Tebaldo, Juliet's cousin, challenges Romeo to a duel. But he refuses to fight, because he now considers him a kind of brother. The brave and clever Mercuzio, Romeo's friend, immediately replaces Romeo and fights against Tebaldo, who wounds to death the rival. While dying, Mercuzio courses the hate between the two families. Romeo avenges the friend's death and kills Tebaldo. Romeo who's now wanted has to run away. Juliet is desperate. Her father, who's uneasy because of his daughter's mood, decides to speed up the marriage with the earl of Paris. The wedding will take place the day after. She refuses to get married and her father says that she will marry the earl or she will be disinherited. She goes to Friar Lawrence who suggests her to drink a potion, which will make her like a death for forty hours: believing her death they will close her in the Capulet's grave. Friar Lawrence will go there to free her with Romeo. The friar promises that he will inform Romeo about the plan. Juliet agrees with the friar and, while she's alone in the room, she drinks the potion. The next morning the housekeeper finds her inanimate. The whole family cries for her death. In Mantua, where Romeo is hidden, Baldassarre, Romeo's servant, tells him that Juliet is dead. Romeo can't think about anything else about getting a poison and dieing next to his Juliet. Friar Lawrence find out that something has gone wrong and that Romeo doesn't know anything about the plan. He therefore decides to go to the Capulet's grave and to free Juliet. At the same time Romeo reaches the grave and he finds there the earl of Paris who was visiting his fiancée's grave. A duel begin between the two of them and the earl, who is near to death, asks to Romeo, who agrees, to die next to Juliet. Romeo hugs Juliet for the last time and then drinks the poison. Friar Lawrence is shocked when he sees the two bodies and at the same time Juliet wakes up. When she sees that Romeo is death she kills herself with her lover's sword and dies next to him. The chiefs of the Capulet's and Montagues's families, after they have seen the death of their sons, decide to fight no more and to make a golden statue in honour of the two young lovers. 

2) HISTORICAL CONTEXT:   

At the first sight the text could look like a romanticist one but reading carefully the renaissance love is principal element. It's possible to see in the background of the story an age of wars: the Elizabethan age shows the signs of the religious fights and of the ferocious conflicts between different countries and families. The character of the Prince reminds the iron sovereign/queen like the homonymous character of Macchiavelli and of the Machiavellian current, which is known in England and to Shakespeare himself. ............

The love between the two teenagers is shown also whit a religious vocabulary and the presence of Friar Lawrence gives nearly the charisma of the religious mystery. As always the great masterpieces live in a symbolic space in their own age that they made on their own. So this masterpiece has the sign of the Shakespearian genius and the romantic idealism comes from a strong mixture of comic and pathetic....(io lo toglierei): the signature of its irregular and anticlassical author. 

3) PERSONAL OPINION

Romeo and Juliet is a rich work that melts all kind of genre and style but it's mostly a work that has a poetry that goes over the line of space and time. This tragedy, which is certainly Shakespeare's most popular one, is inspired by many sources. Therefore only Shakespeare has been able to bring this tragic story of love and death to a mythology rank.

The characters of Romeo and Juliet came out for the first time in a novel written by Luigi da Porta (1485-1529), who used the same subject well developed by Matteo Bandello in one of his novels.

The work has inspired many artists and is now shown in many plays and movies. This tragedy has as subject the love and the tragedy of love. The work is one of the few that celebrate the mite in a way that has the role of a paradigm. From now on the love and Romeo and Juliet will be as one in everyone's imagination. The true love without condition seams to be without a sexual implication........

The everlasting hate of the families, the noise of the swords, and the reader will remember the lovely words between the young lovers: the love that takes the souls up in the sky and the death that buries the corpses underground.