In Verona, in Italy, there were two houses called Montague and Capulet. They had been at odds a very long time. Why the quarrel began is nowhere in the play.
The reason was gone and the fighting was left. Even the servants drew on each other in the street, and then the adults came running and it grew. The prince had warned that the next man to disturb the streets would pay with his life. That warning is how this play opens.
Montague’s son Romeo took no interest in the quarrel. He was sick over something else.
A Young Man Sick Over Someone
Romeo’s heart was set on a woman named Rosaline. She had resolved not to marry, and had no intention of taking up his feeling.
He walked about at night and shut himself in his room by day. His cousin Benvolio, worried, tried to get him outdoors. His friend Mercutio mocked the gloom outright. If love weighs you down, he said, then jump on it and rise.
Benvolio’s remedy was simple. Look at plenty of other women. Then the face troubling him now would stop looking remarkable. Romeo said that could not happen.
The Servant Who Could Not Read
Just then a servant of the Capulets stopped the two of them in the street. He had been sent round with the invitations to a feast, and he could not read. So he was asking passers-by to read the list to him.
Romeo read it out. Rosaline’s name was on it. The servant thanked him and said that if he was no Montague he was welcome to come and drink. He had no idea who he had just handed the list to.
Benvolio seized on it. Go to the feast, he said, and set Rosaline beside the others. Romeo went along saying he was going to see Rosaline.
Into the House Behind a Mask
That night Romeo’s party put on masks and walked into the Capulet house. Because the faces were covered, nobody stopped them.
Capulet was in a good mood, welcoming his guests. His daughter Juliet was thirteen, and a match with a nobleman named Paris was being discussed. Her mother had told her to look carefully at the man that evening. Juliet answered only that she would look.
The First Face
Romeo was looking for Rosaline and saw somebody else. He asked a servant who she was, and the servant did not know. Standing there, he cancels everything he has felt until then. Did he ever love before tonight, he asks.
One person recognised his voice. Juliet’s cousin Tybalt. A Montague was in this house, he said, and went for his sword.
Capulet stopped him. The young man’s name was not badly spoken of in Verona, and this was his own feast. Tybalt backed down, muttering that he would not leave it there. What that restraint costs comes back a few chapters later.
A Conversation Made of Hands
Romeo goes to Juliet and takes her hand. If his rough hand has profaned hers, he says, his lips will smooth it away. Juliet answers that palm meeting palm is how pilgrims greet a saint. They pass hands, lips and prayer back and forth between them.
There is a hidden shape to this exchange. The fourteen lines they divide between them make exactly one sonnet. The kiss falls where the poem ends, and the nurse calls Juliet away almost at once.
The Moment the Names Arrive
The nurse tells Juliet her mother is asking for her. Only now does Romeo ask who that was. Told she is the daughter of the house, he says his life lies in his enemy’s hands.
Juliet asked her nurse who the young man was. The answer was the only son of the Montagues.
“My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!” (Act 1, Scene 5)
They saw a face first and learned the names second. That order is this play’s first condition, and its last.
Today, What Happens at First Sight
Until that afternoon Romeo was aching over somebody else. You can say from this that his heart is light. You can equally say that no fixed length of time is required for love to begin. The play does not pick one.
One thing it does show plainly. The two of them had a short while in which they did not know each other’s names. Inside that while there was no house and no grudge. There was a face and there were words.
What the adults handed down was not a reason to fight but a side to fight on. Nobody remembers the reason, and the side is settled at birth. So the next chapter of this story starts with a question about giving up a name.