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Romeo and Juliet ▾
contents
  1. Dramatis Personae
  2. Prologue
  3. Act I
  4. Act II
  5. Act III
  6. Act IV
  7. Act V
English ▾

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

free · 25,958 words · 3 h 2 m audiobook, read by Becky Miller for LibriVox

text from Standard Ebooks

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Dramatis Personae

  • Escalus, prince of Verona

  • Paris, a young nobleman, kinsman to the prince

  • Montague and Capulet, heads of houses at variance with each other

  • An old man, cousin to Capulet

  • Romeo, son of Montague

  • Mercutio, kinsman to the prince, and friend to Romeo

  • Benvolio, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo

  • Tybalt, nephew to Lady Capulet

  • Friar Laurence, Franciscan

  • Friar John, Franciscan

  • Balthasar, servant to Romeo

  • Sampson, servant to Capulet

  • Gregory, servant to Capulet

  • Peter, servant to Juliet’s nurse

  • Abraham, servant to Montague

  • An apothecary

  • Three musicians

  • Page to Paris; another page; an officer

  • Lady Montague, wife to Montague

  • Lady Capulet, wife to Capulet

  • Juliet, daughter to Capulet

  • Nurse to Juliet

  • Citizens of Verona; several men and women, relations to both houses; maskers, guards, watchmen, and attendants

  • Chorus

Scene: Verona; Mantua.

Prologue

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Act I

restoring your place…

fetching the rest…

More by William Shakespeare

  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
    You get a play that keeps changing its mind about love, from the quarrelling lovers in the forest to Bottom blundering through his amateur performance. The language is playful and slippery, and Puck gives the whole thing a mischievous sense that human beings are never quite in control.
  • All’s Well That Ends Well
    Helena chases a man who plainly doesn't deserve her, and the play knows it, which is what makes it interesting. If you like your comedies uneasy, with a bed trick and an ending that only half convinces, this one will stick with you.
  • Antony and Cleopatra
    These two aren't young lovers, they're middle-aged, vain, magnificent messes who keep wrecking empires over each other, and you half want to shake them. Stay for Enobarbus, the dry-eyed friend whose barge speech about Cleopatra is worth the whole play.

genres

  • Tragedy

appears in

  • Great Books of the Western World
  • Love Stories
  • Shakespeare: The Tragedies
  • Shakespeare: Where to Start

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thank you for reading

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. The text is in the US public domain, from the Standard Ebooks edition. Served from our own copy; read on their site for the full edition with images and typography.

Narrated by Becky Miller for LibriVox, also public domain.

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