Romeo and Juliet – Act 4, Scene 3 – Scene Summary

Romeo and Juliet

Act 4, Scene 3

Scene Summary

Characters: Juliet, Nurse

Location: Juliet’s bedroom, Capulet house

Time: Tuesday night

Scene Events: Juliet and her Nurse have gone back up to Juliet’s bedroom to prepare for her wedding the next day, they are choosing Juliet’s best jewels and gowns. Juliet asks the Nurse to leave so that she can be left alone. She has mixed feelings about the sleeping potion that Friar Lawrence has given her, perhaps the drug is really a poison and the Friar wants to kill her, maybe she will awaken to find herself in her family’s tomb among the bones of her deceased ancestors and will go crazy “Where for this many hundred years the bones of all my buried ancestors are pack’d, Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in the earth, Lies fest’ring in his shroud” “Madly play with my forefathers joints, And pluck the mangl’d Tybalt from his shroud”. Juliet is terrified of the outcome of Friar Lawrence’s sleeping potion as she will be sleeping for forty-two hours if it should work. Juliet takes the potion anyway as a toast to her love, Romeo.

Quote: Juliet “Here’s drink – I drink to thee”.

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