Romeo Character Analysis | Romeo And Juliet

Studied for Junior Cycle English exam years 2028, 2029, 2030.

Romeo Montague is the male lead in Romeo and Juliet, and he does not stay the same person. Any Romeo character analysis that stops at the word romantic has missed the play. He begins by performing misery over a girl he barely knows. He ends up dead beside a wife he has known for four days.

Romeo character analysis: who he is in one sentence

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Romeo is a teenage Montague who feels everything at full volume, acts on it within minutes, and dies because that habit never leaves him.

Everything below is evidence for that sentence. Watch the clock while you read. He meets Juliet, marries her, kills her cousin and takes poison inside four days.

What he does

Act 1. He avoids his parents and wanders about at dawn sighing over Rosaline. Benvolio talks him into gatecrashing the Capulet party so he can compare her with other girls. On the way in he says he has a bad feeling about the night.

“Some consequence yet hanging in the stars”
Romeo, uneasy on his way into the Capulet party, in Act 1, Scene 4.

He goes in anyway. He sees Juliet across the room, and Rosaline is never mentioned by him again. They share a kiss before either of them knows the other’s surname.

Act 2. He climbs the Capulet wall that same night and the two agree to marry. Friar Lawrence performs the wedding the next day, hoping it will end the feud. Nobody sleeps on the decision.

Act 3. Tybalt comes looking for him in the street. Romeo is now Tybalt’s cousin by marriage. He refuses to fight and cannot say why. He tries to break up the duel that follows, and Mercutio is stabbed. Minutes later Romeo has killed Tybalt.

“O, I am fortune’s fool!”
Romeo, standing over Tybalt’s body, in Act 3, Scene 1.

The Prince banishes him instead of executing him. Romeo spends one night with Juliet and leaves for Mantua at dawn.

Act 5. His servant reaches Mantua with the news that Juliet is dead. Romeo buys poison within the hour and rides back to Verona. He kills Paris at the tomb door and drinks the poison beside her. She wakes a few minutes later.

What he wants

At the start he wants to be in love. Rosaline is barely the point. She never appears on stage, and his misery comes out in neat matched pairs of words.

“O brawling love! O loving hate!”
Romeo, describing his misery over Rosaline, in Act 1, Scene 1.

It sounds worked out in advance, because it is. His friends read it as a pose. Mercutio says so the moment Romeo starts trading jokes with him again.

“Why, is not this better now than groaning for love?”
Mercutio, teasing Romeo the morning after the balcony scene, in Act 2, Scene 4.

After Act 1, Scene 5 the wanting changes shape. It stops being about how he feels and starts being about getting to Juliet. Walls, curfews and a death sentence all look like obstacles rather than warnings.

After the banishment he wants one thing, and it is not survival. He cannot picture a life with Juliet in it somewhere else.

“There is no world without Verona walls”
Romeo, hearing his sentence in the Friar’s cell, in Act 3, Scene 3.

Key quotes

“O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!”
Romeo, seeing Juliet for the first time, in Act 1, Scene 5.

Not a word about Rosaline. The switch takes one line and he never explains it. Use it to argue that his feelings arrive complete, with no working out.

“Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say death”
Romeo, told he is exiled rather than executed, in Act 3, Scene 3.

He would rather be killed than sent away. Treat that as character rather than as decoration. It is the reasoning that has him buying poison two acts later.

“Then I defy you, stars!”
Romeo, told that Juliet is dead, in Act 5, Scene 1.

Set this beside the fortune’s fool line in Act 3, Scene 1. Same character, opposite claim about who is in charge. Neither line stops to check the facts first.

“Thus with a kiss I die.”
Romeo, drinking the poison in the tomb, in Act 5, Scene 3.

The timing is the point. Juliet wakes minutes afterwards. Every earlier rush was survivable and this one is not.

What he stands for

Romeo stands for speed. Shakespeare surrounds him with people who warn about it and he moves anyway. Friar Lawrence tells him that people who run fast stumble. Benvolio says the hot weather has the mad blood stirring. Romeo himself senses trouble before he goes into the party.

He also stands for the gap between saying a feeling and having one. In Act 1 his grief comes in tidy opposites and rhyme. In the tomb in Act 5 the lines go short and plain. The showing off falls away when the feeling is real.

A good Romeo character analysis treats the inconsistency as evidence rather than as a flaw to hide. He is not lying in Act 1. He is a teenager rehearsing an emotion he has not felt yet. The rehearsal is what makes the real grief measurable.

Two strong essay angles

Your studied play is examined in Section C, Responding Imaginatively, worth 70 of the 180 marks. A Romeo character analysis question there tends to come in one of two shapes.

1. One habit, three different costs. Argue that impulse is a single trait in him and only the damage changes. Anchor it in three moments. He walks into the Capulet party after saying he fears the night, in Act 1, Scene 4. He kills Tybalt within minutes of Mercutio’s death, in Act 3, Scene 1. He buys poison inside an hour of hearing a rumour, in Act 5, Scene 1. Say what each one costs. The pattern is your argument, not the plot.

2. The Rosaline problem, used on purpose. Argue that the first love is performed and the second is not, and prove it from his language rather than from events. Set the matched opposites of Act 1, Scene 1 against the short flat lines of Act 5, Scene 3. This shape works for questions about a character who changed, or a character you did not warm to at first.

One common mistake

The common mistake is to write Romeo as a pure romantic hero and quietly leave Rosaline out. That instinct costs you marks. Without Rosaline you have no way of showing that anything changed, and change is what a character answer is judged on. The fix is to put her in early and use her as a measuring stick.

The other half of the same mistake is forgetting that Romeo kills two people. He kills Tybalt in Act 3, Scene 1 and Paris in Act 5, Scene 3. An answer that mentions neither is describing a gentler character than the play gives you.

Quick recall

1. Who is Romeo in love with when the play opens?

Rosaline, a girl who never appears on stage. He drops her the moment he sees Juliet at the Capulet party in Act 1, Scene 5.

2. Why does Romeo go to the Capulet party?

Benvolio persuades him to go and compare Rosaline with the other girls there. It is a Capulet house, so he is gatecrashing.

3. What does Romeo say before he goes in?

That he fears some consequence hanging in the stars, in Act 1, Scene 4. He senses trouble and walks in anyway.

4. Why does Romeo refuse Tybalt’s challenge in Act 3, Scene 1?

He has just married Juliet, so Tybalt is his cousin by marriage. He cannot explain that in the street without exposing the secret wedding.

5. What punishment does Romeo get for killing Tybalt?

Banishment from Verona, not death. The Prince had promised the death penalty for the next brawl, so this counts as mercy.

6. How does Romeo take the news of his banishment?

Badly. In the Friar’s cell in Act 3, Scene 3 he says he would rather be put to death than sent away from Juliet.

7. How close does Romeo come to being saved?

Very. The Friar’s letter never reaches him, and Juliet wakes in the tomb minutes after he drinks the poison in Act 5, Scene 3.

Romeo and Juliet: Romeo