Summary
Paris arrives at the Capulet tomb to lay flowers in Juliet's memory. His page warns him that someone is approaching, and they hide in the bushes outside the tomb. Romeo appears with Balthasar and breaks into the tomb on the pretext of seeing Juliet one last time. Balthasar, apprehensive about what Romeo is going to do and fearful of Romeo's wild looks, also hides himself outside the tomb. Paris, believing that Romeo has come to desecrate the bodies in the tomb, confronts Romeo. Romeo tries to warn Paris off, but Paris challenges Romeo and they fight. Paris is wounded and dies. Just before he dies, he begs Romeo to place him in the tomb next to Juliet. Romeo is filled with compassion and grants his wish. Paris' page, who has watched the fight, goes to call the night watchman.
Romeo is dazzled by Juliet's beauty even in death. Without hesitation, he kisses her, drinks the poison, and dies at her side. A moment later, the Friar arrives and discovers the dead bodies of Romeo and Paris. Juliet then wakens from her death-like sleep and looks for Romeo, saying, "Where is my Romeo?" Upon seeing the bodies of Romeo and Paris, she resolves to remain in the tomb.
The Friar tries in desperation to convince Juliet to leave as the night watchman approaches, but Juliet refuses. The Friar flees, and Juliet is alone with Romeo and Paris dead at her side. She tries to drink poison from Romeo's vial. Finding it empty, she tries to kiss some poison from his lips. Hearing the night watchman approach, Juliet fatally stabs herself with Romeo's dagger.
The night watchman and the Prince arrive shortly, accompanied by the Capulets and Lord Montague. Lady Montague has died of grief at Romeo's banishment. The Friar faithfully recounts the events of the past week and offers his life in atonement. The Prince acknowledges the Friar's benevolent intent and instead lays the blame for the deaths squarely on Montague and Capulet for their longstanding quarrel. The Prince also blames himself for his leniency and fines Montague and Capulet severely. The two families are finally reconciled as the Prince ends the play by saying, "For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
Analysis
The final scene of the play brings both the transcendent reunion of Romeo and Juliet and the reconciliation of the feuding families. The family tomb becomes a symbol of both birth and death. It is, on the one hand, the womb from which Juliet should emerge alive — and hope be born anew. However, the tomb is also a dark and fateful vortex that consumes life, light, and hope. Romeo pledges in Act V, Scene 1, that he will defy fate and lie with Juliet that night. In his final act, he falls by her side and lies with her in perpetuity.
As Romeo charges into the tomb, a "detestable maw," he sheds much societal pretense that previously influenced his behavior. His plans are "savage-wild," "[m]ore fierce than empty tigers or the roaring sea," and he vows to tear anyone who attempts to detract him "joint by joint" and to "strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs." Romeo has separated himself from his family, from the feud, from Verona, and now from his humanity.
This last scene, appropriately, takes place in the dark of night. Heretofore, Romeo and Juliet's relationship flourished at night, and each provided the other with light. In his final speech, Romeo once again uses light and dark imagery to describe Juliet as she acts as a source of light in the darkness of the tomb. "her beauty makes / This vault a feasting presence full of light." Such images simultaneously make the audience all the more aware of how close the lovers come to finding joy — making their end in darkness all the more tragic. However, these images also suggest a spiritual light that may surround a wedding feast for the couple beyond death.
Romeo is struck by the way Juliet's beauty appears to defy death — she still looks alive: "Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe / That unsubstantial Death is so amorous?" he asks bitterly, believing that death preserves her to be death's own lover. The dramatic tension is amplified by the audience's awareness that Romeo is seeing the physical signs of Juliet's recovery from drug-induced sleep. In an example of bleak irony, his attraction to her even in death emboldens him to press onward with his own suicide just as she is about to awaken.
Lady Capulet's curse on Juliet echoes loudly: "I would the fool were married to her grave," as does Paris' description of the tomb as a "bridal bed." Once again, the themes of love, sex, and death become inextricably intertwined ensnaring the characters in an intricate web. Reunion in this scene is not only spiritual, but also sexual. Shakespeare again draws on the Elizabethan meaning of death as sexual climax. Romeo drinks poison from the round vial — an allusion to female sexuality. Juliet stabs herself with Romeo's dagger, a phallic image symbolizing the reconsummation of their marriage. Thus as they die in pursuit of spiritual unification, they symbolically reconsummate their marriage, leaving their bodies as monuments to the depth of their love as well as signs of the tragic waste that is the feud's legacy.
Paris' challenge to Romeo at the tomb parallels Tybalt's challenge in Act III, Scene 1. In both instances, Romeo resists the invitation to fight, but fate conspires to leave him no choice. Romeo is reluctant to kill Paris, because he is concerned only with dying himself and entreats Paris to leave. Romeo says to Paris, "By heaven I love thee better than myself." He responded similarly to Tybalt's insults in Act III, Scene 1, "But [I] love thee better than thou canst devise."
After Paris is dead, Romeo realizes who Paris is and describes them both as the victims of fate: "One writ with me in sour misfortune's book." Paris is a noble suitor and defends Juliet's grave with his life. His death, like Mercutio's, is tragic in that he never knew the love shared by Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo's sudden sense of compassion for the dying Paris may be understandable. When Romeo courted Rosaline, he found her cold and unresponsive to his amorous desires. Like Romeo, Paris received little beyond polite conversation from Juliet; her love was entirely dedicated to Romeo. Like Romeo, Paris is a worthy suitor of good character and noble intent. The pain of an unrequited love is not foreign to Romeo, and the fact that Paris will die, like Mercutio, without enlightenment or exposure to true, transcendent, spiritual love catalyzes great compassion and sympathy in Romeo.
Rather than demonstrating weakness or a distracted mindset, Juliet's death indicates her dignity and strength of character. The Romans regarded stabbing as the most noble form of suicide. Juliet ignores the Friar's warnings and deliberately follows through with her vow to be with Romeo in death.
Thus the play concludes with the reconciliation of the families — a somewhat Pyrrhic triumph. As the originators of the feud stand amidst the dead bodies of their city's youth, the rift is healed. Romeo and Juliet have achieved spiritual reunion in death, and their lives will be memorialized in gold as witness to their sacrifice. The conclusion seems somewhat empty because Romeo and Juliet triumph in death — an ending that manifests the very essence of the tragedy itself. However, measuring the tragedy by the crude barometer of the moral lessons that the survivors learn seems obtuse. The tragedy can be appreciated in the context of the protagonists' understanding of their own lives. The soul of the tragedy is not constituted in the joy they had and lost; rather, the soul of the tragedy lies in the joy that could never last in this world.
