Scene 1

Act V includes the play’s climax and dénouement. The setting is now Mantua. Romeo does not realize Juliet is in a coma rather than dead as his servant reports. The Friar’s plan has failed. Romeo has not received his message for reasons that Shakespeare will soon reveal. When Balthasar tells Romeo that Juliet is dead, the rash husband immediately decides to commit suicide. Knowing about an apothecary nearby whose poverty will probably compel him to sell poison, Romeo finds the man’s shop is closed. By a odd coincidence, however, the man himself happens to walk by at that precise moment. Shakespeare stretches our credulity here. In any case, as Romeo suspected, the impoverished chemist breaks the law and sells the poison. Romeo rushes off to kill himself at Juliet’s tomb, another example of his rash behavior. Both Romeo and Juliet resort to the use of drugs, although Romeo takes a drug on his own initiative while Juliet is persuaded to do so. Also, Romeo resorts to a drug as a means of suicide, while Shakespeare would have us believe that Juliet does so to achieve reunion with her husband. One could argue that these contrasts support the implication that Juliet is more mature than Romeo.

Scene 2

The scene switches back to Verona where we now learn that another friar who was supposed to deliver Friar Laurence’s message to Romeo has been quarantined at a house in which everyone is stricken with the plague. Another coincidence involves Friar John. Of all the houses in Mantua where he could have stayed, he lodges at one so plague-ridden that neither people nor letters could leave the residence. Thus, Friar John could not deliver the letter to Romeo that explained Juliet’s coma. Friar Laurence immediately foresees a fatal outcome, and he too hurries to Juliet’s vault to rescue her and hide her at his cell until Romeo is contacted.