Romeo And Juliet(Illustrated) E-Book

William Shakespeare

• Herausgeber: Jillian Wayne
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

• Illustrated Edition: Includes 20 original, full-page illustrations that bring Verona’s streets, the balcony, and the final act to life.
• Bonus Features: A crisp plot summary, a handy characters list, and a brief author biography of William Shakespeare.

Step into moonlit Verona, where a glance becomes destiny and a whispered vow defies an ancient feud. This beautifully illustrated edition of Romeo and Juliet pairs Shakespeare’s unforgettable poetry with twenty evocative artworks, turning every scene into a moment you can see, feel, and remember.
Follow Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet from the electric spark of first love to the breathless choices that change their world—duels at dawn, secret weddings at noon, and messages that race the clock at night. Shakespeare’s language dazzles with wit and wordplay while digging into themes that still strike home today: love versus hate, youth versus authority, fate versus choice.
Perfect for students, book clubs, and collectors, this edition is designed for effortless reading and deeper appreciation:
The summary gives you the story at a glance—ideal before or after reading.
The characters list helps you keep every Montague, Capulet, and friend straight during the action.
The concise author biography places Shakespeare’s life and stage in context, enriching every line.
Whether you’re discovering the play for the first time or returning to a favorite, this edition offers a vivid, accessible journey through the world’s most famous love story—now illuminated with striking art and thoughtful extras that make Verona feel brand new.

 

Leseprobe

Romeo And Juliet                                        By                                                   William Shakespeare

ABOUT SHAKESPEARE

William Shakespeare: A Life in Five Acts

Act I: Stratford beginnings (1564–1582)

William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire; tradition places his birth three days earlier. His father, John, was a glover and civic official; his mother, Mary Arden, came from a local farming family. Shakespeare likely attended the King’s New School, where he absorbed Latin, rhetoric, and the classics—an education that later blooms in his plays’ easy traffic with Ovid, Plautus, and Seneca. No university followed; his theater would be a grammar school graduate’s republic of words.

Act II: Marriage, family, and the “lost years” (1582–1592)

At eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, on November 28, 1582. They had three children: Susanna (1583) and the twins Hamnet and Judith (1585). Then the record thins. Between 1585 and 1592 lie the “lost years,” a gap filled by folklore—poaching stories, schoolmaster tales—but not by documents. What is certain is that by 1592 he had arrived in London as an actor-playwright significant enough to be publicly mocked (and thus, certified) by the pamphleteer Robert Greene.

Act III: The Lord Chamberlain’s Man (1594–1603)

Shakespeare’s fortunes rose with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a company that married artistic ambition to commercial savvy. He wrote a rush of comedies and histories—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry IV—and helped make the theater a middle-class entertainment as well as a courtly pastime. In 1599 the company built the Globe, a wooden O of a playhouse that turned daylight and human breath into stagecraft. Shakespeare also invested in Stratford property, shoring up a provincial base while conquering London by pen.

Act IV: Tragedy, sonnets, and a king’s patron (1603–1611)

With James I’s accession, the troupe became the King’s Men, gaining prestige and steady court performances. Shakespeare’s writing darkened: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth probe ambition, desire, and the way language both reveals and deceives the self. His 154 sonnets—printed in 1609—compress those concerns into crystalline arguments about time, beauty, and loyalty. In his last decade he turned toward late romances—Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest—plays that bend tragedy toward forgiveness and wonder. He also began collaborating, especially with John Fletcher, reflecting a practical playhouse culture where scripts were living documents.

Act V: Return to Stratford, will, and afterlife (1611–1616 and beyond)

Around 1611–1613, Shakespeare spent more time in Stratford, a prosperous householder at New Place. He died on April 23, 1616, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, where his epitaph famously warns off stone-movers. His will—businesslike and precise—distributes property and remembers his “second-best bed” to Anne, a domestic detail that has invited centuries of overreading. The most consequential memorial came seven years later: the 1623 First Folio, assembled by fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell. Without it, half of the plays we now attribute to Shakespeare—including Macbeth and The Tempest—might have vanished.

Coda: What makes him Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s singularity isn’t a matter of biography but of reach. He wrote for a specific architecture and audience, yet his characters think in ways that still feel modern—restless, self-aware, improvising identities in public. He could coin a phrase, bend a proverb, or let blank verse break into prose when emotions outran measure. Scholars continue to refine the chronology, document collaborations, and resist fringe authorship theories; the essential picture holds: a working playwright-actor, financially astute, formally inventive, and unmatched in the dramatic articulation of human possibility.

SUMMARY

Elevator pitch

Two teenagers from enemy families fall in fierce, first-sight love. In a city fueled by pride and street brawls, they try to turn private passion into public peace—only to be outpaced by secrecy, rash choices, and terrible timing.

The story (in a heartbeat)

In Verona, the Montagues and Capulets are locked in a bitter feud. Romeo Montague crashes a Capulet party, meets Juliet, and in a lightning strike of chemistry they vow themselves to each other. With the help of the well-meaning Friar Laurence and Juliet’s bawdy, loyal Nurse, the pair marry in secret, dreaming their love might end the feud.

But the streets won’t stay quiet. A duel spirals into bloodshed, banishment, and a desperate plan: a sleeping potion, a midnight message, a reunion in the family tomb. Miscommunication—Shakespeare’s cruelest villain—arrives right on cue. The lovers’ final choices force their warring parents to face what hatred has cost.

Why it still hits

It captures the rush of first love—breathless, poetic, reckless.

It skewers adult failure: the feud, the pride, the schemes that ignore real risks.

It shows how chance and haste can twist good intentions into catastrophe.

Big ideas

Love vs. hate • Fate vs. free will • Youth vs. authority • Words as weapons and bridges.

A few unforgettable lines

“My only love sprung from my only hate!”

“These violent delights have violent ends.”

“For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Read it for the balcony spark, stay for the razor’s-edge suspense—and the sobering truth that private love can’t survive public hate without courage from everyone.

CHARACTERS LIST

The Montagues

Romeo Montague — Impulsive, romantic protagonist who falls for Juliet.

Lord Montague — Romeo’s father; feuding with the Capulets.

Lady Montague — Romeo’s mother; worried for her son.

Benvolio — Romeo’s cousin; peacekeeper who tries to stop fights.

Balthasar — Romeo’s loyal servant.

Abram (Abraham) — Montague servant.

The Capulets

Juliet Capulet — Intelligent, brave heroine who loves Romeo.

Lord Capulet — Juliet’s father; proud, volatile, feud-locked.

Lady Capulet — Juliet’s mother; favors a match with Paris.

The Nurse — Juliet’s bawdy, affectionate confidante and go-between.

Tybalt — Juliet’s hot-headed cousin; fierce duelist.

Peter — Capulet servant, comic relief.

Sampson & Gregory — Capulet servants who ignite the opening brawl.

Neutral / Others

Friar Laurence — Franciscan; marries the lovers and hatches risky plans.

Friar John — Fellow friar; fails to deliver the crucial message to Romeo.

Mercutio — Romeo’s witty friend (kin to the Prince); loves wordplay and duels.

Prince Escalus — Ruler of Verona; tries to keep civic order.

Count Paris — Noble suitor chosen for Juliet by her parents.

The Apothecary — Poor pharmacist in Mantua who sells Romeo poison.

Chorus — Prologue speaker framing the play’s fate-driven tragedy.

Page, Musicians, Watchmen/Officer — Minor roles that move key scenes along.

Rosaline — Romeo’s offstage crush at the start; underscores his quick-spark heart.

If you want, I can turn this into a printable character map or a study sheet with quotes for each character.

Table of Contents

Titlepage

Imprint

Dramatis Personae

Romeo and Juliet

Prologue

Act I

Scene I

Scene II

Scene III

Scene IV

Scene V

Act II

Prologue

Scene I

Scene II

Scene III

Scene IV

Scene V

Scene VI

Act III

Scene I

Scene II

Scene III

Scene IV

Scene V

Act IV

Scene I

Scene II

Scene III

Scene IV

Scene V

Act V

Scene I

Scene II

Scene III

Colophon

Uncopyright

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.

Romeo and Juliet

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.