A boy and a girl, from families who hate each other bitterly, fall in love, but everything goes wrong for them and they kill themselves rather than be parted. Most of the
play takes place in ''fair Verona'' an attractive little
city in the north of Italy. The action moves quickly from the city streets to the hall of old Capulet''s house, then to the orchard below Juliet''s balcony, to Friar Lawrences'' lonely cell and finally to the vault where the Capulets and the Montagues view their dead children. The play starts on a Sunday morning in the middle of July; less than five days later - just before dawn on the following Thursday - it is all over.