William Shakespeare was a famous playwright whose play about Romeo and Juliet is as alive today as it was when he first wrote it. This piece is alive today in two film forms made in the 1990s, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare in Love, as well as in the original text form. These two films are great for understanding the play and also for understanding a little where Shakespeare got most of the ideas for this play. Romeo and Juliet is the tragedy of two "star-crossed" lovers who are the son and daughter of two quarreling families. in Verona, The Montagues and the Capulets. These two lovers fall in love at a party in the Capulet mansion where Romeo, a Montague, shouldn't even be. After Tybalt, Juliet's cousin and leader of the Capulets' hatred, learns of Romeo and Juliet's marriage, he goes in search of Romeo and ends up killing Romeo's friend Mercutio in a duel while Romeo tries to divide him. In anger at the death of his friend, Romeo kills Tybalt and is then banished from Verona by the prince. Juliet is then ordered by her parents to marry a young man named Paris. She doesn't want to get married to him, so she heads to the friar's quarters where she is supposed to confess. Instead, he gets a potion that is supposed to remove all vital signs in which he can fake his death and escape to find Romeo in Mantua. When Romeo learns of Juliet's death he has no idea what her plans were because her message did not reach him due to a plague. (This plague was foreshadowed by Mercutio shortly before his death in the Act II scene, "A plague on both your houses! [II,I,108]" He then buys some poison with the idea in mind of going to Juliet's tomb and rest in peace with her. He arrives at the tomb and meets an enraged Paris, who forces Romeo into a duel in which Paris dies and Juliet wakes shortly after to find that her husband has killed himself. She then takes the dagger and kills herself. The city discovers the nature of the two deaths and the Montagues and Capulets realize that hatred is stupid.