- In exile in Mantua, Romeo wakes up feeling good. He has just had a dream in which Juliet found him dead, but then kissed him back to life.
- That sound you just heard was the anvil of foreshadowing.
- Romeo's servant Balthasar (ironically the name of a wise man in church tradition) arrives with the news from Verona. There's no good way to say this: Juliet's dead.
- Um, is there any message from Friar Laurence?
- Nope.
- Romeo immediately decides that the only thing he can do is go to Juliet's grave and commit suicide there. He knows a poor apothecary who sells illegal drugs, including poisons.
- ("Apothecaries" are basically pharmacists—they sell medicine, some of it prescription and some not.)
- He goes to said "poor apothecary," whose sunken cheeks and hollow looking eyes suggest that he is starving to death, and Romeo convinces him to sell him a dram of poison (even though selling poison is illegal), since, you know, the guy is starving and really needs the money.
- Then Romeo heads for Verona.