being related to Mercutio, whom Tybalt had slain, and
having had the peace of his government often disturbed by these
brawls of Mountagues and Capulets, came determined to put the law in
strictest force against those who should be found to be offenders.
Benvolio, who had been eye-witness to the fray, was commanded by the
prince to relate the origin of it, which he did, keeping as near the
truth as he could without injury to Romeo, softening and excusing the
part which his friends took in it. Lady Capulet, whose extreme grief
for the loss of her kinsman Tybalt made her keep no bounds in her
revenge, exhorted the prince to do strict justice upon his murderer,
and to pay no attention to Benvolio's representation, who being
Romeo's friend, and a Mountague, spoke partially. Thus she pleaded
against her new son-in-law, but she knew not yet that he was her
son-in-law and Juliet's husband. On the other hand was to be seen Lady
Mountague pleading for her child's life, and arguing with some justice
that Romeo had done nothing worthy of punishment in taking the life
of Tybalt, which was already forfeited to the law by his having slain
Mercutio. The prince, unmoved by the passionate exclamations of these
women, on a careful examination of the facts, pronounced his sentence,
and by that sentence Romeo was banished from Verona.

Heavy news to young Juliet, who had been but a few hours a bride,
and now by this decree seemed everlastingly divorced! When the
tidings reached her, she at first gave way to rage against Romeo,
who had slain her dear cousin: she called him a beautiful tyrant,
a fiend angelical, a ravenous dove, a lamb with a wolf's nature, a
serpent-heart hid with a flowering face, and other like contradictory
names, which denoted the struggles in her mind between her love and
her resentment: but in the end love got the mastery, and the tears
which she shed for grief that Romeo had slain her cousin, turned to
drops of joy that her husband lived whom Tybalt would have slain.
Then came fresh tears, and they were altogether of grief for Romeo's
banishment. That word was more terrible to her than the death of many
Tybalts.

Romeo, after the fray, had taken refuge in friar Lawrence's cell,
where he was first made acquainted with the prince's sentence, which
seemed to him far more terrible than death. To him it appeared there
was no world out of Verona's walls, no living out of the sight of
Juliet. Heaven was there where Juliet