Many of the commentators on Romeo and Juliet have suggested that the tragic outcome of the plot hinges merely on a series of coincidences in the time structure of the plot. Capulet hastens Juliet’s marriage to Paris, Friar John arrives too late in Mantua and Juliet awakens just too late to prevent Romeo from suicide. Yet the play has far more force than simply a sad story of young lovers. The play is about ‘the fearful passage of their death-marked love’ and it arouses a feeling of tragic inevitability which runs throughout the plot and creates a suspense for which the tragic outcome is the only possible resolution. This feeling has to be aroused from the very beginning of the action and Shakespeare succeeds in this by presenting the meeting of the lovers in a masque. The masque solves perfectly the plot problem of how to get Romeo into the Capulet household but it also makes it into a theatrically significant event by the spectacular nature of the scene and the atmosphere which it creates. Romeo must enter the Capulet banquet as the herald of love and the masque evokes this atmosphere of youth and revelling.