Act 3, scene 3 Friar Lawrence tells Romeo that his punishment for killing Tybalt is banishment, not death. Very simply, the curse, said by a character Mercutio as he was dying means: ‘I hope both your families get sick and suffer’.

Brother Bartholomew does not know who to trust so keeps his own counsel but that causes him to even distrust the people he loves. Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content. I like the fact she mixed historical facts and people with fiction makes this an enjoyable read and the characters believable. Their families are enmeshed in a feud, but the moment they meet—when Romeo and his friends attend a party at Juliet’s house in disguise—the two fall in love and quickly decide that they want to be married.

However, some of the historical detail was very well done and any book that deals with the Black Death cannot help but be filled with ghoulish appeal. The phrase a plague on both your houses is a famous line from the play Romeo and Juliet that involves a dying character cursing two families that caused great problems. Some people know this phrase as "a pox on both your houses" (and we accepted this variation as correct), and interestingly, it seems that at least one early version of Romeo and Juliet from 1597 does refer to pox. The government had red crosses painted on the doors of affected houses and the whole house would have to obey the quarantine rules – not to go out. But there is little doubt La Peste – like all of Camus’s writing – addresses issues of ultimate, ‘existential’, concern.

The first in the series, A Plague on Both Your Houses is set against the ravages of the Black Death and subsequent novels take much of their subject matter from the attempts of society to recover from this disaster. But he is distracted by the sudden and inexplicable death of the Master of Michaelhouse - a death the University authorities do not want investigated. Susanna Gregory is the pseudonym of Elizabeth Cruwys, a Cambridge academic who was previously a coroner's officer.John Wilkes famously responded to an insult in Parliament to the effect that he would die either "of the pox or on the gallows" by saying "That depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress. The plague rages through England in 1348, and he finds himself one of the few physicians willing to treat and comfort the suffering poor. At some point, I may add Steevens's observations to my answer, which now seems rather faulty in its assumption that "a plague on both your houses" was Shakespeare's original wording. It gave a good pretext for an introductory story about a physician, but I felt like the main mystery/plot as well as the general action and time frame of the book could have centered more on the plague. Sometimes translated ‘a pox on both your houses’, the words give voice to acute frustration and angry bitterness.

And that line resonates because on the evidence of everything that’s happened under the last two presidents, a plague is what both houses eminently deserve.Among them are Drs Rieux, Castel and Richard, the city’s Prefect and clerk, Joseph Grand, the officious magistrate Othon, a traveller Tarrou, an eccentric salesman Cottard, and a slippery journalist Rambert. It was offensive, too, in Shakespeare’s time, to wish the plague on someone and while “a plague on both your houses” later became an English idiom, Mercutio meant it: it shows how much he resented having to forfeit his life in the interests of a meaningless feud. to a quiet confidence that somehow ‘God will redeem my life from the grave; he will surely take me to himself’ (v. Only the previous week he had had to ask his neighbours to help him free the branch of a tree that had entangled itself in the spokes, and he was loathe to impose on their good graces again. When they find out that Rosaline, on whom Romeo dotes, is invited to the party, they decide to go too.

Juliet says that she has not even dreamed of marrying, but that she will consider Paris as a possible husband if her parents wish her to.

There are some attempts at realism and there is plenty of slime, rot, blood, sewage, decomposition and the like. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional. This is the first story on Mathew Bartholomew series when he tries to solve some murder in Cambridge University and treat with some unorthodox ways some patients affected by the Plague. Mixed into the plot is the rivalry between the two universities – Cambridge and Oxford, human greed, the medieval perception of the plague and hints of a love story.