Why does Romeo believe Juliet is dead?
Balthasar truthfully reports what everyone in Verona believes, while Friar Lawrence's explanatory letter is blocked by plague quarantine.
Could the plan have worked?
It depends on secrecy, exact timing, an undelayed messenger, and Romeo's restraint. The number of failure points exposes the friar's confidence as dangerously unrealistic.
What ends the feud?
The public discovery of the lovers' marriage, sacrifices, and deaths forces both houses to see that their inherited hatred destroyed their children.
Who is responsible?
The play distributes responsibility across the feud, coercive parents, violent honor culture, risky adult schemes, failed communication, chance, and the lovers' own haste rather than naming a single culprit.
Themes and What the Ending Means
Love and inherited identity: The lovers try to separate themselves from family names that Verona treats as political facts.
Haste and time: The compressed calendar and repeated deadlines turn passion, violence, and rescue into races against knowledge.
Violence and masculinity: Public reputation repeatedly pressures men to answer insults with force.
Youth and authority: Adults control marriage, movement, information, and medicine while misunderstanding the young people affected.
Language and reality: Poetry creates intimacy and possibility, but words and messages also fail, arrive late, or disguise dangerous facts.