by Tybalt? Then the lovers might have come through unscathed. If only Romeo had received the message about the plan, then no one would have had to die. Or what if Juliet had awakened just minutes sooner, before Romeo ingested the poison? Then they could have lived happily ever after. But Shakespeare has shaped the plot to lead to its fatal conclusion, as if it were inevitable. His plotting “works” (his sequencing has a logic to it), and its movement has a driving sense of cause and effect. As we