Romeo buys poison from the apothecary in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
After hearing that Juliet is dead, Romeo travels to Mantua and decides to return to Verona. He visits a poor apothecary and asks for a dose strong enough to kill him quickly. The apothecary hesitates because selling such a drug is illegal under Mantuan law, but poverty persuades him to accept Romeo’s money.
Romeo uses the poison at Juliet’s tomb, believing that she has truly died. The audience knows that Friar Laurence’s plan has placed her in a deathlike sleep, but the message explaining that plan never reaches Romeo in time.
This episode is sometimes confused with the potion Juliet drinks. Juliet receives a sleeping potion from Friar Laurence, while Romeo obtains lethal poison from the apothecary. Their different substances serve the mistaken-information chain that drives the final tragedy.