Shakespeare wrote the apothecary twenty lines and then disappeared him from the text.
Think about what that means for a moment. Romeo, banished to Mantua, walks into a shop and asks a starving man to sell him poison. The apothecary refuses. The apothecary cites the law. Mantua punishes the sale of such drugs with death. Romeo counters that the world affords no law to make him rich. Forty ducats change hands. A vial changes hands. Romeo leaves. Shakespeare's attention returns to Verona, to the tomb, to the reconciliation of the feuding houses.
The apothecary remains in his shop. He has forty ducats on the counter. He has just committed a capital crime. Nobody has ever asked him what happened next.
