At the end of Berlioz's section 1, we had not yet come to the end of Shakespeare's first act; Berlioz's exposition of the plot corresponds to Shakespeare's prologue sonnet, and is wholly anticipatory in character. As section 5 begins, we are already in the domain of the last act. The whole inner drama of Romeo and Juliet occurs in the symphonic sections 2, 3, and 4—another reason for believing that the adagio corresponds not just to the balcony scene, but to every intimate scene between the lovers.

We are in the domain of the last act—but Garrick's last act, not Shakespeare's, as Berlioz explicitly noted:

Berlioz preferred Garrick's treatment of the last act of Romeo and Juliet, but thought that almost all other tamperings with the masters were wretched and reprehensible. It is possible to see why Berlioz would call attention to Garrick: Garrick demonstrated (according to Berlioz) that it was possible to improve Shakespeare, and therefore gave a kind of warrant for Berlioz's own subliminal project of competing with Shakespeare.

The opera of sections 5, 6, and 7 opens with a funeral procession—Convoi funèbre de Juliette—with the odd (though perfectly exact) subheading, “Fugal March, first for instruments, with a psalmody on just one note in the voices; then for voices, with the psalmody in the orchestra.” Berlioz derived the idea of the procession, complete with comparisons of Juliet to a flower cut before its time, not from Shakespeare but from Garrick, who wished to make Juliet's death a more public and spectacular occasion for sentiment: in 1750 Garrick commissioned William Boyce to write (quite beautiful) music for his funeral procession scene, complete with the steady tolling of a bell.