Answer these questions:
a. IN YOUR OWN WORDS- Discuss how you see Romeo as
a character so far. Please only consider what we have read
up to now. USE ONE QUOTE TO SUPPORT WHAT
YOU SAY ABOUT HIM. “She’ll not be hit With Cupid’s arrow.
She hath Dian’s wit, And, in strong proof of chastity well armed, From
love’s weak childish bow she lives uncharmed. She will not stay the
siege of loving terms, Nor bide th’ encounter of assailing eyes, Nor
ope her lap to saint-seducing gold. O, she is rich in beauty, only poor
That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store.” This makes him
sound like a salty person or negative person, but later on finds love and
changes to the complete opposite.
b. nurse’s humorous role. Find ONE LINE that she uses and
explain the meaning of it as it connects with her character.
she fails to understand the rhetorical senses like of when "Lady
Capulet" says, “Thou knowest my daughter’s of a pretty age” Where
she simply means that Juliet is at a marriageable age, the Nurse
answers by saying she knows Juliet’s exact age “Faith, I can tell her
age unto an hour” nurse’s humorous role is simply a comedic relief.
c. Mercutio is a FOIL to Romeo. Give me a ONE-LINER
that Mercutio says that is very DIFFERENT from how
Romeo sees love.😍 “If love be rough with you, be rough with
love; Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.”
SPARKNOTES WEBSITE TO HELP YOU MAKE SENSE OF THE SPEECH
AS YOU ANNOTATE IT:
https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/romeojuliet/page_52/
MERCUTIO
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Mercutio’s famous Queen Mab speech is important for the stunning quality of its poetry and for
what it reveals about Mercutio’s character, but it also has some interesting thematic
implications. Mercutio is trying to convince Romeo to set aside his lovesick melancholy over
Rosaline and come along to the Capulet feast. When Romeo says that he is depressed
because of a dream, Mercutio launches on a lengthy, playful description of Queen Mab, the fairy
who supposedly brings dreams to sleeping humans. The main point of the passage is that the
dreams Queen Mab brings are directly related to the person who dreams them—lovers dream
of love, soldiers of war, etc. But in the process of making this rather prosaic point Mercutio falls
into a sort of wild bitterness in which he seems to see dreams as destructive and delusional.
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she-In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is making himself miserable over a young woman, Rosaline, whom
he has seen and, without having ever spoken to her, and she not even knowing of his existence,
has fallen in love with her. He’s been paralysed by– lovesickness – and he can’t shake it off,
even though his friends are making fun of him. He and his friends have intercepted a messenger
with a list of people to be invited to a party at the Capulet house. Romeo, a Montague – a family
feuding with the Capulets – has not been invited. Romeo sees that Rosaline’s name is on the list
and he and his friends decide to gatecrash the party.
As they approach Capulet’s house Romeo’s friends continue to make fun of him about his
moping, lovesick behavior, brought on by his obsession with Rosaline and the dreams he is
having about her. Mercutio tells him that the mischief-making Queen Mab has been infecting his
dreams and that’s the cause of his affliction. “Oh, then,” he says, “I see Queen Mab hath been
with you,” and he launches into a description of the legendary Queen Mab and how she operates
to affect people’s dreams.
According to Mercutio Queen Mab is a tiny fairy who travels in an empty hazelnut shell, which
she uses as a carriage, with spider’s legs for wheel spokes, driven by a grey-coated gnat and
drawn by a team of tiny atoms. In her coach, she rides over the lips and noses of sleepers and
fills their dreams with wild fantasies. If she’s in a foul mood she’s quite capable of creating
venereal diseases for women who are dreaming of soft kisses. She can also induce innocent
young virgins to have lascivious dreams.
But Queen Mab is very very small, in relation to the human world, and everything around her is
tiny. Mercutio makes this point throughout. He’s suggesting that Romeo is being an idiot – all
teenage boys experience this lovesickness and it’s nothing. It’s a minor issue, not even worth
commenting on really. Rosaline is irrelevant. And of course, that proves to be true, as Romeo is
very soon to meet Juliet, and to have the same response as he’s had to Rosaline. But in this case
the young woman responds and it develops into something significant, and into a full-blown
tragedy.
Queen Mab does not have a dramatic role in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, which could have
functioned perfectly effectively without Mercutio’s speech, but it serves to underline Romeo’s
immaturity in the context of relationships– a typical characteristic in a teenage boy. During the
course of the play Romeo faces several challenges and experiences that force him to grow up,
and we see that by the time of his death he has matured significantly