A plague on both your houses…
What is the first thing that comes to mind when
you think of William Shakespeare, or Romeo
and Juliet?
…old and boring
…tragic love story
…hard to understand
…stuck up
..two feuding families
…romance
…Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
….play with old costumes
…who? Huh?
So about this Shakespeare..
• William Shakespeare was an unknown man from
Stratford on Avon, who ended up becoming a
famous playwright in London
• When he was 18 he married 26 year old Anne
Hathaway, their daughter Susanna was born 6th
months later. They also had twins, Judith and
Hamnet, but he died at age 11
• He spent much of his life in London, as an actor
and author, at the Globe theater, and when he
died he left his wife the 2nd best bed in his will
He wrote his own epitath…
"Good Friends, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To dig the bones enclosed here!
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."
Elizabethan Theater…all the world’s a
stage
• In Shakespeare’s time, theaters were on the
south side of London, along with bearbaiting,
taverns, and some very friendly women
• Theaters were sometimes closed to try to stop
the threat of plague, or because they were
“immoral”
• All of the actors were men, it was illegal for
women to be onstage…so Juliet was being played
by a teenage boy in a dress…there’s a reason
Shakespeare’s plays have lots of talking, but not
too much kissing onstage
• You could get into the Globe theater for a
penny, and stand during the whole play, or pay
a bit more for a seat, most stood, and were
called “groundlings”
• Food was sold, and if the play wasn’t good or
exciting, the audience would heckle or throw
things at the actors
Theater Terms
• Monologue- When one person is talking, for a
long time
Ex. Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech
• Aside- When a character is talking to the
audience, and all the other characters pretend
not to hear
• Suspension of disbelief- When the audience
pretends not to notice all the stuff that is fake
or unrealistic
A way with words
• Shakespeare added over 2,000 words to the
English language in his plays, if he needed a new
word, he made one up, you may recognize…
Eyeball, dwindle, watchdog, gloomy, hobnob,
swagger, rant, moonbeam, fashionable
• There are also expressions he coined that are
very common today, like “a heart of gold,” “wild
goose chase,” “vanish into thin air,” “good
riddance,” “break the ice,” “a laughing stock,”
“clothes make the man,” “dead as a doornail”
• He also wrote some pretty good insults
When we are acting…
• You will sit in your character’s seat
• Keep your folder in order
• When you are onstage (in the middle) you will:
- Speak loud enough to be heard
- Not have conversations with the audience
- Move if it fits in the scene, not wander around
- Stay until you are supposed to exit, then sit down
- Pay attention to the script, so you know your line is coming up
• When you are the audience you will:
- be silent so we can hear the actors and know what’s going on
- follow along with the script, and go onstage when it is your turn
If you cannot follow these expectations, you will start completing
extra questions, be assigned detention, or written up
Match the quote with the characters
1. “What, drawn and talk of peace? I hate the
word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and
thee! Have at thee, coward!”
2. Did my heart love till now? Forswear it,
sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this
night”
3. “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run
fast”
A. Friar Lawrence B. Tybalt C. Romeo
Romeo and Juliet Sources
• Guess what? Shakespeare didn’t come up with
the story of Romeo and Juliet all on his own!
• He borrowed ideas and characters from other
stories that already existed, especially a poem
in 1562 by Arthur Brooke called The Tragical
History of Romeus and Juliet
• The poem is probably Shakespeare’s main
source, but the poem is based on several
different Italian stories
• There’s also a story by Ovid, an ancient Roman
writer, called Pyramus and Thisbe, in which two
lovers from rival families plan to meet in secret,
but through a misunderstanding (who hasn’t
thought their girlfriend was devoured by a lion?)
end up killing themselves
• Shakespeare was definitely aware of the story,
because he used a version of it in one of his plays
• So the moral is, you don’t need the most original
idea, just to have the best, most dramatic version
of it
• And just as Shakespeare borrowed ideas to
come up with Romeo and Juliet, people have
borrowed the play’s ideas to create new
entertainment
• A well-known example is West Side Story, a
musical with two different gangs replacing the
feuding families
Other examples:
• Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luherman’s update)
• “Love Story” (Taylor Swift)
• Pretty much any story with lovers from two
different worlds (yes, Twilight),
• Gnomeo and Juliet
• Shakespeare in Love
• Warm Bodies
Themes, Symbols and Motifs
• A theme is a main idea, or the moral or lesson
of the story…themes in Romeo and Juliet
include the power of love, passion and violence,
individuals versus society, and that you can’t
fight fate
• A symbol is something that stands for more
than itself…symbols in Romeo and Juliet include
poison, roses, fire, stars, and masks
• A motif is an idea or subject that occurs over
and over …motifs in Romeo and Juliet include
opposites such as light vs dark, and youth vs age
Themes
• Power of love:
Obviously, love is important to the story: it’s why
everything happens. Romeo and Juliet’s love is so
powerful it’s more important to them than their
families, their loyalties, or even their lives
• Passion and Violence:
Of course the same violent passion leads to
violence, from Tybalt’s death to the lovers’ suicide.
As strong as the love in the play is, the families’
hate and anger is equally forceful
• Individual against society:
In the play, what the lovers want as individuals is in
conflict with what their families and society wants.
Juliet doesn’t want to marry Paris, but her dad is
telling her she has to, and society would back him
up. (“An you are mine, I’ll give you to my friend”)
Romeo can’t just change his name and never have
to deal with his family again. The Capulets,
Montagues, and the townspeople don’t want to stop
feuding or seem dishonored just because two
teenagers like each other. It takes a horrible
tragedy to get them to change.
• Can you fight fate?
At the beginning of the play, we’re told Romeo and
Juliet are “star-crossed” lovers, meaning it’s already
decided their love will end badly. During the play, both
lovers have bad feelings about what is going to happen,
Romeo before the party, Juliet when he leaves for
Mantua. When Romeo thinks Juliet is dead he cries “I
defy you, stars!” challenging fate, and planning to kill
himself so he can be with Juliet, who isn’t dead. There
are many near-misses and points where things could
have so easily gone another way and ended happily, but
didn’t, that it seems like their fate or destiny has already
been decided for Romeo and Juliet, and no matter what
they try, they can’t change it. But still, you have to
wonder…
Symbols
• Poison- the hate that is tearing apart two families, the
poisons and potions that Friar Lawrence makes and
gave to Juliet, the poison Romeo bought from the
apothecary, and money, which corrupts
• Rose- Love and sweetness, gentleness, associated
with Juliet and Paris, also death
• Fire- consuming passion, such as love, that is also
destructive, associated with Romeo and Juliet, anger
• Stars- fate, fear of what will happen, beauty and
purity of the love between Romeo and Juliet
• Masks- insincerity, hidden love, helps people break
the rules, reason Romeo and Juliet could meet, but
why they didn’t tell their families
Stars
I defy you stars!
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars , From this world-wearied flesh
Give me my
Romeo; and,
when he shall
die, Take him
and cut him out
in little stars,
And he will
make the face
of heaven so
fine That all the
world will be in
love with night
…my mind
misgives
some
consequence
yet hanging
in the stars…
Two of the fairest stars in all of heaven
Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light
This bud of love…may prove a beauteous flower
Rose
Symbol of love and passion
Juliet:
"What's in a name? That
which we call a rose By any
other name would smell as
sweet."
Verona’s summer hath not such a flower
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corpse
Sweet flower, with
flowers thy bridal
bed I strew
The roses in thy cheeks and lips shall fade
Masks
JULIET: Thou knowest the
mask of night is on my face;
Else would a maiden blush
bepaint my cheek
Give me a case to put my visage in:
A visor for a visor! what care I
What curious eye doth quote deformities?
Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.
Mercutio
What, dares the slave come hither, cover’d
with an antic face? - Tybalt
My fan Peter! Good Peter, to hide her
face, for her fan’s the fairer face of
the two
-Mercutio
Poison
This distilled liquor drink thou off: through all thy veins
shall run a cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse shall keep his native progress
A dram of poison
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end
What if it be a poison which the friar subtilly hath ministr’d
to have me dead?
Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua’s law
is death to any he that utters them
There is thy gold- worse poison to men’s souls, doing
more murder in this loathsome world than these poor
Compounds that thou mayest not sell. I sell thee
poison, Thou hast sold me none
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers…
Poison hath residence
Fire
Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright
“These violent delights have
violent ends, And in their
triump die, like fire and
powder Which, as they kiss,
consume”
Love is a smoke raised with the fume
of sighs; Being purged, a fire
sparkling in lovers' eyes;
And fire-ey’d
fury be my
conduct now…
PRINCE
Now Tybalt,
What, ho! you men, you beasts,
take the
That quench the fire of your
“villain” back
pernicious rage, With purple
fountains issuing from your veins, On again!
pain of torture, from those bloody
hands Throw your mistemper'd
weapons to the ground.
Motifs
• In Romeo and Juliet it’s all about the opposites:
life and death, love and hate, dark and light,
Montagues and Capulets, high and low, peace
and fighting, young and old
• It’s full of imagery with darkness and light: ex. in
the balcony scene Juliet’s at a lighted window,
with Romeo in the dark garden, comparing her
to the sun. Throughout the play there are
references to darkness and light, night and day
ex. “O come gentle night..” or the darkness of
the Capulet tomb
• Youth and age is another motif: Romeo and Juliet
have a passionate, teenage love (that may not be very
mature), they fall violently in love at first sight, and
won’t live without each other, and feel that adults
don’t understand (Juliet says “old folks feign as they
were dead, unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead”)
• Meanwhile Friar Lawrence is trying to tell them to
love moderately, Romeo’s parents are worried about
him, and Juliet’s dad wants her to marry a ‘safe’ guy
he picked
• But at the same time, the adults are in large part to
blame for the tragic ending: they were trying to use
the lovers for political advantage, the friar comes up
with the convoluted poison idea, and the hatred and
feuding between the adults in the families means the
lovers are afraid to tell their parents the truth
Graffiti Activity
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene…
Somewhere, in the town of Romeo and Juliet’s
Verona is a graffiti wall, a place where the
characters have been carving, drawing and
writing about what’s important to them. You are
one of the citizens of Verona, and after the
tragedy, you are showing it to a visitor, and
explaining what all the messages mean. Then,
you are going to add three messages of your
own. (54 points)
Cliff Notes Recap
Trivia Quizzes
True and False Quiz
Practice Quiz