Text: Holt Elements of Literature, Third Course, Romeo and Juliet by
William Shakespeare- Oral Presentations (Memorized)
Excerpt 1
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here (901)
Sentence length: 2.8 sentences
Number of syllables: 132 syllables
Text: Holt Elements of Literature, Third Course, Romeo and Juliet by
William Shakespeare- Oral Presentations (Memorized)
Excerpt 2
What say you? Can you love the gentleman?
This night you shall behold him at our feast;
Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face,
And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen;
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content;
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and ‘tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many’s eyes doth share (916)
Sentence Length: 5.1 sentences
Number of Syllables: 130 Syllables
Text: Holt Elements of Literature, Third Course, Romeo and Juliet by
William Shakespeare- Oral Presentations (Memorized)
Excerpt 3
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou her maid art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid, since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.
It is my lady! O, it is my love!
O, that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it. (934)
Sentence Length: 13 sentences
Number of Syllables: 119 Syllables
Text: Holt Elements of Literature, Third Course, Romeo and Juliet by
William Shakespeare- Oral Presentations (Memorized)
Excerpt 4
God’s bread! It makes me mad.
Day, night; hour, tide, time; work, play;
Alone, in company; still my care hath been
To have her matched; and having now provided
A gentleman of noble parentage,
Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly trained,
Stuffed, as they say, with honorable parts,
Proportioned as one’s thought would wish a man—
And then to have a wretched puling fool,
A whining mammet, in her fortune’s tender,
To answer, “I’ll not wed, I cannot love;
I am too young, I pray you pardon me”!
But, and you will not wed, I’ll pardon you!
Graze where you (986)
Sentence Length: 3.4 Sentences
Number of Syllables: 128 Syllables
Text: Holt Elements of Literature, Third Course, Romeo and Juliet by
William Shakespeare- Oral Presentations (Memorized)
Excerpt 5
I will be brief, for my short date of breath
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife.
I married them; and their stolen marriage day
Was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death
Banished the new-made bridegroom from this city;
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betrothed and would have married her perforce
To County Paris. Then comes she to me
And with wild looks bid me devise some mean
To rid (1021)
Sentence Length: 4.5 Sentences
Number of Syllables: 129 Syllables