Romeo and Juliet

An introduction to Shakespeare and his play of love

But first,what is drama?

Drama: a form of literature that tells a story through the performance of actors in front of an audience.

Its elements include DIALOGUE and STAGE DIRECTION

Elements of Drama - Dialogue

DIALOGUE: any lines spoken by actors. This is what tells the story. There is no narrator; there is nobody interpreting or explaining for you or influencing your perception of the story, as with a novel.

Elements of Drama – Dialogue

Characters typically speak to each other but there are other ways in which they communicate

Soliloquy: a long speech expressing private thoughts, delivered by a character who is alone on stage

Monologue: a long speech delivered by one character to another or to a group of characters

Aside: a private remark to one character or to the audience. It is understood that the other characters on stage can’t hear it

Elements of Drama – Stage Directions

Directions or instructions about setting, costumes, lighting, scenery, props – can also indicate how and when characters move and deliver lines

Usually in italics or set in brackets or parentheses.

Think about importance in Shakespeare’s time!

Kinds of Drama

Tragedy: ends with the downfall or death of protagonist. Elements include

tragic hero – main character – person whose downfall is caused by his own flawed behavior

tragic flaw – part of the hero’s character that leads him to make fatal mistake

comic relief – to relieve tension – humorous scenes or characters. In Shakespeare, it is usually characters from lower ranks of society – servants, cooks, etc.

More Kinds of Drama…

Comedy: shows ordinary people in conflict with society. Conflicts arise from misunderstandings, deceptions, mistaken identities

Romantic comedies – problems between lovers

Comedy of manners – satires of social customs

You should also be aware…

Shakespeare wrote 10 plays that are categorized as “Histories.” These plays dramatize England’s Hundred Years War with France.

Performing Shakespeare

Would be performed at the Globe Theater

Simple props

“Modern” clothing

No girls

More about the Globe

It was in Southwark (what else happened in Southwark??)

Building had to small enough for actors to be heard – but audiences could be as many as 3,000 people!

No seats - spectators stood for performances, ate and drank throughout.

Language

Most important thing to Elizabethans – drama and poetry were their contribution to the Renaissance!

iambic pentameter –meter commonly used in verse and drama

Unstressed -stressed (da-DUM) syllables, five timesA FOOT two or more syllables that together make up the smallest

unit of rhythm in a poem

This foot—the unstressed stressed—is an iamb

Five of those = iambic pentameter

Language – the Sonnet

Shakespearean Sonnet- A type of sonnet made famous by William Shakespeare, which is composed of three quatrains (4 lines) and an ending couplet (2 lines).

The meter of a Shakespearean sonnet is iambic pentameter and it has a rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. This type of sonnet may also be called an Elizabethan sonnet or an English sonnet.

A Sonnet… Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?                      A              Thou art more lovely and more temperate:               B             Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,       A             And summer's lease hath all too short a date:           B              Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,             C             And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;                D            And every fair from fair sometime declines,              C         By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;   D             * But thy eternal summer shall not fade                     E          Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;                F         Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,     E              When in eternal lines to time thou growest:              F            So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,              G

           So long lives this and this gives life to thee.            G

Elizabethans’ World View

The Great Chain of Being: Elizabethans, including Shakespeare, believed in a Divine Order, or Great Chain of Being.  The Divine Order was the belief that everything in the universe has a specific place and rank in order of their perceived importance and "spiritual" nature.  The more "spirit" a person or object had, the more power he or she had. 

The Divine Order

God

Angels

Humans

Animals

Plant

Non-living

The Divine Order

The more "spirit" the person or object had, the more power it had in its interactions with people or things below in the order.  People in Elizabethan England believed that God set up this order and wanted it to be followed.  If someone or something were to break the Divine Order by not being obedient to whatever was above it, the person or thing that went against the God's will would be punished.  Bigger betrayals of the Divine Order were believed to bring bigger punishments by God, while smaller betrayals would bring about smaller punishments.  For example, if a noble overthrew a king, Elizabethan people thought that a natural disaster (an earthquake, a hurricane, etc.) would strike.  If a daughter disobeyed her father, Elizabethan people believed the daughter might fall ill.  This was a convenient way for people higher in the Divine Order to maintain their power.

More literary terms to know or learn

Alliteration

Allusion

Oxymoron

Cliché

Hyperbole

Imagery

Even MORE!

Rhyming Couplet

Simile

Metaphor

Paradox

Personification

Hyperbole

Irony

Romeo and Juliet

One of Shakespeare’s “12” Tragedies

Written in late 1590’s, based on an English poem called The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet.

Hugely popular in its time – was printed and published twice in the 1590’s, which was a big deal considering printing was not technologically evolved yet

Establish This

Exposition

Conflict (Rising Action)

Complication

Climax

Resolution

Shakespeare has conveniently provided an act for each in Romeo and Juliet.

Let’s begin . . .