romeo and juliet essay topics pdf

Romeo and Juliet Navigator HomeLesson Plans Home Romeo and Juliet Navigator:Links to Miscellaneous Lesson Plans For the most part, the sites are described by extracts. My additional notes appear in square brackets at the end. 'You Kiss by the Book': Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet This lesson plan complements study of plot and characterization in Romeo and Juliet by focusing on Shakespeare's use of lyric forms and conventions to spotlight moments in the drama and thereby heighten the impact of the action on the stage. Students look first at the sonnet in which Romeo and Juliet meet, analyzing the imagery to gain insight into the way Shakespeare's use of love sonnet conventions characterizes the moment and the relationship between the lovers. Then students act the passage to notice how Shakespeare stage manages this moment, and consider what perspective his making the lovers almost literally kiss by the book lends to our perception of their characters. Finally, students enact the scene in which this moment occurs, in order to notice how Shakespeare combines poetic forms, ranging from the almost-prose of Capulet and the Nurse to the melodramatic style of Tybalt, to achieve something akin to the cuts and framing that are possible in film. To conclude, students work in groups to find similar moments in the play (e.g., the balcony scene, the tomb scene, etc.) where Shakespeare spotlights the action through lyric form and at the same time invites us to see through the idealization of lyric conventions by having the characters act out these conceits on stage. [Visited 13 December 2005.] Romeo & Juliet License Plates After we finish the play, I have the students think up some creative personalized license plates for various characters. Some use quotes. EX. LYKAROZ (like a rose) JLTZSUN (Juliet is the sun) Popular characters include Romeo, Juliet, The Nurse, Mercutio, and.
Because of the intensity of the relationship between Romeo and Juliet and the complex development of events during the few days of the play’s action, the story can certainly seem to take place over a time span much longer than the one it actually occupies. By compressing all the events of the love story into just a few days, Shakespeare adds weight to every moment, and gives the sense that the action is happening so quickly that characters barely have time to react, and, by the end, that matters are careening out of control. This rush heightens the sense of pressure that hangs in the atmosphere of the play. While it may not seem plausible for a story such as Romeo and Juliet to take place over a span of only four days in the real world, this abbreviated time scheme makes sense in the universe of the play. Romeo is a passionate, extreme, excitable, intelligent, and moody young man, well-liked and admired throughout Verona. He is loyal to his friends, but his behavior is somewhat unpredictable. At the beginning of the play, he mopes over his hopeless unrequited love for Rosaline. In Juliet, Romeo finds a legitimate object for the extraordinary passion that he is capable of feeling, and his unyielding love for her takes control of him. Juliet, on the other hand, is an innocent girl, a child at the beginning of the play, and is startled by the sudden power of her love for Romeo. Guided by her feelings for him, she develops very quickly into a determined, capable, mature, and loyal woman who tempers her extreme feelings of love with sober-mindedness. The attraction between Romeo and Juliet is immediate and overwhelming, and neither of the young lovers comments on or pretends to understand its cause. Each mentions the other’s beauty, but it seems that destiny, rather than any particular character trait, has drawn them together. Their love for one another is so undeniable.
G. Blakemore Evans (essay date 1984) SOURCE: An introduction to Romeo and Juliet, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 1-48. [In the following excerpt, Evans provides an overview of the play's sources, structure, style, characters, and tragic qualities with an emphasis on the theme of love.] SOURCES AND STRUCTURE The general type of story represented by Romeo and Juliet has its roots in folklore and mythology. Best described as a separation-romance, it shows obvious analogies with the stories of Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe, Tristan and Isolde, and with later medieval works like Floris and Blanchefleur and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.1 Chaucer's poem leaves its mark strongly on Shakespeare's principal source for the play, Arthur Brooke's Romeus and Juliet, and, independently perhaps, on Shakespeare's play itself. The earlier history of the Romeo and Juliet story has been treated in detail by a number of critics,2 but since there is no persuasive evidence that Shakespeare knew the Italian or French versions at first hand,3 we may limit our discussion to the two English versions:4 Arthur Brooke's long poem, The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562); and William Painter's 'Rhomeo and Julietta' included in volume II (1567) of his widely known Palace of Pleasure, a collection of prose translations from classical sources and from Italian and French novelle.5 Both Brooke and Painter used a French version of the story by Pierre Boaistuau, published in volume I of Francois de Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques (1559),6 which in turn was based primarily on Matteo Bandello's 'Romeo e Giulietta' (1554) and, in some details, on Luigi da Porto's Giuletta e Romeo (about 1530), the immediate source of Bandello's version and the first to lay the action in Verona and to give the names Romeo and Juliet to the protagonists.7 Shakespeare worked directly with Brooke's.
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In what way do Romeo and Juliet break gender conventions? How do these roles fluctuate throughout the play?At the beginning of the play, the young lovers' behavior reverses common gender conventions – Romeo acts in a way that his friends call feminine, while Juliet exhibits masculine qualities. Romeo is by no means an archetypal Elizabethan man; he is disinterested in asserting his physical power like the other male characters in the play. Instead, Romeo chooses to stew in his pensive melancholy. On several instances, Romeo's companions suggest that his introspective behavior is effeminate. On the other hand, Juliet exhibits a more pronounced sense of agency than most female characters in Shakespeare's time. While the women around her, like her mother, blindly act in accordance with Lord Capulet's wishes, Juliet proudly expresses her opinion. Even when she has lost a battle (like when Lord Capulet insists she consider marrying Paris), she demonstrates a shrewd ability to deflect attention without committing to anything. In her relationship with Romeo, Juliet clearly takes the lead by insisting on marriage and proposing the plan to unite them. As the play progresses, Romeo starts to break out of his pensive inaction to the point that Mercutio notices this change. Romeo also makes a great shift from his cowardly attempt at suicide in Act III to his willful decision in Act V. Overall, Romeo and Juliet are arguably a good match because they are so distinct. Juliet is headstrong, while Romeo is passive until passion strikes and inspires him to action. Contrast Romeo's attempted suicide in Act 3 with his actual suicide in Act 5. How do these two events reveal changes in his character and an evolving view of death?Romeo considers suicide in both Act 3 and Act 5. In Act 3, Romeo's desire to take his own life is a cowardly response to his grief over killing Tybalt. He is.