Questions

• With whom is Romeo madly in love for the first two scenes of the play?

1. Himself2. Mercutio

3. Juliet4. Rosaline

Questions

To which city does Romeo go after being exiled from

Verona?

1. Padua

2. Rome

3. Venice

4. Mantua

Questions

Why is Romeo exiled?

1. For killing Tybalt

2. For marrying Juliet against her father’s will

3. For killing Mercutio

4. For publicly admitting his atheism

Questions

Where do Romeo and Juliet first meet?

1. At Capulet’s feast2. At Friar Lawrence’s cell

3. At Montague’s feast4. At the pier from which

Malvolio is departing for Spain

Questions

Why does Tybalt first challenge Romeo to a duel?

– He’s offended that Romeo loves his cousin– He’s offended that Romeo shows up at the

Capulet ball– He’s offended that Romeo bites his thumb

at him– He does not challenge Romeo to a duel; he

challenges Mercutio

Questions

To what does Romeo first compare Juliet during the

balcony scene?

1. The moon

2. The stars

3. A summer’s day

4. The morning sun

Questions

• How and where does Romeo commit suicide?

1. With a dagger in the orchard

2. With a rope in the public square

3. With a sword in Juliet’s bedchamber

4. With poison in Juliet’s tomb

Questions

Why is Friar John unable to deliver Friar Lawrence’s message to Romeo in

Mantua?1. He is killed by a Capulet servant

2. He is attacked by bandits on the road

3. He is held inside a quarantined house, and is unable to leave

4. Romeo is stopped in Padua and never makes it to Mantua

Conflicts

• Person vs. Person• Person vs. Society

• Person vs. Self

Shakespeare’s Techniques

• Blank verse• Sonnet form• Figurative

language• Imagery

• Puns• allusion

• Soliloquy• Dramatic irony

• Situational irony

• Suspense• Foreshadowing

• farce

Timeline

• Swiftness of action can best be seen by following the

events of these five days.

Sunday

• A street brawl occurs in the early morning between the Capulets and Montagues.

• Romeo meets Juliet at the Capulet feast that night. They declare their love for one another.

Monday

• Romeo talks to Friar Laurence about his love for Juliet.

• Romeo and Juliet are married.• Tybalt kills Mercutio.• Romeo kills Tybalt.• Romeo stays the night with Juliet.• Capulet arranges for Juliet to marry

Paris Thursday morning.

Tuesday

• At dawn, Romeo leaves Juliet to go to Mantua.

• Juliet is told of the plans for her to marry Paris.

• Juliet goes to Friar Laurence for advice.

• Capulet changes wedding date to Wednesday.

• Juliet takes the potion.

Wednesday

• Juliet is discovered “dead” and is taken to the Capulet tomb.

Thursday

• Balthasar tells Romeo that Juliet is dead.• Romeo buys poison and returns to Verona.• Romeo kills Paris and then drinks the

poison.• Juliet awakens, finds Romeo dead, and

stabs herself.• Everyone discovers what has happened.

The Balcony Scene

• The balcony scene is one of the most famous scenes in all of theater, owing to its beautiful and evocative poetry.

• Here Shakespeare plumbs the depths of the young lovers’ characters, and captures the subtleties of their interaction, as in Juliet’s struggle between the need for caution and an overpowering desire to be with Romeo.

Question

What does Romeo compare Juliet to in the beginning passage of

the selection?

Juliet is the sun!

• Shakespeare often exploits the transition between day and night with a recurring light/dark motif, sometimes drawing a sharp distinction between night and day, at other times blurring the boundaries between them.

• In the balcony scene, Romeo imagines that Juliet is the sun, rising from the east to banish the night; in effect, he says that she is transforming night into day.

Juliet is the sun!

• Romeo likewise personifies the moon, calling it “sick and pale with grief” at the fact that Juliet, the sun, is far brighter and more beautiful.

• Romeo then compares Juliet to the stars, claiming that she eclipses the stars as daylight overpowers a lamp—her eyes alone shine so bright that they will convince the birds to sing at night as if it were day.

• Is it a metaphor?

Juliet is the sun!

• Romeo is of course speaking metaphorically here; Juliet is not the sun, and it is still late at night in the orchard.

• But Romeo states the comparison with such devotion that it should be clear to the audience that, for him, it is no simple metaphor. For Romeo, Juliet is the sun, and it is no longer night.

• Here is an example of the power of language to briefly transform the world, in the service of love.

The Power of Language

• Juliet questions why Romeo must be her enemy. She refuses to believe that Romeo is defined by being a Montague, and therefore implies that the two can love each other without fear of the social repercussions.

• But language as an expression of social institutions such as family, politics, or religion cannot be dismissed so easily because no other character in the play is willing to dismiss them. Juliet loves Romeo because he is Romeo, but the power of her love cannot remove from him his last name of Montague or all that it stands for.

The Power of Language

• In the privacy of the garden the language of love is triumphant. But in the social world, the language of society holds sway. This battle of language, in which Romeo and Juliet try to remake the world so that it would allow for their love, is one to keep an eye on.

• It also touches the major theme of the tension between social and family identity (represented by one’s name), and one’s inner identity.

Social Identity vs. Individual Identity

• Juliet believes that love stems from one’s inner identity, and that the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets is a product of the outer identity, based only on names.

• She thinks of Romeo in individual terms, and thus her love for him overrides her family’s hatred for the Montague name.

• She says that if Romeo were not called “Romeo” or “Montague,” he would still be the person she loves. “What’s in a name?” she asks. “That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet” (II.i.85–86).