Do I really love him?

Do you believe in Cupid?

An Introduction to
The Tragedy of Romeo and

How snotty do I look?

William Shakespeare
Born 1564 in Stratford-UponAvon
Father John Shakespeare

Married Anne
Hathaway

Leather-maker & Bailiff of

Stratford
Self-Educated

Anne 26 yrs.
Shakespeare 18
yrs.
Susanna born after
6 mos.

How scary is this?

William
Shakespeare
Cont.
1580s Freelance Actor
1590 Freelance Writer
35 Plays, 6
Collaborations, 2 Long
Narrative Poems, & 154
Sonnets

1590-1600 Comedies,
English Histories, Narrative
Poems, & Sonnets
Classifications Misleading
1601-1613 Problem
Comedies, BittersweetRetired 1613 & Died 1616
Plays, Romantic Adventure

Shakespeares Language
J.K. Rowling uses
Shakespeares
words and names in
her famous Harry
Potter books:
Toil, toil, toil, &
trouble. Fire
burn and
cauldron bubble
- sang with the
frogs
Hermione
Granger - a
character in The

Very significant to the

English language

Invented 1600+ words

Majestic, Hint,

Lonely, Excellent,
Gloomy

 Against = for; in
preparation for
Anon = soon
Hence = away; from
here
Whence = where

Could we but learn from

whence his sorrows
grow/We would as
willingly give cure as
Let Romeo hence in
know.
haste,/Else, when he is
found, that hour is his
last.
Anon, anon!/Come
lets away; the
strangers are all gone.
Look thou but
sweet,/And I am proof
against their enmity.
meo and Juliet sitting in a treeProof = protected

The Theatre
Performed
from 1594Lord
Chamberlains
Men
1597
Founded 1594
NE of London
1603 King James I
Ownermember
of Land kicked
became
the company out took
The
Kingstheatre
Men apart
wooden
and moved to South of
Changed/Founded 1603
Thames River
Show support of King
The Globe
James
I The Globe
Inside
Founded 1599
South of Thames River

 Main Actor - Richard

Burbage
1st to Play Macbeth, Hamlet,
Romeo, King Lear,
Julius Caesar
Female Characters
played by boy actors

The
3 Tiers Globe
Groundlings - Not always poor people - 1 pence
admission (price of a loaf of bread
3 Floors of Seats + balcony over stage
Can you see play on balcony? Why or why
not? Why would someone want to sit on

Queen Elizabeth I
Ruled 1558-1603
Born at Greenwich September
7, 1533
King Henry VIII & Anne
Boleyn

Why are you learning

about me?
Succeeded to Throne on HalfSisters Death
Saw many voyages
45 Year Reign = Most Glorious
Francis Drake, Sir
in English History
Walter Raleigh, and
Humphrey Gilbert
Mainly to Americas
Founded East India

Queen Elizabeth I
Art Flourished
Cont.

Theatres Thrived

Attended First Performance of

A Midsummer Nights Dream
Often called The Virgin
Queen
Reign of Triumph & Success
Threats of Invasion Spain through Ireland &
France through Scotland
Selfless Woman in the Golden Speech of 1601
she addressed Parliament There is no jewel, be it
of never so high a price, which I set before this jewel;
I mean your love.

Verona
Mantua

Setting
Italy
Verona
Mantua
Renaissance
14th or 15th
Century

Shakespeares Plays
Shakespeares works can be put in 4
categories:
Historical
Tragedy
Comedy
Poetry/Sonnets

 Romeo and Juliet is a play. That means it

is a ________________.

BLANK VERSE- a poem written in

unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Iambs/ Feet
Foot- unit of rhythm in verse.
Iamb- a foot consisting of an
unaccented syllable and an accented.
Example- return

METER cont.
TYPES OF FEET (cont.)
Iambic - unstressed, stressed
Trochaic - stressed, unstressed
Anapestic - unstressed, unstressed,
stressed
Dactylic - stressed, unstressed, unstressed

METER
A pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables.
Meter occurs when the stressed and
unstressed syllables of the words in a poem
are arranged in a repeating pattern.
An accent over the syllable indicates it is
stressed. A semi-circle over the syllable
indicates it is unstressed.

Re-turn

METER cont.
Kinds of Metrical Lines

monometer
dimeter =
trimeter =
tetrameter
pentameter
hexameter
heptameter
octometer

=
one foot on a line
two feet on a line
three feet on a line
=
four feet on a line
=
five feet on a line
=
six feet on a line
=
seven feet on a line
=
eight feet on a line

Iambic Pentameter Example:

Example:
I went to see

a man about

a dog.

1
1
1
1
1
foot
foot
foot
foot
foot
Five feet of unstressed and stressed syllables=
Iambic Pentameter
If one foot has one unstressed and one stressed
syllable, how many TOTAL syllables are there in
five feet?

KINDS OF STANZAS
Couplet =
a two line stanza
Triplet (Tercet) =
a three line stanza
Quatrain =
a four line stanza
Quintet =
a five line stanza
Sestet (Sextet) =
a six line stanza
Septet
=
a seven line stanza
Octave =
an eight line stanza

BLANK VERSE POETRY

from Julius Ceasar

Written in lines of
iambic pentameter,
but does NOT use
end rhyme.

Cowards die many times before

their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but
once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have
heard,
It seems to me most strange that
men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary
end,
Will come when it will come.

Shakespeares Sonnets
Iambic
Pentameter
Let me | not to| the marr | iage of | true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Quatrain
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worths unknown, although his height be taken.
Love s not Times fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickles compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me provd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lovd.

Couplet

A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
E
F
E
F
G
G

Rhyme Scheme

14
Lines

Kinds of Characters
Flat- one dimensional character
embodying only one single trait.
Shakespeares flat characters provide
comic relief.
Round- has many personality traits, like
a real person.

Things
we must
Soliloquya lengthy
speech know
in which a
character, alone on stage, expresses his
or her thoughts to the audience
Aside- a brief remark made by a character
to the audience. This remark is unheard
by the other characters.

Things we must know

Monologue- a lengthy speech addressed
to the other characters on stage.

Allusions- within the dramatic speeches

many characters make references to past
experiences, history or other works of
literature.

Paying attention to stage

directions
In our book there are stage directions they
are written in italics.
The stage directions tell the actors who is
entering or exiting the stage and what they
are doing.