Shakespeare on the Sound ROMEO AND JULIET Study Guide 2012

Shakespeare on the Sound
ROMEO AND JULIET
Study Guide
2012
Directed by Joanna Settle
Songs by Stew and Heidi Rodewald
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Study Guide
ROMEO
+ JULIET
CAST OF CHARACTERS
David Cale
Friar Laurence
Raechel Holmes
Lady Capulet &
Tybalt,
cousin of Juliet
Matt Citron
Montague, Apothecary,
& Mercutio
friend of Romeo
William Jackson Harper
Romeo
son of Montague
Ali Ahn
Juliet
daughter of Capulet
Tony Torn
Lord Capulet
Father of Juliet
Will Cohn
Benvolio
Romeo’s cousin
Chinasa Ogbuagu
Juliet’s Nurse &
Prince of Verona
Erica Blumrosen
Server
Damian Lemar Hudson
Singer &
County Paris
suitor to Juliet
Study Guide
ROMEO
+ JULIET
Synopsis
Our production begins at a dinner party of friends, who, like Shakespeare on the Sound’s audience,
have an annual tradition of sharing a play on a summer night. Tony, an architect, and Ali, the hostess, have
invited a group of friends to read a play after dinner. Ali assigns the parts, casting herself as Juliet and her
ex-boyfriend, Will, as Romeo. Much to his dismay, Tony will play Lord Capulet, Juliet’s father. One by one
the party guests find themselves falling entirely into the story and becoming the characters.
As they begin reading . . .
Romeo and Juliet live in Verona, where their families, the Montagues and the Capulets, are rivals
and create community discord. Romeo, a Montague, pines over an unrequited love, Rosaline. Romeo and
his friends, Benvolio and Mercutio, decide to go to Capulet’s ball in disguise when he learns that Rosaline
is a guest.
At Capulet’s party, Romeo meets Juliet, Capulet’s daughter and they fall in love at first sight. Tybalt,
Juliet’s fiery cousin, wants to throw Romeo out of the party, but Capulet stops him.
Though they have learned that they are the only children of two rival families, Romeo and Juliet
exchange vows of love and plan to marry. Friar Laurence, Romeo’s confidant, agrees to help them because
he thinks it will help resolve the long-standing enmity.
Unfortunately, after the clandestine marriage Romeo encounters Tybalt who wants to fight with
Romeo because he crashed Capulet’s party. Romeo’s friend Mercutio cannot stand to watch Romeo duck
out of a fight and takes on Tybalt himself. When Romeo tries to separate them,Tybalt stabs Mercutio under
Romeo’s arm and Mercutio dies. Romeo kills Tybalt to revenge Mercutio’s death.
The Prince of Verona decrees that Romeo is banished. Friar Laurence advises Romeo and Juliet’s
nurse that Romeo should see his new bride, then go to Mantua and wait for a plan to bring them together.
After parting from Romeo, Juliet learns that her father is planning to have her marry County Paris in two
days, which she refuses to do.
The Friar quickly plots that Juliet should agree to the marriage and take a cordial that will put her
into a sleep that seems like death. Her family will weep for her, put her in the family tomb and the Friar
will send word to Romeo to come to Juliet at the tomb as she wakes from the slumber and take her away.
Romeo learns of Juliet’s “death” before Friar Laurence can get word to him. Romeo buys a poison
and goes directly to Juliet. He takes the poison and dies, just as Juliet wakes. The Friar tries to take her out
of the tomb, but she refuses to go and stabs herself. Upon learning of their deaths, the families agree to get
over their grudge and build golden statues to the young lovers.
In collaboration with Director Joanna Settle, Stew wrote a scene to introduce the “frame” of our
production. Shakespeare would have called this frame a “device” to enter into the world of the play and
this kind of device is something Shakespeare frequently used in his own texts to remind the audience that
they were watching a play. The play-within-a play is a common Shakespearean structure used in Taming of
the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Love’s Labors Lost, Hamlet and Timon of Athens to name a few.
Shakespeare always called attention to the fact that these are actors and the stage is just a stage because
he wanted and needed his audience to use their imaginations – to imagine the “vasty fields of France,” to
accept that even in death a person’s spirit can demand revenge, to believe that the boy who played Juliet in
1600 was a beautiful young girl and so on.
ANTITHESIS & OPPOSITION WITHIN
ROMEO AND JULIET
Examples of Opposites in Romeo and Juliet
• Capulets vs. Montagues
• Old vs. Young
• Sun vs. Moon
• Nightingale vs. Lark
• Day vs. Night
• Life vs. Death
• Comedy vs. Tragedy
• Poison vs. Dagger
ROMEO
+ JULIET
Study Guide
INCORPORATE TWO IN ONE
Opposition is not only a theme of Romeo and Juliet, but it is also present in
the character and linguisitc structure of
the play. Shakespeare uses metaphorical
contrasts (sun & moon), character contrasts
(Montague & Capulet), generic contrasts
(comedy & tragedy), to the smallest unit of
opposition - the oxymoron (loving hate).
When are YOU quoting Shakespeare?
“If you cannot understand my argument and declare ‘It’s Greek to me,’ you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you
recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if
your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting
Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if
you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or
in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept
not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself
into stitches. Had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better
days or lived in a fool’s paradise—why, be that as it may, the more fool of you, for it is a foregone
conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early
days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short
of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and
blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth
set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then—to give the devil his due—if the
truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even
if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I were dead as a door-nail, if you
think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony hearted villain, the bloodyminded or a blinking idiot, then—by Jove! O Lord! Tut, Tut! For goodness sake! What the dickens!
But me no buts—it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.”
Bernard Levin, quoted in The Story of English.
Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil. Viking, 1986, pg. 99.
THE SONNET
A sonnet is a fourteen line love poem, made famous by an Italian poet, named Petrarch, and turned
into the height of fashion in the 16th century by noble English poets who circulated their sonnets
among a group of very select friends. The English sonnet usually follows iambic pentemeter rhythm (10
syllabels per line) and follows the rhyme pattern of a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d,e,f,e,f,g,g, ending with a final couplet.
The typical Renaissance love sonnet featured a tale of unrequited love, with a typically beautiful, but
cold and distant idealized woman. The poetic voice of the sonnet was typically male (there are a few
notable women -- see Mary Wroth), and he greatly exaggerated the beauty of his love object (a goddess, an angel, a non-pareil) and her disdain (cold, austere, pale as the chaste moon). The frustration of
the poet is often presented through opposites or antithesis: “Of living deaths, dear wounds, fair storms,
and freezing fires” (Sidney, Sonnet 6). Sir Philip Sidney in this line from his great sonnet sequence,
Astrophil and Stella, sounds uncannily like Romeo when we first meet him and he is still pining for
Rosaline: “O brawling love, O loving hate” (1.1.200).
Once Romeo meets Juliet he sheds the stiff confines of a Petrarchan lover and finds new images to
express himself, “See how she leans her cheek upon that hand!/ O that I were a glove upon that hand/
That I might touch that cheek!” In a flash, Romeo’s language is real, palpable and intimate -- not conventional.
There are at least three sonnets in Romeo and Juliet: the prologue to Act One, the prologue to Act
Two, and when Romeo and Juliet meet. Again, Shakespeare breaks convention -- this is not a sonnet
by a frustrated male lover pining for a distant woman, but a sonnet created out of the attraction of two
people who fall in love at first word.
ROMEO
If I profane with my unworthiest hand (a)
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: (b)
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand (a)
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. (b)
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, (c)
Which mannerly devotion shows in this; (d)
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, (c)
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss. (d)
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? (e)
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. (f)
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; (e)
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. (f)
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake. (g)
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take. (g)
Romeo and Juliet’s Sonnet
Notice here the rhyme scheme that
Romeo and Juliet instantly follow when
speaking for the first time as well as the meter of each line (10 syllabels each).
Directly after this moment, Romeo and
Juliet continue to begin the start of
another sonnet, however they are
interrupted by the nurse.
Ovid is, without a doubt, one of Shakespeare’s favorite poets and tales
from Ovid’s Metamorphoses run through all of Shakespeare’s plays.
One of the most striking themes of Ovid’s tales is how often love can
transform the natural world and human beings. These are the stories of
Zeus turning into Swan to seduce Leda and so on. Ovid’s Pyramus and
Thisbe is a foundational text for Romeo and Juliet (as well as A Midsummer Night’s Dream). From Arthur Golding’s translation of the Metamorphoses, “For both their heartes with equall flame did burne.”
Pyramus & Thisbe
ROMEO
+ JULIET
Study Guide
Ovid and Transformational Love
Romeo & Juliet
Parental Hatred
Parental Hatred
Plot to Elope
Clandestine Marriage
Evidence of Thisbe’s death: the
bloody scarf
Juliet’s death-like sleep
Pyramus takes his own life,
thinking she’s dead
Romeo takes his own life upon
seeing Juliet’s lifeless corpse
Their blood seeps into the
ground creating the Mulberry
Tree as a rememberance of the
lovers
Families build golden statues of
Romeo and Juliet to remember the
consequence of their hatred
Shakespeare’s Other Sources for Romeo and Juliet
Source
Connection
La Giulietta by Luigi da Porto (1530)
first to call lovers Romeo and Juliet
Giulietta e Romeo by Matteo Bandello
(1554)
in this Juliet wakes before Romeo dies
Histoire des Deux Amans by Pierre Boisteau
(1559)
in this French translation for the first time Juliet wakes
after Romeo is already dead (Shakespeare’s version)
The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet
by Arthur Brooke (1562)
this English poem is the first to use the character of the
Nurse, and is Shakespeare’s most direct source
Though each source has elements of plot and character that Shakespeare mined for his own play, no
predecessor approaches the poetic language and thrilling dramatic structure that is Romeo and Juliet.
ROMEO
+ JULIET
Critics and audiences alike often find that Mercutio’s death marks a turning point in our
Lamentable Tragedy from light to dark, life to death and comic to tragic. Our teaching artist, Scott
Bartelson, sheds some light on Mercutio’s character:
In 1672, English poet John Dryden wrote, “Shakespeare show’d the best of his skill in his
Mercutio, and he said himself, that he was forc’d to kill him in the third Act, to prevent being killed
by him.” What more reason does Mercutio need than to have been known to be Shakespeare’s personal best accomplishment? It is Mercutio who sets all things in motion in the most tragic love story
of all time, but don’t sell him so short as a mere function of plot. Mercutio remains one of the most
widely remembered of Shakepseare’s secondary characters because he ‘gives voice to an irrepressible spirit of mockery, a spirit that seems to challenge the very possibility of romantic love or tragic
destiny’ (Stephen Greenblatt).
Romeo: Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, too boist’rous, and it pricks like thorn.
Mercutio: If love be rough with you, be rough with love.
Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.
At the very moment that Mercutio is punning he also makes a radical point about the nature
of love (in the story which we are “supposed to understand” what love really is). His brilliant use of
language demonstrates his cynical view of love and fate. Love doesn’t happen to you, in Mercutio’s
view -- you deal with it. Romeo can be “fortune’s fool,” but Mercutio tells Romeo that he was hurt
under his arm -- he lays the blame with people, not the stars. Mercutio is the epitome of our pull
between the realistic nature of the consequential actions of each decision we make and the grander
scheme of fate which is said to ultimately control all. Are you a Romeo or a Mercutio?
Sword Play and Swagger
“We tend to think of the play about Shakespeare’s most famous couple, Romeo and Juliet, as
being about the tribulations of romantic love – when in fact it’s just as much about gangs of privileged lads slicing each other to death.
Although the play’s action is set in Italy, the issue of urban violence would not have been
foreign to its English audience. Weapons were part of everyday life – all gentleman of the time
would have worn something similar to this rapier and dagger set – part fashion accessory, part murder weapon.
Many such gentlemen would head south of the river to London’s South Bank where, outside
the authority of the City, they could encounter the roaring entertainments of Bankside which could
either lead the way to delights…or dangerous drunken feuds.” (Shakespeare’s Restless World, The
British Museum/ BBC).
Study Guide
Comedy to Tragedy: The Death of Mercutio
My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
(Act I, Scene 5)
Did my heart love till now?
(Act I, scene 5)
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun
(Act II, Scene 2)
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow
(Act II, Scene 2)
They stumble that run fast.
(Act II, scene 3)
A plague on both your houses!
(Act III, Scene 1)
I defy you stars!
(Act V, Scene 1)
O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
(Act V, Scene 3)
O happy dagger!
(Act V, Scene 3)
ROMEO
+ JULIET
Study Guide
Famous Lines
Interesting Facts about Romeo and Juliet
• There are 13 suicides in all of Shakespeare and 2 are in Romeo and Juliet.
• Juliet was played by a boy or young man -- there were no women in English acting
companies during Shakespeare’s time.
• The Curtain Theater, the theater in which Romeo and Juliet was probably performed, was recently found on a dig in East London.
• Of all the versions of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare has Juliet as the youngest at
13. In an earlier English version Juliet was 16 years old and the Italian and French
versions had her as 18 years old.
• The musical West Side Story is based on Romeo and Juliet.
• The word ‘wherefore,” as in, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” means,
“why” not “where.”
• Shakespeare’s works contain over 600 references to bird of all kinds, including
the swan, bunting, cock, swallow, dove, robin, sparrow, nightingale, turkey, sparrow,
wren, starling, lark, and thrush just to name a few.
Come, Musicians, Play
Shakespeare makes over 500 references to music in his plays and poems. Musical interludes were an important part of the Elizabethan Theater, as was music before and after the performance, especially jigs. In our production, Stew and Heidi have adapated the two prologue sonnets
into song lyrics and Juliet sings a song based on Queen Elizabeth’s poem of unrequited love when her
match with the Duke D’Anjou failed, “On Monsieur’s Departure.” With the exception of Queen Elizabeth’s poem, all of the songs use Shakespeare’s language. In some cases, such as the two prologues, the
language has been adapted to make lyrics. The Friar’s song and Mercutio’s song are as written by Shakespeare. Romeo’s song is as written, with some improvisational flourishes. A sung dirge in the second act
is created out of the most evocative words from individual speeches for each character.
“On Monsieur’s Departure”
- Elizabeth I
I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.
My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.
What’s an Audience? from our Artistic Director Joanna Settle
Tonight we are lucky to know this great writer and to celebrate the meaningful conversation
between artists and audiences in a community that welcomes and supports theater as a local priority.
My hope for this company is to enrich our communities with thought-provoking art that spurs us on to
be our best selves. Contained in Shakespeare’s stories is the very stuff we are made of: our laughter, our
joy, our grief, our wonder and our moral sense. When we gather together on a summer night to tell those
stories, Shakespeare on the Sound is fulfilling its mission. Tonight we look forward to those evenings
to share with our friends, gaze at the stars, picnic, laugh, listen and reflect. We ask that you please be
respectful of your neighbors and the actors and save the lively conversations that we hope to incite for
intermission or after the show. This performance only happens once, tonight, and you will be creating it
right along with us. Thank you.
Study Guide
ROMEO
+ JULIET
2012 Romeo and Juliet Study Guide created by
Emily Bryan, Director of Education
Scott Bartelson, Administrative Manager
Lauren Stuzin, Administrative Intern
Interested in having Shakespeare on the Sound in your classroom?
We offer various workshops and lecture series and
can tailor a program specifically for the play or topic of your choice!
Contact our Director of Education, Emily Bryan to
discuss further opportunities for your school!
emily@shakespeareonthesound.org
203.299.1300
Download a PDF version of this study guide
from our website!