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Romeo and JulietBackground Notes
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Theme•Tragic young love
•Star-crossed lovers
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1595•The year the play was written
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Shakespeare “borrowed”
from a lot of sources
•Tragedical History of Romeo and Juliet
•Arthur Brooke•Brook borrowed the idea
from an old Italian poem
(just like the other writers of his day)
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Shakespeare and his times
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Other actors included:
•Richard Burbage•Cuthbert Burbage•Will Kemp•John Hemminges
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1594•Lord Chamberlain’s Men
1603
•The King’s Men
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•Sets were not elaborate•Before theatres, taverns and town halls hosted plays
•$$$ meant you could afford to sit in the balcony
•Groundlings paid one penny to stand in the pit
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• No artificial lighting
• Plays were usually performed in the afternoon
• Stage was a platform
• Groundlings threw garbage
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• Familiarity with the plots help the audience appreciate the performances
• Women were not allowed to be actresses so young boys played the female roles
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•Theatre troupes usually had 12 men
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•Actors needed to be versatile (multi-talented)
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dancers/musicians
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The Playwright’s Art
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No outside curtains
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•Actors’ lines helped the audience understand the setting
This is the forest of Arden.
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Prologue•an introductory speech
•spoken by a narrator also known as a chorus
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Romeo and Juliet•takes place is less than one week
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Romeo and Juliet•is set in Verona, Italy
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•contrasted in –characters – mood– setting
Romeo and Juliet
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Important Influences in Romeo and Juliet
•chance/fate•time•love
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Languageمسالم paz
paixpace
MNPruhe
pokójpeace
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•action + language = good show
•pun
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Iambic Pentameter•five stressed beats and five unstressed beats per line
Shall I compare thee to a summers day?
∕ ∕∕∕∕
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Literary Criticism•Shakespeare was popular with the people but not with the critics
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Shakespeare broke the Rules of Good
Writing
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Instead of writing for the king and queen…
…Shakespeare wrote for the “common folk”
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Rather than avoiding the
realities of life and notshowing crime…
…Shakespeare showed murder on stage
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Instead of keeping genres of theatreseparate…
…Shakespeare combined comedy and
tragedy to create a different form of entertainment
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Rather than agreeing with other playwrights that theatre was to be serious and straight-laced…
…Shakespeare ignored the rules of decorum and made theatre fun and accessible for all