Review for Test on Romeo and Juliet

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Review for Test on Romeo and Juliet
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What is one of the themes of Romeo and Juliet?

• The destruction of innocence
• The dangers of haste

3
What information about the play is given in the
prologue to Act I?

• The play is about two star-crossed lovers
• They are the children of two feuding families
• The feud ends when the children die
• The setting is Verona
• The play will last for two hours

4
What is one of the external conflicts in the play?

• The feud between the two families
• The fights between Tybalt and Mercutio, Romeo and
  Tybalt
• Juliets argument with her father when she
  refuses to marry Paris

5
How is light imagery used in the play?

• There are frequent references to the sun, moon,
  and stars
• The lovers can only meet at night, so day is
  their enemy
• It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
• More light and light, more dark and dark our
  woes.

6
Explain at least one reference to fate in the
play.

• Oh, I am fortunes fool.
• star-crossed lovers
• some consequence left hanging in the stars

7
What is the plot structure of a Shakespearean
tragedy?

• Act I-exposition
• Act II-rising action
• Act III-crisis or turning point
• Act IV-falling action
• Act V-climax (the death of one or more of the
  main characters) and resolution

8
Internal Conflicts in the Play

• Juliets decision to take the Friars potion
• The Friars decision to marry Romeo and Juliet
• Romeos decision to fight Tybalt

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Setting of the play

• The play takes place in Verona, Italy, in the
  fourteenth century

10
Poetic Forms in Romeo and Juliet

• Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic
  pentameter. Most of Romeo and Juliet is written
  in blank verse.
• An iamb is a pair of syllables, the first
  unstressed and the second stressed.
• Iambic pentameter is a line of poetry that
  consists of five iambs.
• Couplets are two consecutive lines of poetry that
  rhyme

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Poetic forms continued

• Lines of poetry are either end-stopped lines or
  run-on lines.
• End-stopped lines have some punctuation at the
  end which requires a pause.
• In a run-on line, the meaning is always completed
  in the line or lines which follow.
• A sonnet is a fourteen line poem with the rhyme
  scheme abab cdcd efef gg. A sonnet ends with a
  couplet. There are three sonnets in Romeo and
  Juliet

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More terms

• A conceit is an ingenious, elaborate, and
  extended comparison. Shakespeare is famous for
  his skillfully wrought conceits. An extended
  metaphor is a comparison developed over several
  lines of a poem.
• A soliloquy is an unusually long speech in which
  a character who is onstage alone expresses his or
  her thoughts aloud. The soliloquy is a very old
  dramatic convention in which the audience is
  supposedly overhearing the private thoughts of
  the actor.

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And still more terms

• The thought we suppose a character is thinking
  while saying the lines is the subtext, and
  subtext controls the way an actor reads a line.

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Foreshadowing

• When Juliet looks down at Romeo from her balcony
  and tells him he looks as if he were in a grave
• When Lady Capulet says that she wishes Juliet
  were married to her grave

15
Comic Relief

• Scenes of comic relief are used to lighten the
  mood before or after heavy dramatic scenes when
  the nurse gives Juliet the news about the
  marriage plans, when the musicians hired for the
  wedding are joking around after Juliet is found
  dead

16
Dramatic Irony

• Dramatic irony is when the audience or the reader
  knows something that the characters dont know.
  The most obvious example of this in Romeo and
  Juliet is when we know that Juliet isnt really
  dead. (The first time, anyway!)

17
Shakespeare and the English language

• Shakespeare added over 1500 new words to the
  English language. For instance, words like
  advertising, manager, luggage, and zany have
  their first recorded use in his writing.

18
Puns

• Shakespearean audiences loved puns and wordplay.
• Examples
• When Mercutio says, Ask for me tomorrow, and you
  shall find me a grave man.
• When Romeo says You have dancing soles, but I
  have a soul of lead.