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Romeo and Juliet
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love:Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!O anything, of nothing first create!O heavy lightness! serious vanity!Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Romeo has heard about the street fight and is speaking about love before he has seen Juliet. Read your copy aloud and mark each pair of words that fight inside one phrase. Which pair is hardest to make sense of, and how does the next line change your reading of it?
Narration Retell Act I in order, from the servants' quarrel to the moment each lover learns who the other is.
1. Sampson and Gregory start the play with puns and a bitten thumb, and soon the whole street is fighting. The Prince calls the cause "an airy word." Does that name fit what you watched?Tone
2. Benvolio says "one fire burns out another’s burning." What kind of love does that picture describe, and does Romeo's first sight of Juliet bear it out?Theme
3. Capulet stops Tybalt with "Am I the master here, or you?" Who is he protecting in that moment: Romeo, his guests, or himself?Character
4. Romeo praises Juliet, Tybalt hears his voice and calls for a rapier, Capulet overrules him, and only then does the sonnet begin. Why might Shakespeare set it in that order?Plot structure
5. Juliet ends the pilgrim-and-saint talk with "You kiss by the book." Why might Shakespeare give her that last word, and is it praise, teasing, or a warning?Author's choice
6. Juliet asks the Nurse about two other guests before she asks about the man "that would not dance." What do you make of her order of questions, and of what she says next?Inference
Make a Connection Think of another story where people from rival sides meet, and say what that meeting changes.
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
That quench the fire of your pernicious rage
Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.
I would not for the wealth of all the town Here in my house do him disparagement.
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?
If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
Prodigious birth of love it is to me, That I must love a loathed enemy.
1. Mercutio's Queen Mab gives lovers, lawyers and soldiers each a dream that matches what they want awake, then he sums up dreams in his line about an idle brain. Write a thesis on what his speech shows, answer one objection, and revise.
2. Lady Capulet tells Juliet to "Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face," and Juliet answers, "I’ll look to like, if looking liking move." Write a thesis on what kind of choice Juliet is given here, answer one objection, and revise.
3. Romeo describes his love for Rosaline in contradictions, then as a siege, then as a blindness, and also says "I have lost myself." Write a thesis on whether these speeches show a feeling or a way of talking, answer one objection, and revise.