Romeo & Juliet

1. William Shakespeare’s
Romeo & Juliet
Background notes about William
Shakespeare and the play

2. William Shakespeare
•Born in 1564 in
Stratford, England
•Died in 1616 on his
birthday
•Nickname- The Bard
•Married Anne Hathaway
and had three children.

3. William Shakespeare
•He worked as an actor,
a poet, and a
playwright.
•He thrived as a
playwright during the
monarchs of Elizabeth I
and James I.
•Founded and wrote
plays for the theatrical
company The Lord
Chamberlain’s Men

4. 16th-century Elizabethan
Theatre
•Religious groups condemned theater for the
immorality in the plays.
•All of society attended the theater, including
royalty.
•Plays were meant to be performed-- not seen
as literature, therefore only rough copies of
Shakespeare’s plays survive today.
•Only men were actors at the time, even for
female roles.

5. The Globe
•Shakespeare’s
theater group
constructed The
Globe, an open-air
round theatre.
•The original theatre
burned in 1613. A
new Globe Theatre
was built in London
in 1997.

6. Romeo and Juliet
•Romeo and Juliet was written in Elizabethan
English circa 1595.
•Shakespeare derived the plot from another
play, which was common at the time.
•Like his other works, this play was celebrated
for its experimental and exciting language.
•This was one of his first tragedies; he had
mainly written comedies until this time.
–Tragedy- a play dealing with tragic events; usually
has an unhappy ending, culminating in the main
character’s downfall
–Comedy- a humorous play where the characters
triumph over adversity

7. Romeo and Juliet
•This play is an unusual
tragedy because
Romeo and Juliet is
about love.
•Shakespeare had a flair
for mixing comedy,
tragedy, and romance
in his writing.
•At the time, marriage
was not always viewed
as a result of love.
People married for
reasons other than love.

8. Iambic Pentameter
•Shakespeare wrote in iambic
pentameter.
–Iambic pentameter- a type of meter with 10
syllables per line (1 unstressed syllable,
1 stressed syllable [5x] in each line)
–iamb= foot pent= 5 5 feet per line

9. Iambic Pentameter
•This type of meter was originally used in
dance and by actors to remember lines in
theatre.
–The regular rhythm helps dancers keep the beat
when dancing and the actors keep the beat when
speaking.
•When lines in iambic pentameter do not
rhyme and are not grouped in stanzas,
they’re called blank verse.

10. Rhyme Scheme
•Rhyme scheme is the ordered pattern
of rhymes at the ends of the lines of a
poem.
–Letters of the alphabet are used to assign
the pattern, e.g., aabbcc.

11. Sonnet
•A sonnet is a fourteen-line rhyming poem in
iambic pentameter.
•Shakespeare’s sonnets contain three four-
line stanzas (quatrains) and one couplet.
•The rhyme scheme for a Shakespearean
sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg.
•The chorus, or narrator, in Romeo and Juliet
speaks in sonnets.
•In Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting, their
dialogue is a sonnet.

12. Themes
•A theme is a story’s insight about life.
•Themes in Romeo and Juliet:
–The Power of Love
–Love vs. Family
–Family Ties
–Revenge
–The Power of Attraction, specifically of opposites
–Arranged Marriage

13. Motifs
•A motif is a recurring element that usually
relates to one of the story’s themes.
•Motifs in Romeo and Juliet:
–Young/Old
–Love/Hate
–Wisdom/Passion
–Light/Dark
–Night/Day
•All the motifs are opposites of one another.

14. Foreshadowing
•Foreshadowing is the use of hints to
suggest what will happen later in the
story.
–Shakespeare uses foreshadowing
throughout Romeo and Juliet to provide
clues about the fate of the characters in the
play.