The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare

DIALOGUE • The conversation between characters • Provides the substance of a play • Can further the plot • Provide clues about character or theme (indirect characterization) • Heighten the overall dramatic effect

STAGE DIRECTIONS • The written instructions that explain how to perform a play • Stage directions contain crucial information that will help you visualize the action • Includes how the characters should look, speak, move, and behave • Stage directions can also specify details of the setting and scenery • Usually written in italics & within parentheses

Structure

Prologue • Establishes the setting • Introduces main characters • Explains background • Introduces character’s main conflict • Spoken by the chorus

Chorus • During the Elizabethan era in England, the chorus was portrayed by one actor • Spoke the prologue and epilogue to the play • Spoke directly to the audience

Exposition • Establishes the setting and the characters • Introduces the conflict

Rising Action • Consists of a series of complications • These occur as the main characters take action to resolve their problems

Crisis • Turning point • Moment when a choice is made by the main character • Determines the direction of the action • Dramatic and tense moment when the forces of conflict come together

Falling Action • Presents events that result from the action taken at the turning point • Usually lock the characters deeper and deeper into disaster

Climax • Occurs at the end of the play • Usually ends in tragedy with the death of the main characters • Play ends with the resolution immediately follows & ties up the loose ends of the play

Tragedy • A play in which the main character suffers a downfall • In most tragedies, the main characters are in some ways responsible for their downfall • Tragic hero • Tragic Flaw

Aristotle’s Six Elements of Tragedy • Plot • Diction/Language/Dialogue • Music/Rhythm • Theme • Spectacle • Character

Elements of Tragedy: Plot • Plot: what happens in a play

Elements of Tragedy • Diction/Language/Dialogue • The playwrights’ word choices and the actor’s enunciation while delivering the lines

Elements of Tragedy • Music/Rhythm • Not music as we think of it, but rather the sound, rhythm, and melody of the speeches

Elements of Tragedy • Theme: • What a play means, as opposed to what happens

Elements of Tragedy • Spectacle • the scenery, costumes, and special effects in a play

Elements of Tragedy • Character • The person an actor represents in a play

Romeo and Juliet • Romeo and Juliet is based on a long narrative poem by Arthur Brooke • Published in 1562 • Based on popular Italian stories

Romeo and Juliet • Romeo was a very young man • Juliet was a 14-year-old girl • They fall in love at first sight • Caught up in an idealized, almost unreal, passionate love • In-love with love

Star-crossed lovers • Shakespeare presents Romeo and Juliet as “star-crossed lovers” • Doomed to disaster by fate • In Shakespeare’s time, they believed in astrology • (Zodiac signs)

Fate • More than mere victims of fate • Romeo and Juliet make decisions that lead to their disaster

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet