Romeo and Juliet

1. Romeo and Juliet Love and Romance Attitude Analysis

2. Romeo and Juliet The first step in this analysis is to review your survey results to determine what is potentially the most interesting or important information. This could be a response that generated near-unanimous agreement or disagreement, or one that illustrated a wide debate. Review your survey summaries.

3. Romeo and Juliet To get the paper started, choose one response to focus on: here, let’s choose the “love at first sight” question. Let’s say your results showed that most respondents disagreed with the notion of love at first sight.

4. Romeo and Juliet That one result will get the paper going (you will discuss two or three other results later in the paper). Now, we need to craft an introduction or opening. Let’s review three types of journalistic leads: summary, descriptive, and anecdotal.

5. Romeo and Juliet A “summary” opening gets right to the heart of the story, right away, with the most interesting or important information. Example: Love at first sight is not only impossible but also highly undesirable, especially for teenagers, according to a survey exploring a key theme of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

6. Romeo and Juliet A descriptive opening re-creates a scene and may build to a punch line: Example: Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy marries girl – all within the space of a few hours.

7. Romeo and Juliet The anecdotal opening includes a little story (a “vignette”) to help illustrate the bigger topic. Example: When Erin Swanson was five years old, she pledged to never love a boy more than the blonde-haired, blue-eyed prince who sat next to her in kindergarten. “I thought he was so choice,” said Swanson, now a freshman at Wayzata High School. “I knew the minute I saw him that he would be mine. Oh yes, he would be mine.” Ten years later, Swanson has jettisoned both her “prince,” whom she actually dismissed a week after she met him, and the belief that love at first sight is possible.

8. Romeo and Juliet Now the key is to build on whatever opening you choose by providing more information about your opening and your findings (the survey). Let’s re-visit the summary opening:

9. Romeo and Juliet Love at first sight is not only impossible but highly undesirable, especially for teenagers, according to a survey exploring a key theme of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Ninety percent of those surveyed indicated that love at first sight just doesn’t happen, especially not between two young teenagers who surely don’t even know what love is. The survey was administered to a range of age groups made up of both genders, and included questions about love, romance, and marriage. The contemporary responses were then compared to the prevailing attitudes of the key characters in Shakespeare’s tale of the two young, “star-crossed” lovers.

10. Romeo and Juliet Let’s do the same thing with the descriptive introduction: Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy marries girl – all within the space of a few hours. What seemed perfectly normal for Romeo and Juliet, the star-crossed protagonists of William Shakespeare’s tragedy of the same name, would be seen as highly improbable, if not utterly weird, today, according to the results of a recent survey on love, romance, and marriage.

11. Romeo and Juliet Now let’s try with the anecdotal opening: When Erin Swanson was five years old, she pledged to never love a boy more than the blonde-haired, blue-eyed prince who sat next to her in kindergarten. “I thought he was so choice,” said Swanson, now a freshman at Wayzata High School. “I knew the minute I saw him that he would be mine. Oh yes, he would be mine.” Ten years later, Swanson has jettisoned both her “prince,” whom she actually dumped a week after she met him, and the belief that love at first sight is possible.

12. Romeo and Juliet “He was the classic case of ‘nice house – nobody home,’” Swanson said. “I learned that ‘love at first sight’ is a fool’s paradise.” Swanson’s dismissal of the notion of love at first sight is mirrored in a recent survey on love, romance, and marriage, administered to a range of age groups of both genders as part of a study of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. An overwhelming majority of respondents indicated love at first sight is impossible, especially between two young teenagers who surely don’t even know what love is.

13. Romeo and Juliet A key thing to remember: No matter what type of opening you choose, don’t wait too long to establish that your paper is about the survey. Again, this is your “controlling purpose” – or the thesis – that tells the reader what the paper is going to discuss or reveal. Don’t make the reader wait too long to find out.

14. Romeo and Juliet Now that we’ve established the “controlling purpose” of our paper – the survey results – we can start filling it in with more information. Let’s return to the last points of our most recent example: Swanson’s dismissal of the notion of love at first sight is mirrored in a recent survey on love, romance, and marriage, administered to a range of age groups of both genders as part of a study of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. An overwhelming majority of respondents indicated love at first sight is impossible, especially between two young teenagers who surely don’t even know what love is.

15. Romeo and Juliet Now we can add more information, including a second result from the survey and a comparison to the play itself: Ninety percent of respondents also indicated you can be too young to fall in love. That response represents a 180-degree difference from those expressed in fair Verona more than 500 years ago in the world of Romeo and Juliet. Juliet’s mother, Lady Capulet, doesn’t even flinch at the idea of her 13-year-old daughter getting married. In fact, she encourages it, as noted in this passage from the play: “Younger than you, here in Verona, ladies of esteem, are made already mothers,” Lady Capulet tells Juliet (1.3.75-78).

16. Romeo and Juliet Now, we can add another survey result and a comment from one of your respondents. Most contemporary 14- or 15-year-olds surveyed said, “No way.” “I think that’s disgusting, and I don’t agree with it,” said Katie Johnston, a WHS sophomore. “And it’s disturbing – so disturbing that (any girl) who is thinking about getting married at 13 should go see a counselor.”

17. Romeo and Juliet Now, we can add another comment from the survey, this time from another age group. Johnston’s mother, Anne Johnston, echoed those sentiments. “Back in old times it was a common thing,” she said. “Nowadays, I think it’s ludicrous. I think even age 18 is ludicrous.”

18. Romeo and Juliet You can even add a dissenting opinion from your results: The lone respondent in favor of love and marriage at such an early age, 15-year-old Natalie Crosby indicated she would have no problem with marrying 24-year-old actor ZacEfron, who coincidentally bears a striking resemblance to actor Leonard Whiting, who portrays Romeo in the 1968 film version of the play. “I’d prefer Johnny Depp,” said Crosby. “But you have to draw the age line somewhere. It’s just so hard to choose. They’re both so dreamy.”