The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet

While in the case of Romeo and Juliet, the plot (story) has great appeal, most of Shakespeare's art (and fame) comes from the way in which he tells his story; i.e., how his characters speak. The art and poetry of his language is not always easy to get. In fact, one of the best ways to understand and appreciate it is through repeated listening and readings. To that end, you will each be assigned a set of lines (14-15 lines) to memorize and analyze. There will be three separate assessments for this: one, memorization of the first 7 lines; memorization of the second 7 (or 8) lines andanalysis of literary elements. These assignments will count as a project grade.

Memorization:You will be asked to write the linestwice. For the first assessment, you will memorize the first half of your excerpt. For the second assessment, you will memorize the entire excerpt.

Literary Analysis: You will be asked to identify which of the following literary elements are used in your excerpt and explain how this literary element is shown–

• Imagery: Broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object. Basically, imagery involves any or all of the five senses.
• Irony: A situation or statement characterized by significant difference between what is expected or understood and what actually happens or is meant. Irony is often humorous, and sometimes sarcastic when it uses words to imply the opposite of what they normally mean
• Metaphor:One thing pictured as if it were something else, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them. It is an implicit comparison or identification of one thing with another unlike itself without the use of signifying words (e.g., "like," "as," "just so").Sometimes the term metaphor is used as a general term for a figure of speech.
• Simile: a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, typically using signifying words (e.g., "like," "as," "just so") to draw the connection.
• Aubade: Asong or poem of lovers parting at dawn.
• Sonnet:Alyric poem consisting of fourteen lines. In English, generally the two basic kinds of sonnets are the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet. The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (four lines each) and a concluding couplet (two lines). The Petrarchan sonnet tends to divide the thought into two parts; the Shakespearean, into four.
• Conceit:A comparison of two unlikely things that is drawn out within piece of literature, in particular an extended metaphor within a poem. For example, conceits might be the idea of tracing a love affair as a flower growing, budding, coming to fruition, and dying.

Group 1

If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

Group 2

Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?

The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!

Group 3

Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them.

Group 4

Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I:
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua:

Rev. 2015