William Shakespeare Background for Romeo & Juliet

Why Study Shakespeare?  Have you ever used the following words:  Outbreak  Hamlet  Gossip  Comedy of Errors  Addiction  Henry V  Assassination  Macbeth  Bump  Romeo and Juliet

European Renaissance  Period of artistic rebirth after the “Dark Ages” of the Medieval Period  Mass creation of visual arts (paintings, sculptures, etc.)  Celebration of antiquity  Began in Italy in 13 th century  English Renaissance began approximately 100 years later

English Renaissance  Late 1500s-1600s  Literary contributions—specifically plays—most important feature of English renaissance  Queen Elizabeth ( )  Very well-educated and supported the arts  Works written during this time are called “Elizabethan literature”

William Shakespeare  Baptized in 1564 in Stratford-Upon-Avon  No actual birth records  Educated at Stratford Grammar School  At 18, married Anne Hathaway (who was 27)  Arrived in London by 1588  Successful playwright by 1592  His wife and children stayed in Stratford

Elizabethan Theater  London was England’s theatrical center  Famous playwrights included Christopher Marlowe (Edward II), Thomas Kyd (The Spanish Tragedy), and John Ford (‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore)  Shakespeare was the “new kid on the block” when he arrived  Protestants condemned the theater, but theater was hugely popular  Theaters built on outskirts of the city  The Theatre (1576), The Rose (1587), The Swan (1595), and The Globe (1599—Shakespeare helped built The Globe)

Elizabethan Theater  People who attended the plays:  Merchants  Lawyers  Laborers  Prostitutes  Visitors from other countries  Royalty  What does this list tell you about the Elizabethan Theater scene?

The Theatrical Experience  Plays had to include something appealing for everyone  Entertaining for peasants and nobility  Elaborate costumes  Didn’t always match with the time period  Looking good more important than being realistic  Women not allowed onstage; Young boys played female roles  Audience members would throw things at actors if they got bored or didn’t understand what was happening

Performing in Shakespeare’s Time  Actors only had three weeks to rehearse and perform plays  Because theater so popular, actors might perform 6 different plays a week  As many as 4,000 lines!  Plays belonged to the acting companies, not the author  No original copies of Shakespeare’s plays exist today  Companies performed plays for years before they were printed

Printing Shakespeare’s Plays  The first collection of Shakespeare’s work (First Folio) published in 1623, seven years after his death  Actors recited lines from memory  Punctuation, spelling, and word choice varies across folios  Act and Scene Divisions are result of editors’ guesses  Many different versions of Shakespearian works  Differences in memory/editing/handwriting legibility

Theatrical Terms  Act : Divisions of theatrical piece  Shakespearian plays have five acts  Stage Directions : Instructions telling the actors what to do  Often written in brackets so actors know not to say them  Characters : Who the action of the play surrounds  Soliloquy : Speech delivered by an actor onstage to themselves  Monologue : Speech delivered by an actor onstage to other characters  Dialogue : Conversation between two or more characters

Theatrical Terms  Tragedy : Play that ends with many characters dying  Comic Relief : Humorous breaks in tragedies or dramas to make audience laugh  Aside : Comment made by an actor that other characters onstage are not supposed to hear  Setting : The time and place where the action of the play occurs

Dramatic Irony  When the audience knows something that the characters do not

Foil  Two characters that dramatically contrast with each other to highlight each others’ qualities

Romeo and Juliet: The House of Montague  Romeo: Son of Montague  Benvolio: Nephew to Montague and Romeo’s friend  Mercutio: Romeo’s best friend  Balthasar: Romeo’s friend and servant  Montague: Romeo’s father and head of the house  Lady Montague: Romeo’s mother  Friar Lawrence: Local priest and Romeo’s friend

Romeo and Juliet: The House of Capulet  Juliet: Daughter of Capulet  Tybalt: Nephew to Capulet and Juliet’s cousin  Nurse: Juliet’s servant and most trusted friend  Paris: Young nobleman  Capulet: Juliet’s father and head of the house  Lady Capulet: Juliet’s mother

Romeo and Juliet Intro. Discussion  During this time, it was common for fathers to arrange marriages for their daughters  Whom do you think this custom benefitted?  What reaction might parents have had to their children marrying other people?