1. Romeo and Juliet and Poetry Notes

2. Date of composition: between 1594-1595
Got idea from Arthur Brooke’s poem “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet”

3. Romeo and Juliet is written in both prose and poetry

4. Prose: spoken mostly by common people; occasionally by Mercutio when he is joking
Poetry: Most everyone else speaks in poetry

5. Prose
Ordinary speech without any structured beat
Written in paragraph form

6. The poetry is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter

7. Unrhymed iambic pentameter is called blank verse
(Blank verse means there is no rhyme at the end of the lines---Shakespeare used this about 93% of the time)

8. Iambic Pentameter
Iambic pentameter- line consisting of 5 iambs
Iamb- metered foot composed of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable
U = unstressed / = stressed

9. Example:
u / u / u / u / u /
He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

10. Lines of poetry are either end-stopped or run-on.

11. End-Stopped Line: Has some punctuation at its end
Run-On Line: *no punctuation at its end

12. Examples
O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, If thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
End Stopped
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.
Run-On

13. A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem.

14. A Shakespearean has three four-line units, or quatrains, followed by a concluding two-line unit, or couplet.

15. Shakespeare uses couplets to show an end we should note
Somebody leaving a place says a couplet
The last two lines of an Act or Scene are a couplet

16. Famous Couplet Spoken by Juliet
Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

17. Rhyme Scheme is the pattern of end rhymes in a poem.

18. The rhyme scheme of a poem is indicated by the use of a different letter of the alphabet for each new rhyme.

19. The most common rhyme scheme for the Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg.

20. Label the following on the poem in your notes:
Rhyme Scheme
Quatrains
Couplet

21. Sonnet 29 When, in disgrace with Fortune in men’s eyes, A
I all alone beweep my outcast state, B
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, A
And look upon myself and curse my fate, B

22. Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, C
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, D
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, C
With what I most enjoy contented least; D

23. Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, E
Haply I think on thee, and then my state, F
Like to the lark at break of day arising E
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; F
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings G
That then I scorn to change my state with kings G