1. Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare

2. What do you already know about Romeo and Juliet?

3. What do you want to know about Romeo and Juliet?

4. Summary
Romeo and Juliet is a story about two teenagers who fall in love but are forbidden to see each other by their parents.
They meet one night at a party (Romeo is actually there to check out another girl, Rosaline) and quickly fall in love.
Unfortunately, Juliet’s parents already have a husband picked out for her.
So, the two decide to get married and enlist the help of Juliet’s nurse to act as a messenger between the two and Friar Laurence who agrees to marry them.
However, plans go awry after Romeo is banished from Verona and doesn’t get filled in on the plans that Juliet has for them to live happily ever after…

5. Setting The story is set in the late 1500’s
Mostly in the town of Verona, Italy.
However, there are a few acts set in Mantua, Italy a smaller town just a few miles away.

6. Timeline
Sunday – Act One
Monday – Act Two
Tuesday – Act Three
Wednesday – Act Four
Thursday – Act Five

7. The Feud
Romeo’s family, the Montagues, have a long standing feud with Juliet’s family, the Capulets.
While the audience never learns about the source of the ancient quarrel, we do learn that it has recently grown stronger.

8. Romeo and Juliet begins as a comedy but ends as a tragedy
Comedy and Tragedy
Romeo and Juliet begins as a comedy but ends as a tragedy
Elements of a tragedy
Must have a tragic hero/heroine
Ends in the death of many of the main characters
Elements of a comedy
A struggle of young lovers to overcome difficulty that is often presented by elders
Separation and unification
Heightened tensions, often within a family
The shift from comedy to tragedy is what sets Romeo and Juliet apart from the rest of Shakespeare’s plays

9. Themes Love Hate Fate The power of love Love as a cause for violence
Hate as a forced emotion
Fate
The inevitability of fate

10. Thoughts for reading… Loving to hate or hating to love?
Is this the fate they cannot escape?