Romeo and Juliet
If you would like to meet with me or have me edit your paper before the due date, you may share it with me early and let me know you’d like an edit, or you may sign into seminar for a face-to-face chat about your paper. I have placed the self-edit form in my folder on the student common just in case you’d like to use it.
Note: keep in mind that this is a LITERARY ANALYSIS paper. In other words, your evidence and examples need to include a number of direct quotes from the play properly cited with Act, Scene, and line number in the format we discussed (3.2.111 = Act III, Scene 2, line 111).
Prompts: 1. Discuss the relationships between parents and children in Romeo and Juliet. How do Romeo and Juliet interact with their parents? Are they rebellious in the modern sense? How do their parents feel about them?
2. Analyze the characters of the Nurse and Friar Laurence as mentors to the young people in the play. Do these two people do the “right thing” in their relationships with Romeo and Juliet?
3. How does the idea of identity contribute to the story of Romeo and Juliet? Consider family affiliation, gender, social class and age in your response.
4. How does the suicidal impulse that both Romeo and Juliet exhibit relate to the overall theme of young love? Does Shakespeare seem to consider a self-destructive tendency inextricably connected with love, or is it a separate issue? Why do you think so?
5. Shakespeare was the master of figurative language. Consider how the use of metaphor, simile, hyperbole and/or personification contributes to the meaning of one of the play’s longer speeches. Analyze the speech and explain its figurative language.
6. What role does fate play in Romeo and Juliet, and what role do the characters’ choices play?
7. Explain the role of disorder and hatred in Romeo and Juliet and give its consequences.
8. Show how timing played an important role in the play. Give examples.
9. Explain the role of foreshadowing in
Note: keep in mind that this is a LITERARY ANALYSIS paper. In other words, your evidence and examples need to include a number of direct quotes from the play properly cited with Act, Scene, and line number in the format we discussed (3.2.111 = Act III, Scene 2, line 111).
Prompts: 1. Discuss the relationships between parents and children in Romeo and Juliet. How do Romeo and Juliet interact with their parents? Are they rebellious in the modern sense? How do their parents feel about them?
2. Analyze the characters of the Nurse and Friar Laurence as mentors to the young people in the play. Do these two people do the “right thing” in their relationships with Romeo and Juliet?
3. How does the idea of identity contribute to the story of Romeo and Juliet? Consider family affiliation, gender, social class and age in your response.
4. How does the suicidal impulse that both Romeo and Juliet exhibit relate to the overall theme of young love? Does Shakespeare seem to consider a self-destructive tendency inextricably connected with love, or is it a separate issue? Why do you think so?
5. Shakespeare was the master of figurative language. Consider how the use of metaphor, simile, hyperbole and/or personification contributes to the meaning of one of the play’s longer speeches. Analyze the speech and explain its figurative language.
6. What role does fate play in Romeo and Juliet, and what role do the characters’ choices play?
7. Explain the role of disorder and hatred in Romeo and Juliet and give its consequences.
8. Show how timing played an important role in the play. Give examples.
9. Explain the role of foreshadowing in