When English poets began imitating Petrarch's sonnets in the early 16th century, they continued this thematic focus on the pleasures and frustrations of love. In Petrarch's work, these were usually problems, situations, and incidents arising from his love for the unattainable Laura. The sonnet form, explored in the lesson activities below, was popularized by the 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch, who established the custom of presenting a problem, situation, or incident in the octave, followed by a resolution in the sestet. A fuller text of the play, which has served as the basis of all subsequent editions, appeared in quarto in 1599."įor information about the play, its history, its staging, Shakespeare, and more lesson plans, explore the Royal Shakespeare Company's educational website for a rich portal of resources on Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet was published as a quarto in 1597. Shakespeare based the plot on several sources, including Arthur Brooke's Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet.
The EDSITEment-reviewed Teaching Shakespeare website, published by the Folger Shakespeare Library, offers the following textual history of Romeo and Juliet, situating its writing, performance, and publication in the last years of the 16th-century: "Scholars generally date the writing of Romeo and Juliet to 1595-96, near in time to the composition of A Midsummer Night's Dream. To conclude, students work in groups to find and examine similar moments in the play (e.g., the balcony scene or the tomb scene) where Shakespeare spotlights the action through lyric form and at the same time invites us to explore and question the idealization of lyric conventions by having the characters act out these conceits on stage. Finally, students enact the scene in which this moment occurs in order to notice how Shakespeare's juxtaposition of poetic forms, ranging from the almost-prose of Capulet and the Nurse to the melodramatic style of Tybalt, further highlights the sonnet of the lovers. Then students act the passage to notice Shakespeare's stage managing of this moment and to consider what perspective his making the lovers almost literally "kiss by the book" lends to our perception of their characters. Students look first at the sonnet in which Romeo and Juliet meet, analyzing the imagery to gain insight into the way Shakespeare's use of love sonnet conventions characterizes the moment and the relationship between the lovers.
This lesson plan complements the study of plot and characterization in Romeo and Juliet in its focus on lyrical form and convention that heighten the impact of the action on the stage. Explore with your students the techniques that Shakespeare uses to capture the magic of the couple's first meeting and to make that meeting so memorable. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet presents "star-cross'd" lovers whose plight has become the subject of many of today's novels, plays, films, and television dramas.
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