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Performance 2
Title: Romeo and Juliet
Performance: Auckland Theatre Company
Author: William Shakespeare
Director: William Wassaner
Theatre Form: Elizabethan Tragedy
Venue: Maidment Theatre
Feature1
Soliloquies to reveal
thoughts and motivation
Stage- fighting (duels)
Multiple deaths
Last important living
character speaks the last
lines
Revenge key idea
Definition
Juliet when she is preparing to drink
the sleeping potion
Tybalt and Mercutio
Tybalt and Romeo
Tybalt challenges Romeo to a duel
for attending the party
Typical
1
“Boy, this shall not excuse the
injuries That thou hast done me;
therefore turn and draw” - Tybalt
Mercutio, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
Lady Montague
The Prince has the final lines in
Romeo and Juliet following from
Lords Montague and Capulet
agreeing to peace. In this case it
serves as an epilogue to the play,
mirroring the prologue at the
beginning
Romeo killing Tybalt is an act of
revenge for Mercutio (he does not
consider the impact of his action till it
is too late)
Lady Capulet seeks revenge for
Tybalt’s death.
Juliet foreshadows Romeo’s death
and Romeo her own.
Foreshadowing
Prologue
Example in text / performance
“Farewell!- God knows when we
shall meet again. I have a faint cold
fear thrills through my veins…
Romeo, I come! This do I drink to
thee” - Juliet
“Come sir, your passado” - Mercutio
Plays in the Renaissance often
began with a dumb show where the
entire play was ‘mimed’ out while a
single player narrated the story. This
meant that the audience knew what
they were going to see. In Romeo
and Juliet the text doesn’t specify
which player should say this
prologue and in some productions
it’s left out.
“ For never was there a story of
more woe, than this of Juliet and her
Romeo” - Prince
“Oh I am fortune’s fool” - Romeo
“Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo shall
not live” - Lady Capulet
“Methinks I see thee, now thou art
below, As one dead in the bottom of
a tomb: Either my eyesight fails, or
thou lookest pale” - Juliet
“And trust me love, in my eye, so do
you” - Romeo
“Two households, both alike in
dignity, In fair Verona where we lay
our scene, From ancient grudge
break to new mutiny, where civil
blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these
two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers
take their life; who’s misadventur’d
piteous overthows Do with their
death, bury their parent’s strife
...The which, if your patient ears
attend, What here shall miss, our
toils shall strive to mend.”
Some features taken from http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/resources/drama/theatreform.html
The Prince’s lines at the end of the
play serve as an epilogue to the
play.
Epilogue
It also reads as an instruction to the
audience, to leave the theatre and
talk about the production. It
challenges them as to whether this
is the ‘saddest’ play they’ve ever
seen.
“ A glooming peace this morning
with it brings, the sun for sorrow will
not show it’s head; Go hence, to
have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’ and some
punished: For never was there a
story of more woe, than this of Juliet
and her Romeo” - Prince
Prose (comic relief?)
Mercutio
“Look for me tomorrow and you shall
find me a grave man” - Mercutio
Wordplay
“You have made worms meat of me”
- Mercutio
“Brave Mercutio is dead”
-Benvolio
Reported action
Fatal flaw?
Comic character or
moment to relieve tension
- catharsis
In Romeo and Juliet the Nurse
repeats herself, for comic effect
when she finds Juliet dead.
The repetition of Romeo’s
“banished” becomes comic
“Oh day, oh day, oh day, oh woeful
day” - Nurse
Theatre Form: Elizabethan Comedy
Typical
Feature2
The capriciousness of love
Definition
Love is fickle.
Romeo and Juliet fall in love at
first sight, despite Romeo being
in love with Rosalind. The
implication is that had they lived
they would have fallen in love
with someone else next week.
Example in text / performance
“If love is rough with you, be
rough with love. Prick love for
pricking…” Mercutio
“…is Rosaline, whom thou did’st
love so well, so soon forsaken?”
-Friar Lawrence
Typical
Typical
“young men’s love lies not in their
hearts but in their eyes”
- Friar Lawrence
Juxtaposition of worlds:
Capulets / Montagues
The world as it is / the world they
want it to be
The nature of marriage;
interference of parents in love
affairs; results of jealousy and
antagonism
Lady and Lord Montague decide
that Juliet will wed Parris on
Thursday, despite Lord
Montague saying earlier that
Juliet is too young to get married.
“…’o Thursday, tell her, She shall
be married to this noble Lord”
- Lord Capulet
“My child is yet a stranger in the
world” - Lord Capulet
Typical
Typical
Typical
“and too early spoiled are those
so early made” - Lord Capulet (in
response to Parris “Younger than
her are happy mothers made”)
2
Verse (couplets)/poetry/comic
dialogue
To show that it is morning and
they have slept in too late Romeo
and Juliet discuss whether the
bird they can hear is a lark
(morning) or nightingale
(evening)
Nature and animal imagery
Nature and animal imagery
In his despair about being
banished and, therefore
separated from Juliet, Romeo
used animal imagery to illustrate
his point.
“It was the nightingale, and not
the lark, That pierc’d the fearful
hollow of thine ear; Nightly she
sings on yon pomegranate tree:
Believe me, love, it was the
nightingale.” - Juliet
It was the lark, the herald of the
morn, No nightingale: look love,
what envious streaks Do lace the
severing clouds in yonder east:
Night’s candles are burnt out,
and jocund day Stands tiptoe on
the misty mountaintops….” Romeo
“…every cat, and dog, And little
mouse, every unworthy thing Live
here in Heaven, and may look on
her; But Romeo may not. - More
validity, More honourable state
more courtship lives In carrion
flies than Romeo…” Romeo
Some features taken from http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/resources/drama/theatreform.html
Typical
Juliet uses animal imagery to
illustrate her duel emotions on
hearing that Romeo has slain
Tybalt
“O serpent heart, hid with a
flowering face! Did dragon ever
keep so fair a cave? Beautiful
tyrant! fiend angelical! Dovefeather’d raven! wolfish-ravening
lamb! … Oh nature, what hadst
thou to do in hell When thou didst
bower the spirit of a fiend In
mortal paradise of such sweet
flesh” - Juliet
In this speech, Lord Capulet is
describing the scene both for the
audience and as stage directions.
The expectation is that musicians
will play and dancers dance for
the remainder of this, the party,
scene
“Welcome, gentlemen! ladies that
have their toes Unplagu’d with
corns will have a bout with you. Ah ha, my mistresses! which of
you all Will now deny to dance?
she that makes dainty, she, I’ll
swear hath corns; am I come
near you now? Welcome,
gentlemen! I have seen the day
That I have worn a visard; and
could tell A whispering tale in a
fair lady’s ear, … Come
musicians, play- A hall, - a hall!
give room, and foot it girls. - “
Nature and animal imagery
Sense of place created through
visual imagery
Music and song
Female character / children subservient to males / parents “I’ll look to like if looking liking move” - Juliet
Theatre form: Shakespearian Theatre (Performance features)
Atypical
Atypical
Feature3
Definition
Male actors played female roles:
Juliet, Lady C, Lady M, Nurse
Male actors
Action played to three sides and
levels
Stages in the Renaissance
Theatres were thrust into the
audience. Audience would stand
before the stage as well as in
three levels of seating around the
edges of the Theatre.
Example in performance
In this performance, all female
characters were played by
females and all males were
played by males. It is important to
note, however that while older
actors played older characters,
Romeo and Juliet (who are 14 &
16ish) were played by actors who
are in their 20s.
In this production the staging was
typically in the end stage. A
couple of characters (Romeo and
Nurse) entered through the
audience.
Atypical
Thrust stage
No balcony was used in this
staging, however raised
platforms moved in and out of the
acting space and these were
used for the balcony scenes by
having Romeo and Juliet
standing on them so that they
were elevated.
Balcony
Typical
Audience interaction
No stage lighting
Typical
3
Flow on/off entrances /exits
Atypical
Typical
Inner & outer action
Iambic pentameter blank verse
Characters deliver lines to or
about the audience in order to
include them in the action
“
An iambic foot is an unstressed
syllable followed by a stressed
syllable (eg tra-peze) . A line of
iambic pentameter is five iambic
feet in a row.
This poetic form is the one that
best mimics natural speech.
“But soft, What light through
yonder window breaks? // It is the
east and Juliet is the sun! - //
Arise fair sun and kill the envious
moon // who is already sick and
pale with grief // That thou her
maid are far more fair than she”
Some features taken from http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/resources/drama/theatreform.html
Typical
Rhyming couplets to indicate end
of scenes
Use of dramatic irony
Typical / Atypical
Typical
A couplet is a pair of lines of
verse. In this case the two lines
rhyme.
Elizabethan costuming with
symbolic additions to change era
This was an oral cue to the
audience that the ‘setting’ was
about to change as there were no
lighting cues. This feature is
evidence of the idea that
Shakespeare’s was a listening
audience.
In drama, the device of giving the
spectator an item of information
that at least one of the characters
in the narrative is unaware of (at
least consciously), thus of placing
the spectator a step ahead of at
least one of the characters.
Dramatic irony involves three
stages: installation, exploitation
and resolution.
Many theatre troops gained their
materials and costumes from
hand-me-downs. Often
merchants whom were unable to
sell material would donate it to
the theatre, or sell it at a very
reduced rate. Nobles also gave
away much of “last seasons”
fashions to actors, who could
then in turn use it to portray the
very people who had given it to
them.
Romeo - “Farewell, thou canst
not teach me to forget.”
Benvolio - “I’ll pay that doctrine or
else die in debt”
Romeo - “ O, let us hence; I
stand on sudden haste.
Friar L - “Wisely and slow; they
stumble that run fast.”
“Come, cordial, and not poison,
go with me To Juliet’s grave; for
there must I use thee.” - Romeo
Juliet goes to the Friar and get a
sleeping potion (installation), she
takes the potion and appears
dead and is ‘buried’, Romeo
doesn’t receive the message that
she has taken a sleeping potion
(exploitation), goes to the tomb,
finds her dead, and kills himself.
She wakes, finds him dead and
kills herself (resolution).
In this production, it could be
argued that the actors are
wearing ‘fashion’ of the current
time period and therefore being a
modern version of this tradition.
However costuming of the
production is specifically
‘designed and then created from
these designs rather than being a
‘making do’ situation.
The Wheel of Fortune
The Great Chain of Being
“
The Four Humours influencing
personality types (phlegmatic,
choleric, melancholic, sanguine)
Shakespeare didn’t write stage
directions in his text, he put the
directions within the words that
characters say.
Stage Directions within the text
“Help me to some house”
-Mercutio
“Go villain, fetch a surgeon”
-Mercutio
“Hence, be gone, away!”
-Benvolio
“See where she comes from
shrift with a merry look” -Nurse
Typical
Atypical / Typical
Text appealing to the ‘lowest
common denominator’
Changes in time indicated in the
text by what characters say.
Shakespeare wrote his plays to
be enjoyed by the largest portion
of the crowd. These people were
often menial workers who were
both uneducated and illiterate.
The result of this was that often
there was a character in the play
whose speech was very bawdy.
These comments were likely
accompanied by exaggerated
movements in order to get a
laugh from the audience.
Lord Capulet’s line tells the
audience that it’s dark but also
early morning
“Dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backwards when
thou has more wit” - Nurse
“Women grown by men” - Nurse
“- Light to my chamber, ho! Afore me, it is so very very late
That we may call it early by and
by. -” - Lord Capulet
In this production, while the
words still remain, they are now
supported by lighting cues which
further enhance the situation.