Romeo and Juliet and Poetry Notes Date of

Romeo and Juliet and Poetry Notes

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

Romeo and Juliet is written in both prose and poetry

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

Prose • Ordinary speech without any structured beat • Written in paragraph form

Poetry • The poetry is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter

• 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)

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

• Example: • u / u / u / • He jests at scars that never felt a wound. • 1 2 3 4 5

es of poetry are either end-stopped or run-on.

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

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

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem.

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

• 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

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

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

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

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

• Label the following on the poem in your notes: –Rhyme Scheme –Quatrains –Couplet

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

• 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

• 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