Scarica Romeo and juliet e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Romeo and Juliet The plot The play begins with a sonnet, spoken as prologue, where the private emotional experience of the lovers, is explored in isolation and in relation both to their social context and ideas of love, destiny and death. First Act. The first act covers a whole day, the first of the five in which the play takes place, and it opens in a Verona street. This act Is composed of a series of dialogues about the courtly concept of love, linked to melancholy, holy devotion and idealization of the object of desire. It ends with the scene of the masque and the meeting of the two main characters: Romeo, the son of Lord Montague who is the head of a Veronese family that is gripped in a bloody feud with the Capulets, and Juliet, Lord Capulet’s daughter. Second Act. The second act is concentrated on the development of the relationship between Romeo and Juliet. The dialogue between the two lovers deals with the theme of love in a way that gradually avoids the features of courtly convention, especially as regards Juliet’s language. This act also ends with a ceremony: the secret wedding of the two lovers celebrated in the chapel by Friar Laurence. Third Act. This is the central act; it is the longest one and it can be divided into two parts: that of public events concentrated in the first scene, full of action and movement, and that of private events. Fourth Act. It is the preparatory act to the final tragedy. The deviation of information has brought about the division of the characters into two groups, each living a different story; only Friar Laurence and Juliet share both. It is the shorter act: it covers Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. Fifth Act. The fifth act consists of three scenes. The first breaks the unity of place, moving from Verona to Mantua, where Romeo has gone, after being banished from Verona for killing Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin. In the last scene there is the explanation: Romeo find Juliet’s sleeping body in her family tomb after she has drunk the potion, and he believes her to be dead. He decides to kill himself, then Juliet wakes up from her sleep. Out of fear and love she inserts a dagger into her heart with the famous line “Oh happy dagger”. The death of the young couple ends the feud between their families. Themes the main themes of the play are two: • The lack of knowledge, which necessarily derives from bad communication. Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy of not knowing and unawareness; it cannot be summed up as the tragedy of ‘old hate’ and ‘young love’, since the tragic final destruction results from a pattern which includes the elements of chance and the more pervading one of misinformation. • The reflection upon language made by Juliet, who shows a tendency to realism in her use of language. T1. The Masque
