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| The ending, from Zeffirelli's famous 1968 film |
NOTE: Don't forget to start thinking about/writing your Paper #1 due next week! Luckily, we don't have class on Monday, and no reading to worry about, so you can get a jump on it then, too. But don't let it sneak up on you!
Finish the play for next class and think about whether the play follows the rules of tragedy that either Aristotle or Poole (or you!) have described. Question #4 deals with this more specifically if you want to answer it head-on.
Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: In a few of his plays, Shakespeare has a clergyman propose a very unorthodox solution to an ethical dilemma: in this case, drinking a potion that will give Juliet the semblance of death (a similar solution occurs in Much Ado About Nothing). How does Shakespeare characterize the friar’s motives and intentions in his language? Are we meant to trust him? Does Juliet?
Q2: How does Juliet’s family and her fiancée respond to Juliet’s death in 4.5? Obviously they’re all crushed, but look at their language: how does Shakespeare ‘stage’ their grief? Do you find it full of tragedy of melodrama? Pathetic (emotional) or bathetic (parody)?
Q3: Romeo had been kept away from the play in most of Act 4, but he comes to dominate it in Act 5. How has he ‘matured,’ if at all? Is his poetry more authentic and affecting? Or does he still rely on stock expression of grief and rage? Does he seem worthy of Juliet by the end of the play (you might look at some of his longer speeches)?
Q4: In the 19th century, the play often ended with Juliet’s death, while some versions had her and Romeo survive altogether (making a tragedy into a comedy). What do you make of the ending of the play, where the Prince re-emerges and acts as a Chorus to the play (which has been absent since Act Two)? Is this really the moral of the play—that “never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”? Or might this conclusion be trying to create a katharsis that doesn’t exist?
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