Romeo and Juliet Act2 Scene 2 video link

http://youtu.be/r4Ew-Iyj79s

Don’t let the so called “Romantic Story” fools you

Admittedly, Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous and classic plays that have ever written and Romeo and Juliet are widely represented as the symbol of the undying love. However, even with the inherent cognition, I can still hardly feel Romeo’s true spirited love to Juliet when I finished reading Act 2 and I dislike the character of “Romeo” from the beginning of the play. While I was reading the words of Friar Lawrence, I suddenly feel the resonance between his notion of Romeo and mine.The Friar Lawrence’s critical comment on teenager’s love in Act 2 Scene 3 explains exactly how I feel about Romeo and therefore, Act 2 Scene 3 is my favorite scene.

Romeo is always emotional and crazy about love. When he falls in love with Rosaline, he can’t keep himself away from being morose. Because Rosaline swears not to marry, Romeo says “ Do live dead, that live to tell it now”. He thinks he is a walking dead without the love of Rosaline. Nonetheless, all the vows of his love to Rosaline break when he meet Juliet and he even “have forgot that name” of Rosaline. Just like what Friar Lawrence says “Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here! Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear, so soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes”, the love of Romeo isn’t faithful and it changes significantly. Even though Romeo has “thrown away so much salt water” and “washed his sallow cheeks” with “a deal of brine” for Rosaline, when the time comes, he easily forgets Rosaline.I reluctant to believe people can actually fall in love at the first sight and what happen between Romeo and Juliet is that they are simply attracted by each other’s appearance. Their love is corporal, because Romeo eagerly wants to kiss Juliet several times when they just first meet. Besides, Friar Lawrence is indeed a good mentor and I also completely agree with his point that “for doting, not for loving” when Romeo says “thou chid’st me oft for loving Rosaline”. Loving someone is not wrong in any degree and people always have their rights to love whoever they want to love; however, people should keep their mind clear when they are falling in love. Sadly, Romeo is the person who becomes a fool when he is in love. He can easily give up his principle for the girl who he just met. For instance, Romeo says to Juliet without hesitation that he will abandon his name as a Montague if that action will make their love come true.

In conclusion,I appreciate scene 3 because of the comment of the priest. The love between Romeo and Juliet in my point of view is not that holy and the words of Friar Lawrence reveal the truth that the love between them is nothing but a spark between two attractive teenagers.

          

In class writing

In Juliet's soliloquy, she expresses her love to Romeo and worry about their family's antagonistic situation. She also says even if Romeo cannot abandon his identity as a Montague, she will still swear to love him and also give up her name as one of the Capulets. She also says that the name of the family is not as important as the hands, foot, face or hand.

Let's see how this young couple will face their inevitable fate

The first time that I encountered the play written by Shakespeare was in last year’s World Literature Class. At the beginning of reading his play, the sentence structure, grammar and vocabulary were unfathomable to me and the only way I could comprehend his story was by re-constructing the word fragments. Nonetheless, through the deeper study of the context later, I can gradually understand his “ancient language” without recombining the words. Thanks to the experience of reading Othello, I was not anxious at all when I knew I would read Romeo and Juliet soon.

Romeo and Juliet has gained such a world-wide renown that even the four Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies can not reach. What I knew already about this story is that it is a famous tragedy in which both of the main characters died because the coincidence of cumulative misunderstanding. The god of destiny makes fools of the people. I myself do not enjoy reading a story especially when I already knew it had a bad ending.

In Act 1, the playwright already reveals the whole background of the story. The first fight at the start of the play confused me a little bit, but after I went through the following plots, I have to say it is a great idea to introduce the entrenched hostility between the house of Capulet and the house of Montague by presenting the conflict first. The second thing that impresses me is readers can easily figure out the characters’ personality by reading their words. The dialogues are just so representative of their different dispositions. I like the way that Shakespeare “builds” the character of the Nurse. From her endless talks about everything, readers can easily imagine a figure of nagging, over-dramatic and querulous mid or old age lady in their minds.

Romeo is a poetic and melancholy person. The way he wrote and speak is full of sophisticated and poetic description about love, like “why then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything of nothing first create! O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapne chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, still-waking sleep that is not what it is”. When coming to unsmooth love, Romeo will easily become sad. Just like when he knows he cannot marry Roseline, Romeo just keeps thinking about her so deeply that he even cannot have a good sleep.  Juliet, on the other hand, is not that worry about love. However, she should worry about her marriage soon. In the play that we have read so far, she was introduced to a successful man and both her mother and her nurse seem to be very satisfied about their marriage, if that is possible. Although Juliet hasn’t said that much, her response to her mother’s intention of letting young Paris marry her reflects some of her personality. “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move. But no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly” is what Juliet says to her mother. Juliet’s response is indeed smart. She neither defies her mother’s decision nor compromises. She gives herself a space to whether go back or move forward.

Summary of 1.1-1.2

In the beginning of the scene, there is the dialogue between one member of the Capulet Family,Gregory,  and his servent, Samson. They wanted to start a fight between the Montague Family, However, they want to irritate the people in Montague family and let other think Montague family is the one who starts the fight. Their plan worked and the fight also becomes the fight between the Montague and Capulet. Finally,  the conflict is ceased by the local governer. Meanwhile, Romeo is sad about love because the girl he loved swear not to marry. Benuolio tried to let Romeo go to the party in which Romeo can find more girls to compare with the one he loves at present.

Let the novel or play guide you through the story?

The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time differs notably in its play version and novel version, especially when you examine their page numbers. Both play and novel are forms of literature in which authors or playwrights convey their story and their emotion through their words; nonetheless, their reading experience, content and goals are disparate. Readers can realize those key different elements in these two versions of The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time.

To begin with, comparing with novels, plays, maybe except for those written in ancient English, were easier to read yet harder to put oneself into the plot. The most obvious reason that the plays are easier to read is dialogues occupy most of the play while there are thorough descriptions of character’s mind activities, past experiences, circumstances and actions, etc. in the novel. However, because of those descriptions, novel in my point of view is far more attractive than the play. Novels can really connect the reader to the story and characters themselves. With only dialogues and the lack of details, the characters in the play version of The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time is comparatively pale and humdrum. The figure of Christopher in the play is not as “complete” as that in the novel in the readers’ eyes. After I finished reading the play version, I viewed Christopher as a ridiculous and ungrateful kid, especially when he escaped from his father, who loves and takes cares of him deeply, because he absurdly assumes that since his father killed the dog, he will kill him as well. I know Christopher is autistic, but reading the play, I just cannot comprehend his actions and find a reason to justify what or why he is doing these things. Thanks to the first-person narration, all those detailed mind activities, like “I couldn’t trust him, even though he has said ‘Trust me,’because he had told a lie about a big thing”(321 Mark), and those pictures that Christopher draws in the novel, Christopher’s actions gradually start to make sense to me and I can put myself into Christopher’s position to view events happening around him.

Secondly, unlike novels, plays are meant to be performed. When adapting novels to plays, playwrights have to make compromises and cut some parts of the novel, because some of the plot is hard or impossible to perform on stage. The plays are set for stages and the actors or the directors are the ones who control the elements in the play. In the play version of The Curious Incident of The Dog in The Night-time, the descriptions of the characters’ movement and the surrounding circumstances are so simple that they are only consisted of just a few words. For instance “he creams”,”he groans” and “train starts to rumbling”( 72 Mark). There is much space in the play for the actors to specify and complete. For instance, how Christopher groans and screams, and what effect does the rumble of the train have on those passengers including Christopher. Unlike the novel version, which is vivid and detailed itself, the play version can only be vivid by performing it through the performers’ understanding and imagination of the characters and plot.

To sum up, both versions of the story was well written and the key reason of these differences between the two is simply their different aims: novels are mainly for readers while plays are mainly for performers.

     

Difference between modern theater and Elizabethan theater

1. In Shakespeare's theater , only men were allowed to perform and some men would perform as women. However, in modern times, both men and women are allowed to perform in theaters.

2. During Elizabeth time, players trvael by companies. They don't have a place to stay like modern theaters. They travel around to attract audience. They don't have an audition, but choose the audience by the customer who order them.

3. In Shakespeare's theater, the cheapest place to watch play is the front of the stage while nowadays the most expensive place to watch plays is the front.

4. Shakespeare's theaters are mostly wooden while nowadays are mostly concrete.

5. Watching plays how's is viewed as decent while doing so before was viewed as not fancy.

6. Shakespeare's theater was not only for performing plays, before they perform plays they will perform other entertainment such as bear baiting.

7. Flag tower on the top of the Shakespearean theaters.

Literature vs. Performance & Play vs. Novel

Literature, by the definition of Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “written works that are considered to be very good and to have lasting importance” and the “written works” include poems, plays, novels, books, etc.. Performance, on the other hand, is “the way an actor performs a part in play, movie, etc.” by the definition of Merriam-Webster Dictionary. From these two definitions, we can see the styles of the two ways of conveying information are totally different, but they are still closely related. Literature is more of an understanding of the material while a performance is more of a visual and auditory entertainment. Literature, in my point of view, can be divided into two categories: entertainment and non-entertainment. Much like that of performance, the goal of entertaining literature is letting the readers find something that is enjoyable and can spend their free time on. However, unlike most of the performance, the non-entertainment literature aims at informing, recording, or teaching the reader certain events that are worth pondering on and extending their knowledgement of the world. In my point of view, one of the biggest advantages of performance is that the performance can reach the audience and impress them in a way that an article can never manage to achieve, because, after all, literature is a collection of pallid( maybe I am being too exaggerated)  papers and literature can never become that vivid like performance. Still, literature has its own uniqueness. Literature can have plenty of details and places for the readers to imagine. Besides, literature is mostly the foundation of performance and in order to develop an awesome performance, a well-prepared script must be written first. For instance, my most favorite TV show, “The Game of Thrones”, is derived from the famous novel “The Song of Fire and Ice”. The partial reason that this TV shows has made such a great success is the author of the book, George R.R Martin, already delineated the world settings and the personality of characters so detailedly that the TV show can just simply follow the progress of the novel.

Both play and novels are viewed as a part of literature and both of them are mainly figments of authors’ imagination. Even though some will claim that plays are great because of the wide imagination space that the readers can have, I personally prefer reading novels to reading plays mainly because in the plays, there is a lack of details. People can easily know the personal trait of the different characters by reading their mind activities, backgrounds and actions in the novel; however, the only way people can interpret what is going on in the play is through the dialogue between characters and the short description of the change of places. Reading the stage direction in the play is crucial because otherwise the play won’t make a lot of sense to the reader. Unlike novels, all plays are meant to be performed and the director and actor have to add their comprehension of the characters’ emotion, the settings, and the actions  to the performance.

Reflection on a quote

" A script is obviously less than a play, while a production is more."
A play is the final stage of the script. A script or play is simply a text which narrates or describes the fictional events that the author want to write about. A production, however, is not simply the text; it is the combination of text and performance. People cannot really find the visual impression from the script, but a production can give the audience a full understanding of the happening events. In this course, I think we are aiming to merge the performance with the text.

Who am I?

Hi, I am Eric and in this blog post I hope I can introduce different sides of me, whether as a friend, a student , an athlete or a family member, as well as my past life experience. I hope you can kind of know me through my narratives. 

Strangely enough, the most obvious characteristic of mine is “go with the flow”. I can find a reason to be happy right where I am. This characteristic has contributed significantly to, or even shaped, what I am. Thanks to this personality, I barely become angry towards others (if you see me being annoyed, usually I am just pretending to be so) so that others are willing to fraternize with me. As a friend, I am a trustworthy and easygoing. I am not a gossipy person; therefore, if you want to have somebody to pour forth your feelings, I am the one you can talk to and your secret will keep with me.

As you knew already, I am an international student. This is almost my third year in Cheshire Academy, and I have changed quite a lot in those years. Before I came to American school, “inconspicuous” and “ordinary” are the fittest two words that represents my life in academic study: my grades in all fields are in neither the top nor the bottom. I can handle all the subjects courses, but none of them is what I am extremely good at. More pathetically, I don’t even have any particular interest towards any course. The way I view different courses has changed quite a little when I came to my current school, in which I found that learning in the courses itself can be interesting. After all, teachers in America teach students in an completely different and closer way than do those in Chinese schools.

As an athlete, sadly, I can only say that I used to be a gifted one. I could do well in a great variety of sports activities. I broke my primary school and middle school’s sport records of 100m run and long jump and got the third prizes both in the 50m run and 100m swimming race in my district schools competition. Nevertheless, due to the work load and my increasingly laziness, I lost interest in doing sport activities during my 8th and 9th grade. Hopefully, when I came to Cheshire Academy, I start to realize that I can no longer grow fatter and gradually turn into a more active sport player.

As a son in my family, I am a quite docile. I never reply defiantly to my relatives even though sometimes my father is being unreasonable. I am quite grateful that I was born in this family. Nothing is perfect, but I think my family is comparatively awesome. My parents are both hardworking and responsible, and their quality has greatly influenced me to be a full man.