Draft

Ben: Abram, Tybalt

Eric: Sampson, Capulet, Romeo

Lucie: Gregory, Romeo, Mercutio

1.1

Sampson:

Gregory，on my words we’ll not carry coals.

Gregory:

No, for then we should be colliers.

Sampson:

A dog of the house of Montague shall move me to stand.I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s.

Gregory:

They must take it in sense that feel it.

Sampson:

Me they should feel while I am able to stand and ‘tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.

Gregory:

Draw thy tool. Here comes of the house of Montagues.

Enter Abram

Gregory:

I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.

Sampson:

Nay, as they dare, I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it.

Abram:

Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

Sampson:

No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you.

Abram:

You lie.

Gregory:

Do you quarrel, sir?

Abram:

Quarrel? No.

Sampson:

Draw if you be men.

They Fight

1.5

Romeo:

What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night as a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear

Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.

Tybalt:

This, by his voice, should be a Montague. Fetch me my rapier, boy. What, dares the slave Come hither covered with an antic face To fleer and scorn at our solemnity ?

Capulet:

Why, how now, kinsman? Wherefore storm you so?

Tybalt:

Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe, A villain that is hither come in spite To scorn at our solemnity this night.

Capulet:

Young Romeo is it?

Tybalt:

’Tis he, that villain Romeo.

Capulet:

Content thee, gentle coz. Let him alone. He bears him like a portly gentleman.

Show a fair presence and put off these frowns, An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.

Tybalt:

It fits when such a villain is a guest. I’ll not endure him.

Capulet:

You’ll not endure him! God shall mend my soul, You’ll make a mutiny among my guests,

Tybalt:

Patience perforce with willful choler meeting

Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.

I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall,

Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest gall.

Scene 3.1

TYBALT
Follow me close, for I will speak to them.

MERCUTIO
And but one word with one of us? couple it with
something; make it a word and a blow.

TYBALT
Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo,--

MERCUTIO
Consort! what, dost thou make us minstrels?

here's my fiddlestick; here's that shall
make you dance.

Enter ROMEO

TYBALT
Well, here comes my man.
Romeo, the hate I bear thee can afford
No better term than this,--thou art a villain.

ROMEO
Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee
Doth much excuse the appertaining rage
To such a greeting: villain am I none;
Therefore farewell; I see thou know'st me not.

TYBALT
Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries
That thou hast done me; therefore turn and draw.

ROMEO
I do protest, I never injured thee,
But love thee better than thou canst devise,
Till thou shalt know the reason of my love:

MERCUTIO
O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!

Draws
Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?

TYBALT
What wouldst thou have with me?

MERCUTIO
Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine
lives; that I mean to make bold withal.

Will you pluck your sword out of his pitcher
by the ears?

TYBALT
I am for you.

Drawing

ROMEO
Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.

MERCUTIO
Come, sir, your passado.

They fight

ROMEO
Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage!
Hold, Tybalt! good Mercutio!

TYBALT under ROMEO's arm stabs MERCUTIO, and flies

MERCUTIO
I am hurt.
A plague o' both your houses! I am sped.

ROMEO

What, art thou hurt?

MERCUTIO
Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch

ROMEO
Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.

MERCUTIO
Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.

A plague o'both your houses!

Why the devil came you between us?

I was hurt under your arm.

ROMEO
I thought all for the best.

MERCUTIO
A plague o' both your houses!

ROMEO

O, brave Mercutio's dead!
Here comes the furious Tybalt back again.

Re-enter TYBALT

Now, Tybalt, take the villain back again,

Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him.

TYBALT
Thou, wretched boy, that didst consort him here,
Shalt with him hence.

ROMEO
This shall determine that.

They fight; TYBALT falls

ROMEO
The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain.
The prince will doom thee death,
O, I am fortune's fool!

Exit ROMEO

Feud: The chief culprit of this tragedy

The main theme I want to explore in the play is the feud’s role in creating and leading to the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Both the capulet and Montague families had certain entrenched bias towards each other and the feud becomes the inner motivate that is responsible for some characters’ certain action and decision. There are plenty of lines in the play shows the ongoing hatred between the two families. Without the feud, the story of Romeo and Juliet will no longer be a “forbidden love” and all these bloody events will not happen.

 Since the role of feud is showed in a sery of events, I decide to stage 3 parts of different scenes which are act 1 scene 1, act 1 scene 5 and act 3 scene 1. Act 1 scene 1 is the start of the chapter. Its importance to the topic is that it establishes and reveal the conflicts in which both family, even their undermen, hold “ancient grudge” towards each other. In act 1 scene 5, Tybalt dislike Romeo at the first sight, simply because Romeo is their family’s foe.The power of the feud is showed in its climax when it leads Tybalt to seek revenge against Romeo and ends up killing himself and Mercutio, ruining the smooth development of Romeo and Juliet’s love.

Since we have 3 people in the group and there are changing characters in those scenes, it is better to let out group members change roles during the play. Lucy and I are going to act as Sampson and Gregory while Ben will be Abram in the first scene. In the second scene, we will only stage the conversation between Capulet and Tybalt. I will act as Capulet while Ben will be Tybalt. In the last scene, Ben will still be Tybalt while I will be Mercutio and Lucy will be Romeo.

3 ideas

1. Act 1 scene one and act 3 scene 1. Those two scene reveals the long-hold feud between two family.

2. Act 2 scene 3 and act 4 scene 1. Those two scene can shows Friar Lawrence both identities as a priest and a scientist.

3. Act 3 scene 1 and act 5 scene 3. Is the tragedy avoidable or it is destined to be a bad ending.

If enmity is not settled amicably, there is no end to it.

Essay Question number 5

“Romeo and Juliet”, written by William Shakespeare, was always seen as a story of “forbidden love”. As Shakespeare tells the readers in the prologue, there are “two households, both alike in dignity” and they both held “ancient grudge” towards each other. The background of the setting of the two households already forebodes the hardship of this love, and as the full plot gradually unfolds, the feud between the two families is proofed to be the chief culprit of this tragedy. If there isn’t a feud of both families, there will be no need for the couple to hide their love and marriage, and more importantly, there won’t be so many unfortunate incidents led by the feud.

Interestingly, the feud is represented in the first scene, right after the prologue. of the play where Sampson and Gregory ,who belong to the house of Capulet, instigate Abram and Balthasarto to fight against them simply because both of them cannot bear the sight of the people in the House of Montague. After that, the entrenched hatred was revealed to be more dangerous. During the party, Tybalt already shows his bias and enmity when he uses “this is a Montague, our foe, a villain that is hither come in spite to scorn at our solemnity this night” to describe Romeo. After his plan of expelling Romeo from the party is refuted by Capulet, Tybalt holds the grudge and self-talks “Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest gall”. Although the tension and violence seem to be minor at the time, that line of self-talk actually foreshadows the greater consequence due to that small unpleasure.  

Mishap always pays an unexpected visit. When both Juliet and Romeo is immersing in felicity in which they successfully marry each other and  unite together, Tybalt decides to find Romeo and get his revenge for the shame he got from Romeo. Tragedy happens when Tybalt finds Romeo. Due to the long-holding feud, when Romeo is saying words like “I have to love thee” to Tybalt, Tybalt thinks Romeo is teasing him. Dramatically, after that, Mercutio replaces Romeo to duel with Tybalt and finally gets killed under Romeo’s arm. Romeo, outraged by the death of his best friend, slays Tybalt. The feud between two family becomes increasingly fierce after the death of Tybalt. Both lady Capulet and Capulet, distrust the word of Benvolio because “he is a kinsman to the Montague, affection makes him false”, insist to let Romeo get severe punishment and Romeo is eventually banished from the city. The final result for that abhorrence, as we all know, turns out to lead to death of the couple and the regrets of both the family.

People, not only those in Shakespeare’s play, can easily be blinded by hatred. The accumulation of lack of civility could likely produce misconception and even violence in the society. Without the feud in the play. for example, Tybalt would not feel disgraced by the appearance of Romeo and Romeo and Juliet would have lived happily ever after their marriage. Therefore, it is better to get rid of an enmity than keep it alive.

R & J Questions

What's Fiair Lawrance's plan of letting Juliet avoid to be married to Paris.

How many people did Romeo kill? For what reasons?

How does the Prince find out the truth after all these events happened?

Why Romeo is banished?

Why Romeo returns to Verona?

What causes this tragedy? Who is the one to blame

Should Juliet listen to her father's arrangement for her marriage?

How do you what to stage the scene of Romeo seeing Juliet's "dead Body" and suicide?

Is the tragedy inevitable?

Do you think the tragedy will actually let both houses remain in peace? why?

Analyze the power of love in the play.

Compare and contrast Juliet and Romeo in hlove.

Knowing and Practice

Performance and staging are always part of the class, and we are gradually learning them from the beginning when we acted as animals or pretended to be in certain emotions and ran to other classmates’ position. Undoubtedly, as a novice, there are quite a lot flaws in the first scene that I perform, but fortunately, by watching others’ performance and introspecting, I thought it is relatively easy to improve.

When I  am adapting the play to performance, it is quite easy to decide what emotions we should express, what actions we should show and how to condense or expand the original lines in the play. After all, we all have seen so many performance whether through media or theaters. We can judge what makes a good performance and which ones are better. We can realize the emotions from the text through the instinct and we know which lines, if they are performed on stage, will be viewed as verbose by the audience. What is challenging for me though is how to apply these theories into practice, because now it is the time for me to change my position from viewer to actor and director.

I am always struggling with how to really show emotions on the stage. Knowing the emotion does not ensure that I can reveal the emotion through acting and some degree of nervousness always accompany with me when I act on the stage. The way to address this problem for me is maybe to put my focus on where it belongs, not on what “should” the character feel or on the audience, but on my partners. I know to overcome that is never easy, but by practicing more and working more on moment to moment, it won’t be that hard. Time is needed for achieving that.

One of the another main difficulties that I am facing is how to use limited items in the black box theater to revision the scene.It seemed to me that the only tools that I could really use are those boxes. However, after watching others’ performance and staging, I realize firstly I don’t need to find tools to adapt the scene but I can let the scene adapt to the tools I have. For instance, although the characters are talking to each other while standing, I can make them sit on chairs having coffees and seem like chatting intimately. Besides, it is still possible to use these tools to convey the ideas in the original play. Adler’s group inspired me when I was watching their balcony scene. The way Romeo secretly listen to Juliet’s speech through showing only head from the curtain perfectly display the idea that the original play wants to show.

Incident Before Parent's Weekend

Setting: VDP third floor during Study Hall

Enter Old Capulet and his Wife.

Capulet:

For what cause has VDP become such a noisy and chaotic place? I heard from the teacher that it is now study hall time. My wife, please give me my stick.

Lady Capulet: 

Why do you need your stick?

Capulet: 

Quickly, I see that old Montague is coming. He must be the one who instigates his nephews to start the fight against the nephews of mine.

Enter Old Montague and his Wife.

Montague: 

Capulet, you such a old villain! Don’t stop me, my wife!

Lady Montague: 

If you are going to argue with Capulet, I will not let you move even one foot towards him because the dorm parents, Mr. Porter, is coming.

Enter Mr.Porter, the dorm parent of VDP third floor.

Mr. Porter: 

How dare you guys to start the chaos again and again during study hall time. Stop, all of you! Mr. Capulet and Mr.Montague, your nephews in this school have already started the unforgivable violent incidents three times and all those innocent hardworking students have been all negatively influenced and entangled. It seems to me that three detentions are not enough to deter all your bad students. If you guys start the fight anytime in the school again, there won’t even be a C.C. for you and you guys will all be directly expelled from Cheshire Academy. Mr. Capulet and Mr. Montague, since today is already planned for having conversation between parents and teachers, come with me and let’s have a really serious communication. Dismiss and go back to your rooms, now.

Montague: 

Benvolio, who really started the fight? It is those bastards of Capulet did it, right? Tell me, are you those presented when the fight started?

Benvolio:

Before I came, two students funded by you to read this school and another two students funded by Capulet were already in fight. I did try to stop them, but that is when that irritable Tybalt holding a thick book joins in the fight. He accused me of being the one who always not flushes the toilet in VDP. During the time when Tybalt and I tried to use the book to hit the other in the head, more students were dragged in the chaos.