Romeo & Juliet Movies
Again....there are so many. Here are just a few.
There's almost an endless amount of resources out there for Romeo and Juliet , but hopefully these are still helpful for someone. If you have any resources that you would like to share with others, please post them in the comments below.
Free Resources for Romiette & Julio by Sharon Draper
Free Unit for Lord of the Flies
Free Unit for The Odyssey
by mindroar | Aug 22, 2021 | blog | 0 comments
Looking for lessons for Romeo and Juliet ? Are you teaching Romeo and Juliet in high school and desperately looking for activities and resources for the Shakespearean tragedy? Check out these 12 Romeo and Juliet teaching resources.
1. shakespearean insult lesson.
If your students are unfamiliar with English from the Elizabethan era, it can be a steep learning curve. And it can make it difficult to teach Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet .
Students often feel intimidated by the language and find it hard to get into. And if you’re teaching one of Shakespeare’s plays for the first time, you can feel intimidated yourself. I know I was when I first started!
A great way to overcome this fear factor is to have some fun activities for teaching Shakespearean language and the specific play you will be teaching.
One of my favorite ways to start any unit about Shakespeare is by having a Shakespearean Insult Lesson (see h ere for my blog post about it and here for my digital and in-class lesson ).
Not only is the Shakespearean insult lesson lots of fun, but it also helps reduce the fear factor of Shakespearean language.
Another great way to introduce students to Shakespeare and his plays is to watch a short video about Shakespeare’s life and his tragedies.
There are heaps of videos around, but some of my favorites are the Crash Course videos: this one , which is all about Shakespeare’s life, and this one , which is about Shakespeare’s tragedies.
Both videos are short and sweet, less than fifteen minutes. The video about Shakespeare’s tragedies covers King Lear in more depth, so you can also stop the video at about eight minutes and fifteen seconds if you’re short on time.
These are also great activities to set as homework because they are short and easy to get into. Plus, if you had to choose between a video and solving algebraic equations, which would you choose?
The videos are funny and engaging, and they use illustration, a presenter, and quotes to delve deeper into Shakespeare’s life and plays. That series also has a video about Shakespeare’s comedies, just in case you teach any of those too.
If you’re looking for a worksheet to go with the videos, check out our Shakespeare life and plays bundle on TPT.
Now, once you’ve introduced Shakespeare, gotten your student more comfortable with his language, and begun reading Romeo and Juliet , you’ll probably be wondering what other lessons for Romeo and Juliet you can use in class.
The Crash Course Literature series also has two videos specifically about Romeo and Juliet . Again, I rate these highly as they’re short, entertaining, and cover important content such as plot, characters, and themes.
If you’re looking for worksheets for these, we have some too. Check out the Romeo and Juliet mini bundle , which has worksheets for both of the videos.
Be warned that the videos do have plot spoilers though, so if your students don’t already realize that R+J die, you may want to hold off until you’ve read the whole play.
This great lesson by The English Teacher’s Pet asks students to choose a scene from the play and recreate the scene through text messages on Romeo’s phone. And the best part? This lesson plan for Romeo and Juliet is free.
This Romeo and Juliet activity includes an explanation of the activity and a model answer, an evaluation sheet, and a text-message printable worksheet for students to write on.
These comics by David Rickert give an introduction to the main events of each act and have activities that explain an important concept or literary device.
Using comics is a great way to take away that fear that students often have of not understanding Shakespearean language. As an added bonus, the visuals in comics help with comprehension.
These body biographies by Danielle Knight of Study All Knight are another great lesson for Romeo and Juliet . In the activity, students analyze characters from the play in an engaging way. In completing the projects, students have to:
This lesson helps students understand how to quote and paraphrase in literary analysis using Romeo and Juliet quotes. Included in the lesson, useable in both print and digital, are:
This Romeo and Juliet activity would be a great way to get students to revise the play as they go. At the end of each scene, students could do a fun comic-book style photo-booth scene summary that they act out, write dialogue for, and then print and put in a comic-book template .
It would not only be fun, but it would also help students identify the important elements of each scene and remember what happened in the plot of the play.
So you’ve finished reading or watching Romeo and Juliet , and now you come to the pointy end where you need to review before an assessment task. These great Romeo and Juliet review activities are sure to be a hit with your students.
This digital escape room review by Gamewise is a great no-prep escape room that is paperless and completely online. You just buy the game, give students the link and password, and set them loose.
Even better, for students to get to the completion page, they need to answer all of the questions correctly.
The game covers topics such as:
If you prefer your students to do a paper-based escape room, this one by Nouvelle ELA can be used as an escape room with clues hidden around the room. Or it can be used as a breakout box, with students remaining in their desks to complete the tasks. It covers elements such as:
If your students are going to watch a video version of the play, this lesson for Romeo and Juliet helps students compare the Baz Luhrman movie adaptation to the play.
This film to play comparison by Visual Thinking Classroom is a great Romeo and Juliet movie lesson plan because it includes a no-prep instructional slide deck, as well as scaffolding to help students compare the original play to the Baz Luhrman adaptation.
The Romeo and Juliet movie lesson plan also helps students focus on important elements such as characters, story elements, and important moments in the play.
Now, maybe you’ve read through all of the Romeo and Juliet lesson plans so far, but what you’re really after are Romeo and Juliet unit lesson plans for a whole unit instead of individual lessons. If so, keep reading.
This five-week Romeo and Juliet unit of lesson plans contains the following:
This final resource with lessons for Romeo and Juliet is this differentiated teaching bundle by The Daring English Teacher. This bundle includes writing prompts, cloze activities, character analysis, and vocabulary.
But one of the best things about this product is that it is easy to differentiate – the one unit of work enables you to run Romeo and Juliet ESL lessons but can also be adapted to suit other learners too.
Hopefully, the resources listed above have been helpful for your lesson plans for Romeo and Juliet. If you are an English teacher, you may be interested in my other blog posts with lesson ideas and resources for other texts, including:
By Gail Kern Paster
Does Romeo and Juliet need an introduction? Of all Shakespeare’s plays, it has been the most continuously popular since its first performance in the mid-1590s. It would seem, then, the most direct of Shakespeare’s plays in its emotional impact. What could be easier to understand and what could be more moving than the story of two adolescents finding in their sudden love for each other a reason to defy their families’ mutual hatred by marrying secretly? The tragic outcome of their blameless love (their “misadventured piteous overthrows”) seems equally easy to understand: it results first from Tybalt’s hotheaded refusal to obey the Prince’s command and second from accidents of timing beyond any human ability to foresee or control. Simple in its story line, clear in its affirmation of the power of love over hate, Romeo and Juliet seems to provide both a timeless theme and universal appeal. Its immediacy stands in welcome contrast to the distance, even estrangement, evoked by other Shakespeare plays. No wonder it is often the first Shakespeare play taught in schools—on the grounds of its obvious relevance to the emotional and social concerns of young people.
Recent work by social historians on the history of private life in western European culture, however, offers a complicating perspective on the timelessness of Romeo and Juliet. At the core of the play’s evident accessibility is the importance and privilege modern Western culture grants to desire, regarding it as deeply expressive of individual identity and central to the personal fulfillment of women no less than men. But, as these historians have argued, such conceptions of desire reflect cultural changes in human consciousness—in ways of imagining and articulating the nature of desire. 1 In England until the late sixteenth century, individual identity had been imagined not so much as the result of autonomous, personal growth in consciousness but rather as a function of social station, an individual’s place in a network of social and kinship structures. Furthermore, traditional culture distinguished sharply between the nature of identity for men and women. A woman’s identity was conceived almost exclusively in relation to male authority and marital status. She was less an autonomous, desiring self than any male was; she was a daughter, wife, or widow expected to be chaste, silent, and, above all, obedient. It is a profound and necessary act of historical imagination, then, to recognize innovation in the moment when Juliet impatiently invokes the coming of night and the husband she has disobediently married: “Come, gentle night; come, loving black-browed night, / Give me my Romeo” ( 3.2.21 –23).
Recognizing that the nature of desire and identity is subject to historical change and cultural innovation can provide the basis for rereading Romeo and Juliet. Instead of an uncomplicated, if lyrically beautiful, contest between young love and “ancient grudge,” the play becomes a narrative that expresses an historical conflict between old forms of identity and new modes of desire, between authority and freedom, between parental will and romantic individualism. Furthermore, though the Chorus initially sets the lovers as a pair against the background of familial hatred, the reader attentive to social detail will be struck instead by Shakespeare’s care in distinguishing between the circumstances of male and female lovers: “she as much in love, her means much less / To meet her new belovèd anywhere” ( 2. Chorus. 11 –12, italics added). The story of “Juliet and her Romeo” may be a single narrative, but its clear internal division is drawn along the traditionally unequal lines of gender.
Because of such traditional notions of identity and gender, Elizabethan theatergoers might have recognized a paradox in the play’s lyrical celebration of the beauty of awakened sexual desire in the adolescent boy and girl. By causing us to identify with Romeo and Juliet’s desire for one another, the play affirms their love even while presenting it as a problem in social management. This is true not because Romeo and Juliet fall in love with forbidden or otherwise unavailable sexual partners; such is the usual state of affairs at the beginning of Shakespearean comedy, but those comedies end happily. Rather Romeo and Juliet’s love is a social problem, unresolvable except by their deaths, because they dare to marry secretly in an age when legal, consummated marriage was irreversible. Secret marriage is the narrative device by which Shakespeare brings into conflict the new privilege claimed by individual desire and the traditional authority granted fathers to arrange their daughters’ marriages. Secret marriage is the testing ground, in other words, of the new kind of importance being claimed by individual desire. Shakespeare’s representation of the narrative outcome of this desire as tragic—here, as later in the secret marriage that opens Othello —may suggest something of Elizabethan society’s anxiety about the social cost of romantic individualism.
The conflict between traditional authority and individual desire also provides the framework for Shakespeare’s presentation of the Capulet-Montague feud. The feud, like the lovers’ secret marriage, is another problem in social management, another form of socially problematic desire. We are never told what the families are fighting about or fighting for; in this sense the feud is both causeless and goal-less. The Chorus’s first words insist not on the differences between the two families but on their similarity: they are two households “both alike in dignity.” Later, after Prince Escalus has broken up the street brawl, they are “In penalty alike” ( 1.2.2 ). Ironically, then, they are not fighting over differences. Rather it is Shakespeare’s careful insistence on the lack of difference between Montague and Capulet that provides a key to understanding the underlying social dynamic of the feud. Just as desire brings Romeo and Juliet together as lovers, desire in another form brings the Montague and Capulet males out on the street as fighters. The feud perpetuates a close bond of rivalry between these men that even the Prince’s threat of punishment cannot sever: “Montague is bound as well as I,” Capulet tells Paris ( 1.2.1 ). Indeed, the feud seems necessary to the structure of male-male relations in Verona. Feuding reinforces male identity—loyalty to one’s male ancestors—at the same time that it clarifies the social structure: servants fight with servants, young noblemen with young noblemen, old men with old men. 2
That the feud constitutes a relation of desire between Montague and Capulet is clear from the opening, when the servants Gregory and Sampson use bawdy innuendo to draw a causal link between their virility and their eagerness to fight Montagues: “A dog of that house shall move me to stand,” i.e., to be sexually erect ( 1.1.12 ). The Montagues seem essential to Sampson’s masculinity since, by besting Montague men, he can lay claim to Montague women as symbols of conquest. (This, of course, would be a reductive way of describing what Romeo does in secretly marrying a Capulet daughter.) The feud not only establishes a structure of relations between men based on competition and sexual aggression, but it seems to involve a particularly debased attitude toward women. No matter how comic the wordplay of the Capulet servants may be, we should not forget that the sexual triangle they imagine is based on fantasized rape: “I will push Montague’s men from the wall and thrust his maids to the wall” ( 1.1.18 –19). Gregory and Sampson are not interested in the “heads” of the Montague maidens, which might imply awareness of them as individuals. They are interested only in their “maidenheads.” Their coarse view of woman as generic sexual object is reiterated in a wittier vein by Mercutio, who understands Romeo’s experience of awakened desire only as a question of the sexual availability of his mistress: “O Romeo, that she were, O, that she were / An open-arse, thou a pop’rin pear” ( 2.1.40 –41).
Feuding, then, is the form that male bonding takes in Verona, a bonding which seems linked to the derogation of woman. But Romeo, from the very opening of the play, is distanced both physically and emotionally from the feud, not appearing until the combatants and his parents are leaving the stage. His reaction to Benvolio’s news of the fight seems to indicate that he is aware of the mechanisms of desire that are present in the feud: “Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love” ( 1.1.180 ). But it also underscores his sense of alienation: “This love feel I, that feel no love in this” ( 187 ). He is alienated not only from the feud itself, one feels, but more importantly from the idea of sexuality that underlies it. Romeo subscribes to a different, indeed a competing view of woman—the idealizing view of the Petrarchan lover. In his melancholy, his desire for solitude, and his paradox-strewn language, Romeo identifies himself with the style of feeling and address that Renaissance culture named after the fourteenth-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca or Petrarch, most famous for his sonnets to Laura. By identifying his beloved as perfect and perfectly chaste, the Petrarchan lover opposes the indiscriminate erotic appetite of a Gregory or Sampson. He uses the frustrating experience of intense, unfulfilled, and usually unrequited passion to refine his modes of feeling and to enlarge his experience of self.
It is not coincidental, then, that Shakespeare uses the language and self-involved behaviors of the Petrarchan lover to dramatize Romeo’s experience of love. For Romeo as for Petrarch, love is the formation of an individualistic identity at odds with other kinds of identity: “I have lost myself. I am not here. / This is not Romeo. He’s some other where” ( 1.1.205 –6). Petrarchan desire for solitude explains Romeo’s absence from the opening clash and his lack of interest in the activities of his gang of friends, whom he accompanies only reluctantly to the Capulet feast: “I’ll be a candle holder and look on” ( 1.4.38 ). His physical isolation from his parents—with whom he exchanges no words in the course of the play—further suggests his shift from traditional, clan identity to the romantic individualism prefigured by Petrarch.
Shakespeare’s comic irony is that such enlargement of self is itself a mark of conventionality, since Petrarchism in European literature was by the late sixteenth century very widespread. A more cutting irony is that the Petrarchan lover and his sensual opponent (Sampson or Gregory) have more in common than is first apparent. The Petrarchan lover, in emphasizing the often paralyzing intensity of his passion, is less interested in praising the remote mistress who inspires such devotion than he is in displaying his own poetic virtuosity and his capacity for self-denial. Such a love—like Romeo’s for Rosaline—is founded upon frustration and requires rejection. The lover is interested in affirming the uniqueness of his beloved only in theory. On closer look, she too becomes a generic object and he more interested in self-display. Thus the play’s two languages of heterosexual desire—Petrarchan praise and anti-Petrarchan debasement—appear as opposite ends of a single continuum, as complementary discourses of woman, high and low. Even when Paris and old Capulet, discussing Juliet as prospective bride, vary the discourse to include a conception of woman as wife and mother, she remains an object of verbal and actual exchange.
In lyric poetry, the Petrarchan mistress remains a function of language alone, unheard, seen only as a collection of ideal parts, a center whose very absence promotes desire. Drama is a material medium, however. In drama, the Petrarchan mistress takes on embodiment and finds an answering voice, like Juliet’s gently noting her sonneteer-pilgrim’s conventionality: “You kiss by th’ book” ( 1.5.122 ). In drama, the mistress may come surrounded by relatives and an inconveniently insistent social milieu. As was noted above, Shakespeare distinguishes sharply between the social circumstances of adolescent males and females. Thus one consequence of setting the play’s domestic action solely within the Capulet household is to set Juliet, the “hopeful lady” of Capulet’s “earth” ( 1.2.15 ), firmly into a familial context which, thanks to the Nurse’s fondness for recollection and anecdote, is rich in domestic detail. Juliet’s intense focus upon Romeo’s surname—“What’s Montague? . . . O, be some other name” ( 2.2.43 , 44 )—is a projection onto her lover of her own conflicted sense of tribal loyalty. Unlike Romeo, whose deepest emotional ties are to his gang of friends, and unlike the more mobile daughters of Shakespearean comedy who often come in pairs, Juliet lives isolated and confined, emotionally as well as physically, by her status as daughter. Her own passage into sexual maturity comes first by way of parental invitation to “think of marriage now” ( 1.3.75 ). Her father invites Paris, the man who wishes to marry Juliet, to attend a banquet and feast his eyes on female beauty: “Hear all, all see, / And like her most whose merit most shall be” ( 1.2.30 –31). Juliet, in contrast, is invited to look only where her parents tell her:
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.
( 1.3.103 –5)
The logic of Juliet’s almost instant disobedience in looking at, and liking, Romeo (rather than Paris) can be understood as the ironic fulfillment of the fears in traditional patriarchal culture about the uncontrollability of female desire, the alleged tendency of the female gaze to wander. Petrarchism managed the vexed question of female desire largely by wishing it out of existence, describing the mistress as one who, like the invisible Rosaline of this play, “will not stay the siege of loving terms, / Nor bide th’ encounter of assailing eyes” ( 1.1.220 –21). Once Romeo, in the Capulet garden, overhears Juliet’s expression of desire, however, Juliet abandons the conventional denial of desire—“Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny / What I have spoke. But farewell compliment” ( 2.2.93 –94). She rejects the “strength” implied by parental sanction and the protection afforded by the Petrarchan celebration of chastity for a risk-taking experiment in desire that Shakespeare affirms by the beauty of the lovers’ language in their four scenes together. Juliet herself asks Romeo the serious questions that Elizabethan society wanted only fathers to ask. She challenges social prescriptions, designed to contain erotic desire in marriage, by taking responsibility for her own marriage:
If that thy bent of love be honorable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow,
By one that I’ll procure to come to thee,
Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite,
And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay
And follow thee my lord throughout the world.
( 2.2.150 –55)
The irony in her pledge—an irony perhaps most obvious to a modern, sexually egalitarian audience—is that Romeo here is following Juliet on an uncharted narrative path to sexual fulfillment in unsanctioned marriage. Allowing her husband access to a bedchamber in her father’s house, Juliet leads him into a sexual territory beyond the reach of dramatic representation. Breaking through the narrow oppositions of the play’s two discourses of woman—as either anonymous sexual object (for Sampson and Gregory) or beloved woman exalted beyond knowing or possessing (for Petrarch)—she affirms her imaginative commitment to the cultural significance of desire as an individualizing force:
Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match
Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.
Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle till strange love grow bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
( 3.2.10 –16)
Romeo, when he is not drawn by desire deeper and deeper into Capulet territory, wanders into the open square where the destinies of the play’s other young men—and in part his own too—are enacted. Because the young man’s deepest loyalty is to his friends, Romeo is not really asked to choose between Juliet and his family but between Juliet and Mercutio, who are opposed in the play’s thematic structure. Thus one function of Mercutio’s anti-Petrarchan skepticism about the idealization of woman is to offer resistance to the adult heterosexuality heralded by Romeo’s union with Juliet, resistance on behalf of the regressive pull of adolescent male bonding—being “one of the guys.” This distinction, as we have seen, is in part a question of speaking different discourses. Romeo easily picks up Mercutio’s banter, even its sly innuendo against women. Mercutio himself regards Romeo’s quickness at repartee as the hopeful sign of a return to a “normal” manly identity incompatible with his ridiculous role as lover:
Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo, now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature. For this driveling love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.
( 2.4.90 –95)
Implicit here is a central tenet of traditional misogyny that excessive desire for a woman is effeminizing. For Mercutio it is the effeminate lover in Romeo who refuses shamefully to answer Tybalt’s challenge: “O calm, dishonorable, vile submission!” he exclaims furiously ( 3.1.74 ). Mercutio’s death at Tybalt’s hands causes Romeo temporarily to agree, obeying the regressive emotional pull of grief and guilt over his own part in Mercutio’s defeat. “Why the devil came you between us?” Mercutio asks. “I was hurt under your arm” ( 3.1.106 –8). Why, we might ask instead, should Mercutio have insisted on answering a challenge addressed only to Romeo? Romeo, however, displaces blame onto Juliet: “Thy beauty hath made me effeminate / And in my temper softened valor’s steel” ( 3.1.119 –20).
In terms of narrative structure, the death of Mercutio and Romeo’s slaying of Tybalt interrupt the lovers’ progress from secret marriage to its consummation, suggesting the incompatibility between romantic individualism and adolescent male bonding. The audience experiences this incompatibility as a sudden movement from comedy to tragedy. Suddenly Friar Lawrence must abandon hopes of using the love of Capulet and Montague as a force for social reintegration. Instead, he must desperately stave off Juliet’s marriage to Paris, upon which her father insists, by making her counterfeit death and by subjecting her to entombment. The legal finality of consummated marriage—which was the basis for Friar Lawrence’s hopes “to turn your households’ rancor to pure love” ( 2.3.99 )—becomes the instrument of tragic design. It is only the Nurse who would allow Juliet to accept Paris as husband; we are asked to judge such a prospect so unthinkable that we then agree imaginatively to Friar Lawrence’s ghoulish device.
In terms of the play’s symbolic vocabulary, Juliet’s preparations to imitate death on the very bed where her sexual maturation from girl- to womanhood occurred confirms ironically her earlier premonition about Romeo: “If he be marrièd, / My grave is like to be my wedding bed” ( 1.5.148 –49). Her brief journey contrasts sharply with those of Shakespeare’s comic heroines who move out from the social confinement of daughterhood into a freer, less socially defined space (the woods outside Athens in A Midsummer Night’s Dream , the Forest of Arden in As You Like It ). There they can exercise a sanctioned, limited freedom in the romantic experimentation of courtship. Juliet is punished for such experimentation in part because hers is more radical; secret marriage symbolically is as irreversible as “real” death. Her journey thus becomes an internal journey in which her commitment to union with Romeo must face the imaginative challenge of complete, claustrophobic isolation and finally death in the Capulet tomb.
It is possible to see the lovers’ story, as some critics have done, as Shakespeare’s dramatic realization of the ruling metaphors of Petrarchan love poetry—particularly its fascination with “death-marked love” ( Prologue. 9 ). 3 But, in pondering the implications of Shakespeare’s moving his audience to identify with this narrative of initiative, desire, and power, we also do well to remember the psychosocial dynamics of drama. By heightening their powers of identification, drama gives the members of an audience an embodied image of the possible scope and form of their fears and desires. Here we have seen how tragic form operates to contain the complex play of desire/identification. The metaphors of Petrarchan idealization work as part of a complex, ambivalent discourse of woman whose ultimate social function is to encode the felt differences between men and women on which a dominant male power structure is based. Romeo and Juliet find a new discourse of romantic individualism in which Petrarchan idealization conjoins with the mutual avowal of sexual desire. But their union, as we have seen, imperils the traditional relations between males that is founded upon the exchange of women, whether the violent exchange Gregory and Sampson crudely imagine or the normative exchange planned by Capulet and Paris. Juliet, as the daughter whose erotic willfulness activates her father’s transformation from concerned to tyrannical parent, is the greater rebel. Thus the secret marriage in which this new language of feeling is contained cannot here be granted the sanction of a comic outcome. When Romeo and Juliet reunite, it is only to see each other, dead, in the dim confines of the Capulet crypt. In this play the autonomy of romantic individualism remains “star-crossed.”
Find out what’s on, read our latest stories, and learn how you can get involved.
Students will love creating a Romeo and Juliet storyboard to retell the classic story, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. They can also extend their learning by creating a storyboard for a Shakespeare scene and dive deep into character studies and literary elements, and begin to develop an understanding of the structure of a play . Check out our detailed lesson plan about Romeo and Juliet and activities below for inspiration. These detailed lesson plans and projects are aligned with all four ELA Common Core standards, and can be used as a Romeo and Juliet introduction, and during the entire book study. Storyboard That has provided a Romeo and Juliet storyboard template and a completed example for all activities to give students a starting point.
Inspire and engage students with the epic story by William Shakespeare with Storyboard That's Romeo and Juliet lesson plan. Romeo and Juliet is often the first Shakespeare play students are introduced to, and it's one that's constantly being retold. An introduction to Romeo and Juliet can occur in many ways as there are movies, graphic novels and shortened versions of the play available, making the classic tale accessible to all readers!
The tale of feuding families and star-crossed lovers, captivates audiences of all ages and prompts discussions about family, love and free will.
Please note this summary comprises the Romeo and Juliet full story and therefore contains spoilers !
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is about two star-crossed lovers from feuding families, who take their own lives. Through a series of unfortunate events, fate and chance turn against the lovers. Romeo, a Montague, and Juliet, a Capulet, meet at a party thrown by Juliet’s family. Romeo only attends because his friend says it will help Romeo get over a girl, Rosaline. Romeo had loved Rosaline, but she rejected him. When Romeo lays eyes on Juliet, he forgets he ever had other devotions. Later that evening, he sneaks to Juliet’s balcony and professes his love. Juliet, who has also fallen in love with Romeo, asks him to make a serious gesture, to prove his love. He asks her to marry him, and she agrees.
Using Friar Lawrence and Juliet’s Nurse as intermediaries, wedding plans commence. However, Tybalt, a Capulet, goes out in search for the Montagues who crashed the party. A duel ensues, and Romeo’s best friend, Mercutio, is killed, causing Romeo to slay Tybalt. The Prince of Verona had previously warned the quarrelers that if one more disturbance was made, those involved would be put to death. However, because Mercutio was the Prince’s kinsman, Romeo is exiled instead of killed.
Juliet finds out that Romeo has killed her cousin and is devastated, not by the loss of life, but over the banishment of her lover. They again devise a plan to be together, but an obstacle presents itself: Juliet’s father has arranged for her to marry Count Paris in two days time. Friar Lawrence convinces Juliet to take a sleeping potion to appear dead, and promises to send word to Romeo.
The plan is for Romeo to wake her in her tomb, and take her away with him. The plan begins as discussed, however, a dramatic irony unfolds: Romeo does not receive the letter intended for him about the Friar’s plan. Instead, he hears Juliet is dead and decides to enter her grave and take his own life. He goes to an apothecary and purchases poison. When he reaches the tomb, he encounters Paris, who is also there to mourn Juliet. Upset, Romeo kills Paris and enters the tomb, drinking the poison.
Moments later, Juliet awakes and finds Romeo dead. Distraught, she takes the dagger from his belt and stabs herself. In the end, Friar Lawrence confesses the story to the Capulets and Montagues. Knowing that their enmity was the reason for the senseless loss of lives, the two men agree to end their longstanding feud.
William Shakespeare is perhaps the most well-known playwright of all time. Born in April of 1564 in a small city in England, little is known about his childhood life. He had two older sisters and three younger brothers, and enjoyed learning about history and poetry in elementary school. When he was older, William married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children.
William was part of Lord Chamberlain’s Men, an acting company in England. He wrote plays and acted for the company, and his plays became very popular in the city. As he became more and more well-known, Shakespeare wrote more and more plays, averaging about a play and a half per year and totalling 37 plays in his lifetime!
Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of 52, but is still known as one of the most influential writers of the English language. His works are the most often quoted, second only to the Bible!
These questions may be used during reading, or upon completion of the play. While it is best to get students discussing what they’ve read, these questions can also be answered individually in a reader’s notebook. It is always such a joy to hear the different opinions that students have, even though they are reading the same information!
Storyboard That is an excellent tool for students to create fun and engaging projects as a culminating activity after finishing a novel or a play. In addition to our premade activities, here are some ideas that teachers can customize and assign to students to spark creativity in individual students, pairs, or small groups for a final project. Several of these ideas include Storyboard That templates that can be printed out or copied into your teacher dashboard and assigned digitally. All final projects can be printed out, presented as a slide show, or, for an extra challenge, as an animated gif!
Buy Romeo and Juliet on Amazon
Choose a character.
Select a character from Romeo and Juliet that you want to analyze. This could be Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Tybalt, or any other character that interests you.
Read and gather information about the chosen character from the play. Pay attention to their actions, dialogue, relationships, and how they contribute to the overall story.
Use Storyboard That's a biography poster template to create a character profile for the chosen character. Include details such as their background, personality traits, relationships, motivations, and key moments in the play.
Select key quotes from the play that highlight the character's traits, emotions, or important moments. Use the storyboard cells to illustrate the scenes or moments associated with each quote.
Analyze the character's development throughout the play. Consider their strengths, weaknesses, conflicts, and how they change or stay consistent. Use textual evidence from the play to support your analysis.
Reflect on the character's significance in the play and draw conclusions about their role in the story. Consider their impact on other characters, the themes of the play, and the overall message conveyed through their actions and decisions.
What are the main themes of romeo and juliet .
It is clear that the most important theme of this play is love. Some other themes that are evident throughout the story are family, conflict, and loyalty.
The main characters are Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet. They are in love teenagers from two feuding families. Other main characters in the story are Friar Laurence, the Nurse, Mercutio, and Tybalt.
When they realize they cannot live without each other, Romeo and Juliet decide to take poison and take their own lives. Romeo dies, but Juliet simply falls into a coma and eventually wakes up to see Romeo dead next to her. Juliet then stabs herself and dies.
Limited Time
30 Day Money Back Guarantee • New Customers Only • Full Price After Introductory Offer • Access is for 1 Calendar Year
Limited Time. New Customers Only
Purchase orders must be received by 9/6/24.
30 Day Money Back Guarantee. New Customers Only. Full Price After Introductory Offer. Access is for 1 Calendar Year
This is usually pretty quick :)
Email Sent to
Performances for Sam Gold's production begin Thursday, Sept. 26 at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York City
Dave Quinn is a Senior Editor for PEOPLE. He has been working at the brand since 2016, and is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book, Not All Diamonds and Rosé: The Inside Story of the Real Housewives from the People Who Lived It.
Emilio Madrid
Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor are that much closer to their Broadway debuts !
The two actors — she of the upcoming live action Snow White film and he, known for his role in Heartstopper — are starring in a new production of William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet . And on Monday, Aug. 12, the pair gathered together with the rest of the cast, creatives and production team for their first day of rehearsals in New York City.
Photos from the milestone meeting were released by producers on Wednesday, Aug. 21.
The day began with a meet and greet, followed by a design presentation led by director Sam Gold and scenic designer, dots.
Zegler, 23, and Connor, 20, were all smiles in the pictures, even posing together for one sweet shot.
The pictures also showed the two stars laughing as they stood together with company members and the musical's creative team, including choreographer Sonya Tayeh, who will be designing movement for the show, and Grammy Award winner Jack Antonoff , who will be penning original music used in the production.
Performances for Romeo + Juliet begin Thursday, Sept. 26 at the Circle in the Square Theatre, ahead of an official opening on Thursday, Oct. 24. The show is currently scheduled for a strictly limited 16-week engagement.
The Bard's 1597 classic follows the tragic romance of two Italian teens from feuding families. The play has been on Broadway in nearly 40 previous productions, including its most recent revival in 2013 that starred Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad .
It was also the inspiration for West Side Story , Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's award-winning musical that was most recently adapted into a 2021 Steven Spielberg film starring Zegler.
"The youth are f---ed," a logline for the new Broadway production reads. "Left to their own devices in their parents’ world of violent ends, an impulsive pair of star-crossed lovers hurtle towards their inescapable fate. The intoxicating high of passion quickly descends into a brutal chaos that can only end one way."
Just this week, Vogue published an interview with Zegler and Connor in which he admitted to being "bloody nervous" to take on the role, but excited for the challenge it presented.
"I’m so thrilled to get to go back to my roots and the thing that I love so much," Zegler told the outlet, adding "I can’t believe this is my life."
Both explained that they came to Romeo + Juliet for different reasons — Connor signing on because he was "craving Shakespeare" and Zegler jumping at the chance to work with Gold. The two stars didn't really know one another until they were cast, but have been bonding already.
“Imagine if we didn’t get along?” Zegler joked.
Joining Zegler and Connor in Romeo + Juliet are Gabby Beans as Mercutio/The Friar, Tommy Dorfman as The Nurse/Tybalt, Nihar Duvvuri as Balthazar, Sola Fadiran as Capulet/Lady Capulet, Daniel Bravo Hernández as Abraham, Taheen Modak as Benvolio, Jasai Chase Owens as Gregory and Gían Pérez as Samson/Paris/Peter.
Understudies Missy Malek, Timothy Oh, Susannah Perkins and Daniel Velez round out the cast.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
And while all looked happy at that first rehearsal, the tragedy of Romeo + Juliet looms. In her conversation with Vogue , Zegler even said she's hopeful the play's divisiveness — which hits extra hard in today's political landscape — will be something audiences explore after leaving the theater.
“That’s what we do as artists and actors: We hold a mirror up to the world, and what they do based on that examination is up to them,” Zegler said. "I think Sam has really taken that to heart: What world are we leaving behind for future generations?"
"The youth are f---ed if the older generation doesn’t do anything about it," she continues. "And so you hope that it serves more as a warning than as a declaration.”
Tickets for Romeo + Juliet are on sale now.
News on your favorite shows, specials & more! |
News on your favorite shows, specials & more! |
ROMEO + JULIET begins performances Thursday, September 26, 2024.
IMAGES
COMMENTS
Here are 10 activities for teaching Romeo and Juliet. 1. Relatable Bell Ringers. If you're going to focus on a Shakespeare play, you must go all in. Immersing students into a unit from start to finish is such a perfect way to help students understand a topic in-depth. Start off each class with these Shakespeare Bell Ringers.
500+ Words Essay on Romeo And Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love tragedy written by William Shakespeare. This is a story of love and fate. Furthermore, the basis of this tragic love story is the Old Italian tale translated into English in the sixteenth century. The story is about two young star-crossed lovers whose death results ...
Full Title: Romeo and Juliet. When Written: Likely 1591-1595. Where Written: London, England. When Published: "Bad quarto" (incomplete manuscript) printed in 1597; Second, more complete quarto printed in 1599; First folio, with clarifications and corrections, printed in 1623. Literary Period: Renaissance.
Romeo goes to see a churchman, Friar Laurence, who agrees to marry Romeo and Juliet. After the wedding, the feud between the two families becomes violent again: Tybalt kills Mercutio in a fight, and Romeo kills Tybalt in retaliation. The Prince banishes Romeo from Verona for his crime. Juliet is told by her father that she will marry Paris, so ...
Overview. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love.It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud. In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers' final union in death seems almost inevitable.
Juliet eagerly awaits Romeo, but Nurse tells her of Tybalts death Act 3 Scene 3 Friar Lawrence tries to console Romeo and sort out a solution Act 3 Scene 4 Juliets father makes plan for Paris to marry Juliet Act 3 Scene 5 Romeo and Juliet spend the night together; Romeo leaves; Lady Capulet brings news of Juliets marriage to Paris Act 4 Scene 1
Romeo & Juliet Act V Group Assignments. Romeo & Juliet Scene Summary Charts. After each group presented their scene, I would give the rest of the class time to summarize the scene on a graphic organizer. The kids who presented the scene had to field any questions from their classmates about plot points that their classmates were confused about.
Romeo and Juliet Unit Plan. The unifying elements of this Romeo and Juliet unit plan are the Interactive Notes and Acting Troupe Drama Activities. They're incorporated through the entire unit plan for Romeo and Juliet, ensuring that your students not only understand Shakespeare's language but also bring it to life.The interactive notes help students decipher the text and encourage critical ...
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed.Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.. Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of ...
4. Learn about the characters using body biographies. These body biographies by Danielle Knight of Study All Knight are another great lesson for Romeo and Juliet. In the activity, students analyze characters from the play in an engaging way. In completing the projects, students have to: find direct quotes.
Rather Romeo and Juliet's love is a social problem, unresolvable except by their deaths, because they dare to marry secretly in an age when legal, consummated marriage was irreversible. Secret marriage is the narrative device by which Shakespeare brings into conflict the new privilege claimed by individual desire and the traditional authority ...
Script/Presentation Assignment Act 2 ends with Juliet arriving at Friar Lawrence's cell and all gathering for the wedding ceremony. Act 3 begins after the ceremony has taken place, with Mercutio and Benvolio walking ... Designate who will play Romeo, Juliet, Friar Lawrence, and the Nurse - Assign Roles. 2. Sitting amongst each other, have ...
Students will love creating a Romeo and Juliet storyboard to retell the classic story, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. They can also extend their learning by creating a storyboard for a Shakespeare scene and dive deep into character studies and literary elements, and begin to develop an understanding of the structure of a play.Check out our detailed lesson plan about Romeo and Juliet ...
Romeo and Juliet — Alternative Endings. During this lesson, students will finish reading the play, Romeo and Juliet. Students will compare the ending to the ending in the modern movie of Romeo and Juliet (Leonardo Dicaprio and Claire Danes). The students' creativity will be tested when they have to brainstorm alternative endings to the play.
Highlight details that help you understand Romeo's character. Benvolio: This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves; Supper is done, and we shall come too late. Romeo: I fear too early; for my mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels, and expire the term Of a despised life clos'd in my breast By some vile forfeit ...
Romeo: Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. Let's see for means: O mischief! thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men. I do remember an apothecary, And hereabouts he dwells, which late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples; meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones: And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator ...
Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor are starring in a new production of William Shakespeare's 'Romeo + Juliet' set to premiere on Broadway next month. And on Monday, Aug. 12, the pair gathered together ...
Get a first look at rehearsal photos of ROMEO + JULIET on Broadway below! Led by Kit Connor + Rachel Zegler, the cast, creatives, production team, and producers all gathered for a Meet & Greet ...
It's a Sunday afternoon in springtime London, and Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor are standing on a park bench in Primrose Hill. They raise their hands to their mouths in unison, and as the photographer calls, one, two, three, they scream into the void. Over the next few hours, not even the whipping winds of a blustery, overcast day can deter them from giving the camera their all.