assignment on romeo and juliet

10 Activities for Teaching Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is one of those classic pieces of literature I think everyone has read. Even students who haven’t read the Shakespeare play have probably heard of the story or will relate to the plot as it has been retold in various films and literature. If you need some fresh ideas before you start this unit, read on. 

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 . Each one includes a famous Shakespearean quote and a quick writing prompt. Students will explore various writing styles based on the quote.

2. Character Focus

Help your students identify and organize characters with these graphic organizers . This resource has two sets for almost every character in the play. Students will identify characters as round or flat, static or dynamic, and other basic qualities. This will also require them to provide textual evidence. The second organizer focuses on tracing emotions and motivations throughout the play. It’s a creative way for students to organize the play’s characters and is also a great resource for ESL students and struggling readers. 

3. Get Interactive

I can remember interactive notebooks becoming all the rage. And while the paper notebooks are creative, a motivator for some students, and it’s generally pretty easy to put an interactive spin on old ideas already at hand. Having a digital version is just one more layer to add something unique to the interactive notebook. My digital notebook resource can work as its own unit and includes analysis activities covering characters, symbols, major events, writing tasks, and response questions. Digital notebooks are great for classrooms trying to limit paper use, use more technology, prepare students for tech demands, and for any classes that need to work with mobile options.

4. Engaging Writing Tasks

Help students understand and analyze the play by giving them unique writing assignments. Have students explore different writing styles, analyze universal themes, and study character development. My Writing Tasks resource does all this and more. Each act has its own unique writing assignment, and I’ve included brainstorming organizers for each. You’ll be able to use this with differentiated instruction, and there are several additional resources and organizers included. 

5. Read “Cloze”ly

Prep passages for students to summarize to help them understand events from the play. This is an ideal activity for review, comprehension, or even assessment. Cloze reading is an ideal way to help students understand what is happening. Cut your prep time down by using this resource, with 6 passages ready to use AND written in modern-day English. Use as an individual assignment or collaborative activity. 

6. Use Office Supplies

Increase student engagement with hands-on activities using sticky notes. You can use various colors to coordinate different aspects of study (literary elements, major events, character development, etc). It’s an easy and quick way for students to organize thoughts and notes, and the bits of information can be manipulated and moved around for different assignments. Students can gather relevant information for various essays, or can organize their sticky notes in a way that makes sense to them (by topic, or chronologically, as an example). Check out my Sticky Note Literary Analysis activity that includes 12 sticky note organizers. 

7. Make Use of Bookmarks

There are many creative avenues when it comes to bookmarks. Have an activity where students pick a favorite quote, draw a scene, or draw what they know about the play prior to reading (they can use the back to draw after reading the play). Consider a foldable version like this one where you can jam-pack a variety of questions, vocabulary, literary analysis and more. These are foldable, interactive, fun, engaging – and it saves you time passing out one activity to be used throughout the play. 

8. Plan an Escape 

Escape rooms live up to the hype. Challenge your students with a fun and engaging review escape challenge. Have students work together in groups to complete collaboratively and spark authentic discussion. This escape room activity includes 40 timeline events to sort from the play correctly.

9. Don’t Forget Vocabulary

Vocabulary is an important aspect of understanding any work, but Shakespeare is on a whole other level. In addition to reading an older version of English in poetic form, students must grasp key vocabulary to understand the play more deeply. Engage your students with hands-on activities to learn vocabulary, whether that be through graphic organizers, visual dictionaries, or word puzzles. Check out my ready-to-print vocabulary packet that includes word lists, puzzles, organizers and quizzes for the entire play. 

10. Practice Annotations

Start at the very beginning with an engaging activity for the prologue. This will allow students to explore the Shakespearean language and the set-up to the drama that is Romeo and Juliet’s tragedy. Using this resource , students will read and annotate the prologue, be introduced to Elizabethan English, and have context and background information before reading the play. Students then will rewrite the prologue in modern-day English following the same sonnet form. I love having students explore language, and this activity fits perfectly into the unit. 

If you’re starting fresh with activities to fill a unit, or you’re looking to refresh your tried-and-true activities, check out my 5-week unit plan for Romeo and Juliet here . It’s full of goodies including a pacing guide, pre-reading activities, bookmarks, vocabulary, passages, writing tasks, essays, review activities, and more. 

Put a new spin on the classic tragedy by refreshing your activities and finding new ways to present to students. Just a few simple updates and changes can keep students engaged and help them relate to the material. I love seeing what others do in their classrooms, so please share your favorite ideas in the comments below. 

Is Teaching Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Still Revelant?

In an earlier blog post , I discuss if teaching Shakespeare is still relevant.

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Romeo and Juliet

William shakespeare.

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Romeo and Juliet: Introduction

Romeo and juliet: plot summary, romeo and juliet: detailed summary & analysis, romeo and juliet: themes, romeo and juliet: quotes, romeo and juliet: characters, romeo and juliet: symbols, romeo and juliet: literary devices, romeo and juliet: quizzes, romeo and juliet: theme wheel, brief biography of william shakespeare.

Historical Context of Romeo and Juliet

Other books related to romeo and juliet.

• 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
• Genre: Tragic play
• Setting: Verona, Italy
• Climax: Mistakenly believing that Juliet is dead, Romeo kills himself on her funeral bier by drinking poison. Juliet wakes up, finds Romeo dead, and fatally stabs herself with his dagger.
• Antagonist: Capulet, Lady Capulet, Montague, Lady Montague, Tybalt

Extra Credit for Romeo and Juliet

Tourist Trap. Casa di Giulietta, a 12-century villa in Verona, is located just off the Via Capello (the possible origin of the anglicized surname “Capulet”) and has become a major tourist attraction over the years because of its distinctive balcony. The house, purchased by the city of Verona in 1905 from private holdings, has been transformed into a kind of museum dedicated to the history of Romeo and Juliet , where tourists can view set pieces from some of the major film adaptations of the play and even leave letters to their loved ones. Never mind that “the balcony scene,” one of the most famous scenes in English literature, may never have existed—the word “balcony” never appears in the play, and balconies were not an architectural feature of Shakespeare’s England—tourists flock from all over to glimpse Juliet’s famous veranda.

Love Language. While much of Shakespeare’s later work is written in a combination of verse and prose (used mostly to offer distinction between social classes, with nobility speaking in verse and commoners speaking in prose), Romeo and Juliet is notable for its heady blend of poetic forms. The play’s prologue is written in the form of a sonnet, while most of the dialogue adheres strictly to the rhythm of iambic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet alter their cadences when speaking to each another, using more casual, naturalistic speech. When they talk about other potential lovers, such as Rosaline and Paris, their speech is much more formal (to reflect the emotional falsity of those dalliances.) Friar Laurence speaks largely in sermons and aphorisms, while the nurse speaks in blank verse.

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A Summary and Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Although it was first performed in the 1590s, the first  documented  performance of Romeo and Juliet is from 1662. The diarist Samuel Pepys was in the audience, and recorded that he ‘saw “Romeo and Juliet,” the first time it was ever acted; but it is a play of itself the worst that ever I heard in my life, and the worst acted that ever I saw these people do.’

Despite Pepys’ dislike, the play is one of Shakespeare’s best-loved and most famous, and the story of Romeo and Juliet is well known. However, the play has become so embedded in the popular psyche that Shakespeare’s considerably more complex play has been reduced to a few key aspects: ‘star-cross’d lovers’, a teenage love story, and the suicide of the two protagonists.

In the summary and analysis that follow, we realise that Romeo and Juliet is much more than a tragic love story.

Romeo and Juliet : brief summary

After the Prologue has set the scene – we have two feuding households, Montagues and Capulets, in the city-state of Verona; and young Romeo is a Montague while Juliet, with whom Romeo is destined to fall in love, is from the Capulet family, sworn enemies of the Montagues – the play proper begins with servants of the two feuding households taunting each other in the street.

When Benvolio, a member of house Montague, arrives and clashes with Tybalt of house Capulet, a scuffle breaks out, and it is only when Capulet himself and his wife, Lady Capulet, appear that the fighting stops. Old Montague and his wife then show up, and the Prince of Verona, Escalus, arrives and chastises the people for fighting. Everyone leaves except Old Montague, his wife, and Benvolio, Montague’s nephew. Benvolio tells them that Romeo has locked himself away, but he doesn’t know why.

Romeo appears and Benvolio asks his cousin what is wrong, and Romeo starts speaking in paradoxes, a sure sign that he’s in love. He claims he loves Rosaline, but will not return any man’s love. A servant appears with a note, and Romeo and Benvolio learn that the Capulets are holding a masked ball.

Benvolio tells Romeo he should attend, even though he is a Montague, as he will find more beautiful women than Rosaline to fall in love with. Meanwhile, Lady Capulet asks her daughter Juliet whether she has given any thought to marriage, and tells Juliet that a man named Paris would make an excellent husband for her.

Romeo attends the Capulets’ masked ball, with his friend Mercutio. Mercutio tells Romeo about a fairy named Queen Mab who enters young men’s minds as they dream, and makes them dream of love and romance. At the masked ball, Romeo spies Juliet and instantly falls in love with her; she also falls for him.

They kiss, but then Tybalt, Juliet’s kinsman, spots Romeo and recognising him as a Montague, plans to confront him. Old Capulet tells him not to do so, and Tybalt reluctantly agrees. When Juliet enquires after who Romeo is, she is distraught to learn that he is a Montague and thus a member of the family that is her family’s sworn enemies.

Romeo breaks into the gardens of Juliet’s parents’ house and speaks to her at her bedroom window. The two of them pledge their love for each other, and arrange to be secretly married the following night. 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 Juliet goes to seek Friar Laurence’s help in getting out of it. He tells her to take a sleeping potion which will make her appear to be dead for two nights; she will be laid to rest in the family vault, and Romeo (who will be informed of the plan) can secretly come to her there.

However, although that part of the plan goes fine, the message to Romeo doesn’t arrive; instead, he hears that Juliet has actually died. He secretly visits her at the family vault, but his grieving is interrupted by the arrival of Paris, who is there to lay flowers. The two of them fight, and Romeo kills him.

Convinced that Juliet is really dead, Romeo drinks poison in order to join Juliet in death. Juliet wakes from her slumber induced by the sleeping draught to find Romeo dead at her side. She stabs herself.

The play ends with Friar Laurence telling the story to the two feuding families. The Prince tells them to put their rivalry behind them and live in peace.

Romeo and Juliet : analysis

How should we analyse Romeo and Juliet , one of Shakespeare’s most famous and frequently studied, performed, and adapted plays? Is Romeo and Juliet the great love story that it’s often interpreted as, and what does it say about the play – if it is a celebration of young love – that it ends with the deaths of both romantic leads?

It’s worth bearing in mind that Romeo and Juliet do not kill themselves specifically because they are forbidden to be together, but rather because a chain of events (of which their families’ ongoing feud with each other is but one) and a message that never arrives lead to a misunderstanding which results in their suicides.

Romeo and Juliet is often read as both a tragedy and a great celebration of romantic love, but it clearly throws out some difficult questions about the nature of love, questions which are rendered even more pressing when we consider the headlong nature of the play’s action and the fact that Romeo and Juliet meet, marry, and die all within the space of a few days.

Below, we offer some notes towards an analysis of this classic Shakespeare play and explore some of the play’s most salient themes.

It’s worth starting with a consideration of just what Shakespeare did with his source material. Interestingly, two families known as the Montagues and Capulets appear to have actually existed in medieval Italy: the first reference to ‘Montagues and Capulets’ is, curiously, in the poetry of Dante (1265-1321), not Shakespeare.

In Dante’s early fourteenth-century epic poem, the  Divine Comedy , he makes reference to two warring Italian families: ‘Come and see, you who are negligent, / Montagues and Capulets, Monaldi and Filippeschi / One lot already grieving, the other in fear’ ( Purgatorio , canto VI). Precisely why the families are in a feud with one another is never revealed in Shakespeare’s play, so we are encouraged to take this at face value.

The play’s most famous line references the feud between the two families, which means Romeo and Juliet cannot be together. And the line, when we stop and consider it, is more than a little baffling. The line is spoken by Juliet: ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’ Of course, ‘wherefore’ doesn’t mean ‘where’ – it means ‘why’.

But that doesn’t exactly clear up the whys and the wherefores. The question still doesn’t appear to make any sense: Romeo’s problem isn’t his first name, but his family name, Montague. Surely, since she fancies him, Juliet is quite pleased with ‘Romeo’ as he is – it’s his family that are the problem. Solutions  have been proposed to this conundrum , but none is completely satisfying.

There are a number of notable things Shakespeare did with his source material. The Italian story ‘Mariotto and Gianozza’, printed in 1476, contained many of the plot elements of Shakespeare’s  Romeo and Juliet . Shakespeare’s source for the play’s story was Arthur Brooke’s  The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet  (1562), an English verse translation of this Italian tale.

The moral of Brooke’s tale is that young love ends in disaster for their elders, and is best reined in; Shakespeare changed that. In Romeo and Juliet , the headlong passion and excitement of young love is celebrated, even though confusion leads to the deaths of the young lovers. But through their deaths, and the example their love set for their parents, the two families vow to be reconciled to each other.

Shakespeare also makes Juliet a thirteen-year-old girl in his play, which is odd for a number of reasons. We know that  Romeo and Juliet  is about young love – the ‘pair of star-cross’d lovers’, who belong to rival families in Verona – but what is odd about Shakespeare’s play is how young he makes Juliet.

In Brooke’s verse rendition of the story, Juliet is sixteen. But when Shakespeare dramatised the story, he made Juliet several years younger, with Romeo’s age unspecified. As Lady Capulet reveals, Juliet is ‘not [yet] fourteen’, and this point is made to us several times, as if Shakespeare wishes to draw attention to it and make sure we don’t forget it.

This makes sense in so far as Juliet represents young love, but what makes it unsettling – particularly for modern audiences – is the fact that this makes Juliet a girl of thirteen when she enjoys her night of wedded bliss with Romeo. As John Sutherland puts it in his (and Cedric Watts’) engaging  Oxford World’s Classics: Henry V, War Criminal?: and Other Shakespeare Puzzles , ‘In a contemporary court of law [Romeo] would receive a longer sentence for what he does to Juliet than for what he does to Tybalt.’

There appears to be no satisfactory answer to this question, but one possible explanation lies in one of the play’s recurring themes: bawdiness and sexual familiarity. Perhaps surprisingly given the youthfulness of its tragic heroine, Romeo and Juliet is shot through with bawdy jokes, double entendres, and allusions to sex, made by a number of the characters.

These references to physical love serve to make Juliet’s innocence, and subsequent passionate romance with Romeo, even more noticeable: the journey both Romeo and Juliet undertake is one from innocence (Romeo pointlessly and naively pursuing Rosaline; Juliet unversed in the ways of love) to experience.

In the last analysis, Romeo and Juliet is a classic depiction of forbidden love, but it is also far more sexually aware, more ‘adult’, than many people realise.

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4 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet”

Modern reading of the play’s opening dialogue among the brawlers fails to parse the ribaldry. Sex scares the bejeepers out of us. Why? Confer “R&J.”

It’s all that damn padre’s fault!

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The Practical English Teacher

Free Resources for Secondary English Teachers

• Jul 11, 2022

Free Resources for Romeo & Juliet

Updated: Jul 27, 2022

I have always been very lucky to work with smart and caring coworkers. On this blog, I only share materials that I created individually, so I don't have a ton of my own materials to share for Romeo & Juliet. This is because when I taught Romeo & Juliet , my best lessons came from my coworkers and the book Shakespeare Set Free. If you are teaching Romeo & Juliet for the first time, drop everything and go buy this book. Someone who had taught in my classroom before me had left it on the bookshelf, and I opened it in a planning panic. Besides my coworkers (both of whom had theater experience), this book was the most helpful in helping me enact active and fun lessons during my Romeo & Juliet unit.

SO, what this all means is that I cannot share my whole Romeo & Juliet unit, but below are some activities that I created that may be helpful to you.

Pre-Reading Activities for Romeo & Juliet

Action Ranking-Rank actions based on how serious of an offense they are

Agree/Disagree Discussion (You can also turn this into a more active activity by having kids move to one side of the room or other other based on whether they "agree" or "disagree" with the statement)

Character Cut-Outs (paid product) : Introduce the plot of Romeo & Juliet and the main characters by having students complete this "Character Cut-Out Activity." Basically, students cut representations of each character out of old magazines to help them start learning the characters. The TpT product has a PowerPoint and graphic organizers to walk you through the activity.

Romeo & Juliet Reader's Theater

One of the main pieces of feedback from my coworkers was to have the kids act out Romeo & Juliet using Reader's Theater. I was not comfortable with this at all at first since I have no theater background, but eventually, even I figured it out. Also, there are a million variations on Reader's Theater (ie: changing the scene and language, etc.), but I have stuck with the basics.

The handouts below are from a few years of trial & error. One page is directions for the kids on how to do Reader's Theater and the other pages are charts that show how I divided up Romeo & Juliet and assigned the scenes to kids. Overall, when we started an act, I would give the kids an overview of the act and then assign them a scene. Sometimes, some scenes were very long and some scenes were very short, so I would divide up the scenes as needed to try and give each group and equal amount of work. Then, students had to get into their groups and create the script for their scene, and lastly, they would have to present their assigned scene to the class. There is a rubric that you can use as a starting point for grading. You may want to add more detail to it, depending on your grading preferences. The charts below still have my student names on them so that you can see how I assigned kids; you just need to delete my kids and add yours and then you'll be good to go.

Basic Acting Techniques PowerPoint

Reader's Theater Directions

Reader's Theater Rubric

Romeo & Juliet Act II Group Assignments (I started with Act 2 for Reader's Theater because we read Act I together as a class to get used to the language. The page numbers were from the textbooks we had that-Holt Elements of Literature )

Romeo & Juliet Act III Group Assignments

Romeo & Juliet Act IV Group Assignments

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. I always warned the presenters that if their classmates had no clue what happened in their scene, then they did not do a good job bringing the scene to life in their presentation. The q & a was also a good time for me to gauge who in the presentation group did all the work, as the kid who stepped up to answer the questions was typically the only one who understood what was going on, overall.

Act I Summary Chart

Act II Summary Chart

Act III Summary Chart

Act IV Summary Chart

Act V Summary Chart

Romeo & Juliet Handouts & Activities

Understanding Syntax

Act 1 Questions

Small Review Activities for the Balcony Scene (paid product)

Close Reading of Friar Lawrence's Soliloquy (Act 2, Scene 3)

Romeo & Juliet Character Review

Romeo & Juliet Act II Quiz

Written Conversations: For this activity, put students into groups of four and give each of them a different "question." This makes it so that when students pass their papers, they are discussing different questions all at once. Give the everyone 5-10 minutes to respond to their given question, and then have students pass their paper clockwise. The next student has to respond to the ideas of the first student. Repeat this one more time, and then have the students pass the "conversations" back to the original owner.

Literary Terms w. Examples from Romeo & Juliet

Intro to Puns

Romeo & Juliet Literary Terms PowerPoint

Romeo and Juliet Multiple Choice Unit Test (no answer key)- The formatting is all crazy and I don't know where the answer key is, but the questions are good. Mix of plot and analysis.

Other Books That Connect to Romeo & Juliet

There are so many great books that you can use in place of Romeo & Juliet OR as an extension of your Romeo & Juliet studies. Below are some of my current favorites.

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.

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13 easy, engaging lessons for Romeo and Juliet

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.

Pre-reading lessons

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.

2. Watch a video about Shakespeare and his plays

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.

While reading lessons

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.

1. Romeo and Juliet Crash Course Literature videos

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.

2. Romeo and Juliet Text Messaging Activity

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.

3. Read some comics

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.

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
• analyze how the character has changed (or stayed the same)
• explore the characters’ inner thoughts/feelings
• analyze the characters’ values and beliefs
• explore the characters’ strengths/weaknesses
• identify the characters’ goal/s in the play
• describe what the character/s look like
• choose the characters’ best accomplishment/s
• identify symbols
• and describe the characters’ background, family, personality, and conflict

5. Using Romeo and Juliet to learn how to integrate quotes and paraphrasing in literary analysis

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:

• a scaffolded introduction with examples of how to integrate quotes
• independent practice with rubrics
• suggested answers
• an editable homework task and quiz
• bellringers for the play

6. Romeo and Juliet photo booth printable props

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.

After reading lessons

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.

1. Digital escape room review

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:

• the plot of the play
• the main characters in the play
• language and technique analysis
• close reading of Romeo’s soliloquy in the tomb

2. Escape room review for Romeo and Juliet

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:

• figurative language
• plus, it can be increased in difficulty using ‘You’ve been poisoned’ cards

Romeo and Juliet movie lesson plans

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.

Romeo and Juliet entire unit lesson plans

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.

1. Laura Randazzo’s Romeo and Juliet unit lesson plans

This five-week Romeo and Juliet unit of lesson plans contains the following:

• a calendar with suggested pacing and activities
• scene-by-scene study questions in both PDF and Google Drive versions
• life in Elizabethan England team speech activity including many topics and a rubric
• a lecture and craft activity about Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
• a Shakespearean comedy presentation about puns and oxymorons
• a presentation about the power of tone and line delivery with interactive activities for 27 students
• Shakespearean sonnet lecture and creative writing activity
• one-question quizzes to hold students accountable for reading
• Shakespearean slam contest
• art assignment to illustrate Mercutio’s Act 1, Scene 4 monologue
• an Act 2 prologue activity
• plot timeline to review play’s chronology
• quote review challenge
• 50-question exam using matching, true/false and quote identification
• in-class end-of-unit essay prompts

2. The Daring English Teacher’s Romeo and Juliet Teaching Bundle

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.

Want more English lesson and resource ideas?

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:

• 12 excellent teaching resources for Macbeth – make Macbeth easy
• Teaching Lord of the Flies: 12 awesome activities & wonderful worksheets
• How to improve research skills when you have NO time
• 5 awesome free resources to teach Shakespeare
• Fun, engaging, and easy Shakespearean insults lesson you have to try
• 9 quick and easy study skills lesson plans for high school

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A Modern Perspective: Romeo and Juliet

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.”

• The story of these massive shifts in European sensibility is told in a five-volume study titled A History of Private Life , gen. eds. Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987–91). The study covers over three millennia in the history of western Europe. For the period most relevant to Romeo and Juliet, see vol. 3, Passions of the Renaissance (1989), ed. Roger Chartier, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, pp. 399–607.
• The best extended discussion of the dynamic of the feud is Coppélia Kahn, Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 83ff.
• Nicholas Brooke, Shakespeare’s Early Tragedies (London: Methuen, 1968), pp. 82ff.

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The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

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.

Student Activities for Romeo and Juliet

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.

Essential Questions for Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

• What is love?
• Would you go against all your friends and family to follow your heart?
• Are our actions determined by fate, by chance, or by our free will?
• What are some lessons that we can learn from Romeo and Juliet in today’s world?

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet Summary

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.

About the Author

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!

Discussion Questions to Use in Pairs or Groups

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!

• The Montague and the Capulet families have been feuding for years, yet the audience does not know why. Discuss with your group some possible reasons why they may be fighting for so long. Why do you think Shakespeare chose not to include this information in the play?
• When Juliet refuses to marry Paris, she goes against her parents’ wishes. Would you have done the same thing? Is it okay for her parents to try to force her to do something she didn’t want to do?
• Romeo is very different from the other male characters in the play. In what ways is he different? Be sure to be specific, citing which character and how they are different.
• Was the love between Romeo and Juliet actually real, or were they just infatuated with each other? Be sure to give examples from the text to support your answer.
• What roles do the Nurse and the Friar play in the relationship between Romeo and Juliet? What roles do they play in the deaths of the two teenagers? Should they be punished? Be sure to explain your reasoning using text evidence.
• Who, if anyone, do you think should be punished for Romeo's and Juliet's deaths? Why?
• Who is your favorite character in this play? Do you relate to this person? Why did you choose this person? Be sure to give examples from the text to support your answers.
• Romeo and Juliet is a tragic love story that is very commonly taught during the high school years in school. Why do you think this is? How can teenagers relate to their story, even though it was written hundreds of years ago?
• Shakespeare wrote all kinds of plays, and chose to write Romeo and Juliet as a tragedy. Explain why it is a tragedy, aside from the obvious reason! What could the families have done different to change the fate of the young lovers?
• Think about the books, television shows, and movies that are popular today. Are any of these stories similar to what happened to Romeo and Juliet? Compare and contrast with your group, using examples from the play.

Romeo and Juliet Project Ideas and Romeo and Juliet Activities

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!

• For Groups: Choose a scene from the play to reenact it to the class. Use the traditional storyboard layout to plan out your scenes. You can add text to your storyboards, or simply use the cells to visualize each scene of your play.
• Using the timeline layout, retell the play in chronological order. Our timeline layout gives you the options to include year, month, day, and even hour! You may also choose to omit these altogether.
• Choose a setting from the story and create a map of the setting using the small poster or worksheet layout. Use free form or other text boxes to include a key or label the different parts of the map.
• Using one of Storyboard That’s board game templates , create a game based on the play for your classmates to play!
• For Groups: Divide the scenes of the play amongst your group members. Each member of the group creates a storyboard for their assigned scene. This can be done as a collaborative project, or separately for longer plays and novels.
• Using the worksheet layout and Storyboard That’s worksheet assets, create a test or a quiz for other students in the class. You can create all kinds of questions such as multiple choice, short answer, and even matching! When you are done, be sure to make an answer key.
• Using one of Storyboard That’s biography poster templates, create a poster about the character of your choice. Be sure to include important biographical features such as: place and date of birth, family life, accomplishments, etc.
• Choose a scene from the play and create a storyboard that shows that scene from another character’s point of view. For an extra challenge, use the T-chart layout to compare the original point of view with another character’s point of view!
• Create a book jacket of the play using one of Storyboard That’s book jacket templates. Use Storyboard That art to create the cover, and write a summary of the story on the back, just like real books have!
• Using one of Storyboard That’s social media templates as a starting point, create a social media page for one or more of the characters in the play. Be sure to think how the character thinks while creating this page.
• Create a scrapbook page made by one of the characters in the play. Storyboard That has lots of premade templates that you can use as is, or change to fit your character’s personality! Check out our scrapbook templates today!

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Other Plays Written by William Shakespeare

• All’s Well That Ends Well
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• As You Like It
• Love’s Labour’s Lost
• Much Ado About Nothing
• The Taming of the Shrew
• The Tempest
• The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra
• The Tragedy of Hamlet
• The Tragedy of Julius Caesar
• The Tragedy of Macbeth
• The Tragedy of Othello
• The Tragedy of Richard III
• Twelfth Night

How to Analyze Characters in Romeo and Juliet with Storyboard That

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.

Gather Information

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.

Create a Character Profile

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.

Identify Key Quotes

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

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 and Draw Conclusions

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.

Frequently Asked Questions about Romeo and Juliet

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.

Who are the main characters in Romeo and Juliet ?

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.

How did Romeo and Juliet die?

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.

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Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor Kick Off Rehearsals for Broadway's Romeo + Juliet — See the Pics from Their First Day

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.

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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.

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Photos: Rachel Zegler, Kit Connor & More in ROMEO + JULIET Rehearsals

ROMEO + JULIET begins performances Thursday, September 26, 2024.

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, followed by a design presentation led by director Sam Gold and scenic designer dots.     With original music by Jack Antonoff and movement by Sonya Tayeh, ROMEO + JULIET begins performances Thursday, September 26, 2024 and officially opens Thursday, October 24, 2024 at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre for a strictly limited, 16-week engagement.  Photo credit: Emilio Madrid Recommended For You Find anything you save across the site in your account Rachel Zegler And Kit Connor Are Set To Star In A Romeo And Juliet Unlike Any Before It 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. Eventually, though, a different kind of reality sets in: it’s 12 degrees, and once Zegler’s pink satin skirt has been fluffed for the final time, she’s bundled into a puffer jacket with a hot water bottle and sent to her trailer. That’s where I find them – Zegler with a silk scarf covering her hair, Connor’s cheeks turned ruddy by the weather – leaning on a sofa, teasing each other. “Are you memorised?” Zegler asks. “I’m pretty much off-book,” Connor replies with a grin, and the pair high-five. “Are you nervous, though?” “Oh, yeah,” Connor says. “I’m bloody nervous.” In September, Connor and Zegler will be making their Broadway debuts in a bold new production of Romeo and Juliet by director Sam Gold, stepping onto the Circle in the Square stage as history’s most famous star-crossed lovers. The tagline for the show? “The youth are f**ked.” But today, their priority is preparing for their first read-through with Gold that evening, taking place over video link at a conference room in Zegler’s hotel. (Both are currently in London for work: Connor on Alex Garland’s Warfare , a project still largely shrouded in mystery but reportedly set during the 2007 Iraq War, and starring Charles Melton, Cosmo Jarvis and Will Poulter; Zegler doing reshoots for her starring role in Disney’s live-action Snow White adaptation, opposite Gal Gadot.) As soon as the photo shoot is over, they’re in a black cab to Piccadilly. And when we meet at the hotel, both have changed: Zegler is in a black sweater, Connor in jeans and a white T-shirt, the sleeves of which he intermittently tugs down over his biceps. Before I ask them much about anything, Zegler poses a question to Connor with a sly smile: “Imagine if we didn’t get along?” Given how the show was cast – primarily over Zoom and, according to Gold, largely on “gut feeling” – that was a genuine risk. “The entire balance of success hangs on the chemistry between those two people,” Gold acknowledges. “And when I cast them, they didn’t really know each other.” Before their Vogue shoot, in fact, the pair had only really spent any time together while they were filming a music-video-style trailer, which sees them canoodling in a bedroom in suburban New Jersey to the Bleachers song “Tiny Moves”. (The musician behind Bleachers , Jack Antonoff, will be writing an original score for the production.) Thankfully, both actors have a history when it comes to delivering chemistry. The 20-year-old Connor’s breakout role in the 2022 Netflix sleeper hit Heartstopper hinges on the fizzy feeling of first love he conjures with his on-screen partner, Joe Locke, while Zegler – who is three years older than Connor, but like him, can easily pass for a teenager – was plucked by Steven Spielberg as an unknown and thrust into the lead role of Maria in the director’s 2021 adaptation of West Side Story, opposite the (relatively) more seasoned Ansel Elgort. “That’s the best thing about the job,” Connor notes. “You meet someone, and they go, ‘Stare longingly into their eyes. Touch each other’s hair.’” Zegler adds: “Hey, you’re in love: go!” Neither actor has appeared on stage since they were teenagers. So why did they want to return to the theatre now? “I have been deeply craving Shakespeare,” says Connor, who grew up in Croydon and already had an impressive CV before Heartstopper. One of his most formative teenage experiences was in a stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander at the Old Vic in 2018; his only frustration was that he had to share the part due to British child labour laws. “I’m a very different actor than I was when I was 14.” For Zegler, a Broadway fanatic who spent her high school years in New Jersey playing the lead in musicals, saying yes took a little more consideration. “I was Maria since I was 16 years old,” she says, “playing the part of this naive ingenue who is older and smarter than she seems.” Zegler is referring to West Side Story, of course, where her character is based directly on Shakespeare’s Juliet. (Having already performed in a high school production of the classic American musical, she replied to an open casting call on Spielberg’s Twitter account and beat out over 30,000 other applicants.) Since then, Zegler’s star has continued to rise; a prequel to the Hunger Games franchise, the title character in Snow White. What brought Zegler around to Romeo and Juliet , however, was the chance to work with Gold; she recalls saving up money she’d earned as a teenager singing at weddings to see his Tony-winning production of Fun Home . Gold advised her that she could use her familiarity with the character to her advantage. “Juliet has this air about her, a sense that she’s been here longer than we know,” she adds, a description that could equally apply to Zegler. “I’m so thrilled to get to go back to my roots and the thing that I love so much,” she says. “But I can’t believe this is my life.” Every generation has its own Romeo and Juliet. For many, it was the (now controversial) 1968 Franco Zeffirelli adaptation, with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey in sumptuous Danilo Donati-designed period costumes. For me, it was Baz Luhrmann’s radical recasting of fair Verona as a beachside gangland, with a doe-eyed Leonardo DiCaprio staring moodily out at the sunset to Radiohead’s “Talk Show Host”, and Claire Danes perched on her balcony in angel wings. Earlier this year, a buzzy, Tom Holland-fronted version opened in London, directed by Jamie Lloyd. “When I set out to do my own productions of Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet wasn’t one I wanted to start with, because of just how incredibly famous it is,” Gold tells me from Manhattan, where he’s headed into auditions to assemble the rest of the cast. “ Romeo and Juliet has been done on Broadway 36 times, whereas An Enemy of the People has maybe been done twice,” he says, referring to his recent staging of Henrik Ibsen’s classic, which earned its lead, Jeremy Strong, a Tony. “It’s a very different thing.” Rehearsals won’t begin in earnest until weeks after we speak, but Gold’s vision for the show is already starting to coalesce, with Connor and Zegler at the forefront of his mind. “There’s not a lot of people at that age that can do what I’m asking, to carry really challenging parts eight times a week, in the round, on Broadway,” he says. “It’s a big ask.” Yet Gold is keen for the troupe of actors he’s currently gathering – many of whom will play multiple roles – to have a hand in shaping the production’s final form. “That’s the thing that excites me most: putting an ensemble together, and approaching the most third-rail, most dangerous, most heartbreaking, most challenging parts of human experience together.” Gold’s main coconspirator on the project – along with choreographer Sonya Tayeh, best known for her Tony-winning work on Moulin Rouge! The Musical – is the maverick pop producer Antonoff. “He was the first collaborator I thought of when deciding to do the play, and he’s sort of like a North Star for me for the whole production,” says Gold. Although Antonoff has done film soundtracks before, this marks his first time composing for Broadway, and he’s adjusted his processes accordingly, relying heavily on voice notes of dialogue from Zegler and Connor. “Those recordings have become my bible,” he says. Antonoff won’t specify what the finished music might sound like, but in keeping with the spirit of the production, he is looking to achieve “something classic that’s been kind of twisted a little bit.” Gold, on the other hand, draws a parallel between Antonoff’s “anthemic” choruses as a songwriter and his ability to reinterpret the epic sweep of Shakespeare for a new generation. (Antonoff, 40, is also something of a Gen Z whisperer, having teased career-best albums out of collaborators like Lorde and Clairo.) “He has an amazing sense of what is going to excite a young person, get under their skin,” Gold adds. For Antonoff’s part, he believes that “one of the greatest mistakes people make about young people is that they like something specific. When I think youth, I just think of freedom. They can be incredibly hopeful because they haven’t had their dreams crushed. Sometimes what we quantify as youth is actually just hope.” Hope might not be the first word that springs to mind when confronted with the show’s bracing tagline. “It’s a very new, strange, difficult time in cultural history,” Gold acknowledges. “The institutions are kind of crumbling, a lot of the theatres are out of money and artistic directors are leaving. The mode in which we receive our stories is drastically shifting. I just felt like I really, really wanted to take one of the great stories and do it in a way that young people would come and connect to.” On the subject of hope: it’s not lost on anyone involved in the production that it premieres less than two months before the US presidential election. Romeo and Juliet is, after all, a parable of what happens when generations drift apart. “I’m certainly not going to put anything overtly about that in the production, but the timing is very much on purpose,” Gold confirms. “We’re opening the play a week before people go to the polls to vote. But I always find that stuff better left in the audience’s imagination than put on stage by the director,” he adds. A few days after the shoot, I reconnect with Zegler, whose popularity among her Gen Z cohort can in part be ascribed to her outspokenness, whether sharing fundraisers for victims of the war in Gaza, or eloquently condemning the racism that accompanied the announcement that she, a Latina actor, would be playing Snow White. Unsurprisingly, the timeliness of the play has been top of mind for her. “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,” she says. “I think Sam has really taken that to heart: what world are we leaving behind for future generations?” It’s a political landscape Connor is wading into with curiosity and humility, having worked shoulder-to-shoulder with American actors on his Warfare shoot for the past six months. “I think it will be fascinating to be in New York during that time and be surrounded by people who are much more knowledgeable than me,” he says diplomatically, before adding that his greatest wish is simply that the play can meet the moment. “It’s ballsy, I think. Just the play itself – it’s ballsy.” Zegler contends the tagline is hopeful, despite it all. “The youth are fucked if the older generation doesn’t do anything about it,” she says. “And so you hope that it serves more as a warning than as a declaration.” For Gold, it should be galvanising. “It’s a play that leaps out from behind literature and connects to popular culture,” he says. “I’d love there to be people who come find me 10, 15 years from now and say, ‘Hey, I had never seen a play before, and I went to see that Romeo and Juliet, and now I love going to the theatre.’” But I’m reminded, too, of hanging out with Connor and Zegler back in that hotel lobby in London. “It’s not just about the youth being fucked: it’s about unity,” Connor says. “It’s about love.” “This is a love story,” Zegler adds. Then Connor, with mock sincerity: “I’m not sure if you’re aware: This is a love story.” Zegler theatrically pulls out a pen and paper. “Wow, I need to write that down: This is a love story… . ” Connor points to the bottom of Zegler’s scribblings. “You can add my name there. Thanks.” At that, the two erupt into laughter. If Connor and Zegler have anything to do with it, the kids will be alright. In this story: hair, Franziska Presche; make-up, Janeen Witherspoon; manicurist, Hayley Evans-Smith; tailor, Della George. More From British Vogue Read Kylie Jenner’s September Cover Interview In Full Join British Vogue ’s Whatsapp Channel Subscribe To The Vogue Daily Newsletter The 10 Best Sunglasses Brands That Come Vogue -Approved 12 Signs You’re Deficient In Vitamin B12 – And How To Fix It 245 IMAGES Romeo and Juliet Essay romeo and juliet Storyboard by audreyhudson Romeo and Juliet Act 2 Study Guide Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet Creative Writing Assignment by Learning in Mrs Larsen Romeo and Juliet Writing Tasks and Assignments for the Entire Play COMMENTS 10 Activities for Teaching Romeo and Juliet 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. Romeo And Juliet Essay for Students and Children 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 ... Romeo and Juliet Study Guide 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. A Summary and Analysis of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet 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 ... Romeo & Juliet 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. PDF Romeo and Juliet: William Shakespeare Revision Guide 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 Free Resources for Romeo & Juliet 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 Activities, Teaching Ideas, and Lessons 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 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 ... 13 easy, engaging lessons for Romeo and Juliet 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. A Modern Perspective: Romeo and Juliet 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 ... PDF Romeo and Juliet 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 ... The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare 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 Lesson Plans 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. Characters and Conflict in Romeo and Juliet, Part 3 (Assignment #1 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 ... Themes and Resolution in Romeo and Juliet, Part 8 AssignmentS 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, Kit Connor Rehearse for Broadway's Romeo + Juliet: Photos 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 ... Photos: Rachel Zegler, Kit Connor & More in ROMEO + JULIET Rehearsals 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 ... Rachel Zegler And Kit Connor Are Set To Star In A 'Romeo And Juliet 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. assignment essay homework paper phd report resume speech