ROMEO and JULIET
ACT ONE; SCENE 1
Puns: a pun is a play on words, or a joke using words that might have similar sounds but different meanings. In the opening scene there are a lot of jokes and puns where Gregory and Sampson are insulting each other good naturedly about their courage, their fighting skills and their skill with the ladies.
Coals
Colliers: people who carry coals.
When you carry coals you get all dirty.
Choler: (collar) a fever
Draw your neck out of the collar: take your neck out of the hangman’s noose!
Maidenhead: virginity
Maid is a young unmarried woman.
A lot of Romeo and Juliet is NAUGHTY!!!!!
SAMPSON and GREGORY are servants of the house of Capulet. They think they are all that, but they’re really not.
They are bragging about what they are going to do if they run into the servants of the Montagues. And of course, their jokes quickly become naughty and sexual.
Lily livered: coward
In the 1600’s the medical community believed humors, which were basically four fluids that were exuded from the organs, caused or affected personalities. The four bodily humors were part of the Shakespearean cosmology inherited from the ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen. The human personality contained one of the basic elements of earth, water, fire and air; the qualities of hot, cold, moist and dry; and a predominance of one of the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood.
An angry person was one whose spleen produced too much yellow bile (think acid reflux) which caused him or her to be irritable and out of sorts. This person was said to be choleric, which is a term used to this day to describe someone who is irritable and grouchy.
A melancholic person (or depressed person we would say today) would have too much black bile produced by the spleen, making her or him sad or melancholic in nature.
A person whose blood produced a great quantity of fluids was easy going and pleasant – or sanguine, which comes from the Latin word for blood. The sanguine person was also marked by a healthy ruddy (reddish) complexion. In Spanish the word for blood is sangre and in French, it is sang. Both French and Spanish are Latin based languages.
Lily livered: coward
It was believed that courage came from a really healthy red liver. If your liver was pale or white, that meant you were a coward; hence the term “lily livered” or yellow bellied.
Valiant: brave, courageous
To Move: (pun) to be overcome with passion or emotion (such as fear)
The setting is a hot, steamy day (Sunday) in Verona in July.
The prefix “bene” or “ben” means good or having good effects. Shakespeare named the character Benvolio to let us know that he is a good or beneficial character in the play.
Benvolio: Ben means good so Benvolio is a good and peace loving guy. He is Romeo’s best friend.
Tybalt: name of a cat in a story. In Shakespeare’s time, many people named their cats “Tybalt”.
Tyrant: a despotic ruler
Benevolent: the giving of alms or sustenance to another.
Beneficial: something good
Why does Lady Capulet say to her husband: “Give him a crutch!”
Pair up with a partner, go over the Prince’s speech and translated it into modern, contemporary speech.
Pernicious: a disease that devours and consumes; evil and destructive; a disease that is long standing and resistant to treatment or modification; behavior that is resistant to modification or discipline.
Imagery/metaphor:
Purple fountains issuing from your veins: injuries resulting in tremendous blood loss from sword fights.
Vocabulary:
Civil: domestic; at home
Brawl: fights; melees; free for alls.
Moved: angry; moved to anger
Airy word: some words spoken to provoke another
Thrice: three times
Prince:
If ever you disturb our streets again,
Your lives will pay the forfeit of the peace.
If you ever start another fight in the streets you will pay for it with your lives (the state will execute you for starting a riot.)
Fray: a brawl; a fight
Oxymoron: a rhetorical figure is created by the placing of two contradictory words or ideas together producing a new idea or concept. One example would be “freezer burn”, or “Microsoft Works” (j/k).
The scene between Benvolio and Lord and Lady Montague
Madam, an hour before the worshiped sun
Peered forth the golden window of the East….
This is imagery because it makes you visualize (to see)
Personification: giving human qualities to inanimate objects.
Drave: old fashioned word for drove
Grove: a small group of trees
Sycamore: a type of tree
Augmenting: to add to
Aurora: goddess of the dawn
Sounding: sounded out for what is troubling him. The depths of the water are “sounded out” to determine how deep the water is.
Romeo's parents are really worried about their son. He's totally emo! He walks all night alone and when the sun rises, he goes home. locks himself up in his room (private in his chamber pens himself / Shuts up his window, locks fair daylight out, / and makes himself an artificial night. If he were a student today, he'd probably wear black nail polish and dress in black.
The parents ask Benvolio, his cousin and best friend, to find out what is bothering their son.
Benvolio, Romeo's best friend, tells Romeo's parents that one morning when he was troubled, he got up an hour before the dawn and was walking through the town when he saw Romeo by the grove of Sycamore trees that grow in the west side of the city. When Romeo saw him he ducked into the grove, obviously not wanting to socialize. Benvolio, judging Romeo's behavior by how he (Benvolio) was feeling - Benvolio also wanted to be alone - didn't pursue him.
Imagery and Personification:
But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
Should in the farthest East begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora’s bed
Simile:
As is the bud bit with an envious worm
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to air
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
Ere: (pronounced “air”) Before
When Romeo sees that fighting has occurred he says that the fighting…”Has more to do with love than hate….
They hate each other but they love something else more…they love to FIGHT.
ROMEO is in love with Rosaline, but it is unrequited (she doesn’t love him back).
Like many people who suffer from unrequited love, Romeo implies that his beloved is a follower of Diana (she doesn’t like guys) rather than she just doesn’t like HIM.
Diana is the Roman goddess of the Hunt, the moon and the stag. Her Greek version is Artemis.
Carpe diem: Latin for seize the day. Until recently, people did not as a rule live very long. Many children died before their second birthday and the few adults who made it to forty were worn out and to our eyes, prematurely aged.
Chaste: pure; to refrain from having sex.
Abstinence
Benvolio suggests that the best way to get over an old love is to find a new love (“By giving liberty unto thine eyes, Examine other beauties…”) but Romeo disagrees…
“Show me a mistress that is passing fair; What doth her beauty serve but as a note / Where I may read who passed that passing fair?
