Romeo and Juliet Handout

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Kris McAbee

Engl 101

Fall 2002

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Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Assignment due Wednesday, November 13

Look at the following discussion questions and consider responses for all of them. Prepare brief, informal written responses (under a page in length, each) for at least two of the following questions.

1) Consider any film versions of Romeo and Juliet you might have seen, or any movies/productions inspired by the play. These can include, but are not limited to: Zeffrelli’s 1968 version (the one you probably saw in high school), Luhrmann’s 1996 “Romeo + Juliet” (with Leo and Claire), or even “West Side Story,” “Shakespeare in Love,” or Lavrosky’s ballet. How do scenes differ from each other and/or from the play itself? How do these differences change the scenes? What are the implications?

2) List the comic scenes in Romeo and Juliet. When and where do they occur? How do they function in the play as a whole? How do they compare to the comic scenes in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus?

3) Does Romeo really love Juliet? Really, really? Find specific scenes and lines to support your argument.

4) "Night. Everything that happens at night, for Romeo and Juliet, is decided rather in the penumbra, between night and day. The indecision between Romeo and the bearer of this name, between “Romeo,” the name of Romeo and Romeo himself. Theater, we say, is visibility, the stage [la scène]. This drama belongs to the night because it stages what is not seen, the name; it stages what one calls because one cannot see or because one is not certain of seeing what one calls. Theater of the name, theater of night. The name calls beyond presence, phenomenon, light, beyond the day, beyond the theater. It keeps—whence the mourning and survival—what is no longer present, the invisible: what from now on will no longer see the light of day."

–Jacques Derrida, “Aphorism Countertime” (1986)

React to this passage. Unpack its claims and justify (or dispute) them with text from the play. Some ideas to get you started:

• Explore the changes between night and day, light and dark.

• Look into the role of the “name” in the play

• Find instances of metatheatricality in the play (moments when the play is aware of itself as a play)

• Determine who survives whom, who mourns whom.