Romeo and Juliet Final Exam Review
Romeo and Juliet Final Exam Review
Literary Device / Definition / Example from Romeo and JulietForeshadowing / Hints or clues that suggest events that have yet to occur / Friar Laurence: "These violence delights have violent ends / and in their triumph die"
*Friar Laurence's words serve to hint at the deaths of both Romeo and Juliet.
Dramatic Irony / When the audience knows something that a character does not know / Balthazar: "Her body sleeps in Capels’ monument"
*We know as an audience that Juliet is drugged, but everyone else believes she is dead.
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Romeo: "O, I am fortune's fool!"
*We know that Romeo will have bad luck for the rest of the play.
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Mercutio: "Help me into some house, Benvolio,/ or I shall faint. A plague o’ both your houses!/ They have made worms’ meat of me. I have it,/ and soundly too. Your houses!"
*We know that Mercutio’s curse will be fulfilled.
Pun / A play on words in which a humorous effect is produced by using a word that suggests two or more meanings or by exploiting similar sounding words having different meanings / Mercutio: That dreamers often lie.
Romeo: In bed asleep while they do dream things true
*Mercutio believes that dreams lie (don’t tell the truth), and also dreamers have to lie down at night to dream. There are two definitions for lie.
Oxymoron / Two incongruous or contradictory words are placed right next to each other, as in “cold fire” or “bright smoke” / Friar Laurence calls Juliet a "living corpse."
Antithesis / Contrasting ideas presented in a balanced way
Love/Hate
Light/Dark
Night/Day
Violence/Peace
Youth/Experience or Young/Old / Romeo: “More light and light, more dark and dark our woes”
*At beginning of Act 3, scene 5, Romeo and Juliet are arguing about whether it is night or day outside. Both the ideas of light and dark are presented in a balanced way.
Metaphor / A comparison of two unlike things NOT using the words like or as / Friar Laurence: “Within the infant rind of this small flower / Poison hath residence and medicine power: / For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; / Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. / Two such opposed kings encamp them still, / In man as well as herbs, - grace and rude will”
*Friar Laurence is expressing that men are like plants and have the ability to be both good and evil (like the flower in the quote above).
Personification / Giving inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics / Lord Capulet: “Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir; / My daughter he hath wedded: I will die, / And leave him all; life, living, all is Death's.”
*Since Juliet is “dead,” Lord Capulet will not have Paris as a son-in-law. He will instead have to settle with death.
Diction / Specific word choice / Romeo calls the poison a “cordial” and Juliet calls her dagger “happy”
*Cordial means medicine. Romeo believes that the poison will cure all of his emotional hurt with Juliet being “dead.”
Character Foil / A character whose actions or thoughts are juxtaposed (compared side by side) against those of a major character in order to highlight key attributes of the major character / Tybalt and Benvolio: Tybalt is a hot-head and quick to anger while Benvolio is the peacemaker.
Benvolio: “I do but keep the peace: put up thy sword, / or manage to part these men with me.”
Tybalt: “What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, / as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee: / have at thee, coward!”
Romeo and Mercutio: Romeo is a dreamer while Mercutio is practical and a realist (believes in reason/facts and not dreams).
Mercutio: “That dreamers often lie.”
Romeo: “In bed asleep while they do dream things true”
Dramatic Convention / Definition / Example from Romeo and Juliet
Sonnet / A 14 line poem that is written in iambic pentameter (10 syllables per line). / Prologue that starts “Two households, both alike in dignity / In fair Verona, where we lay our scene”
Chorus / An actor who recites the prologue (similar to a narrator)
The chorus reveals the setting the audience should imagine while watching the play, and also summarizes what to expect in the play. / Prologue recited by Chorus: “our toil shall strive to men”
*The chorus (actors) on stage state that they will fill in any missing holes in the story that the prologue left out.
Aside / A private conversation two characters have on stage that other characters cannot hear / R&J Act 1, scene 1: Sampson and Gregory
Sampson: [Aside to GREGORY] Is the law of our side, if I say ay?
*Sampson is speaking privately to Gregory.
Monologue / A long speech given to other actors/characters on the stage/in the scene / The Prince announces to everyone that the next person who dares to fight in the streets of Verona again will get the death penalty (Act 1, Scene 1).
Soliloquy / A long speech given when an actor is alone of the stage in order to share the thoughts and feelings of the character / Juliet expressing her innermost thoughts at the start of Act 2, scene 2 (balcony scene): “Oh Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?”
Romeo and Juliet Themes
Theme – the life lesson or central idea of a literary work.
· Teens make hasty decisions without considering all of the possible consequences.
o This is the reason for the accelerated time frame of the play. The whole play takes place in only 5 days!
· The inevitability of Fate (you cannot escape your fate/destiny)
o Romeo and Juliet cannot escape their fate, which is the driving force behind the entire play.
o “A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life” – quote from the Prologue that reveals Romeo and Juliet are fated to die in the end.
o Friar John’s quarantine in Act 5, scene 2 is an example of this theme. He cannot leave the city to deliver the letter to Romeo because of an infectious disease. Since Romeo does not get the letter from Friar Laurence, he believes that Juliet is dead.
· Religious Distortion
o Religious distortion is when you manipulate religious ideas/concepts for a new purpose.
o Juliet is constantly being compared to angels and saints. Romeo believes she is perfect, but in reality she could never measure up to his high standards. He has unrealistic expectations of Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet Key Quotes
· Romeo speaking to a 'dead' Juliet: "Beauty’s ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks"
o Romeo recognizes that she is still beautiful and rosy in death, but really she is still alive.
o This line reveals there is still life in Juliet.
· Romeo to the Apothecary: “There is thy gold – worse to men’s souls, / Doing more murder in this loathsome world / Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell”
o Greed corrupts and kills a man’s soul more than poison does.
· Juliet on the balcony: "What's in a name? that which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet; / So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, / Retain that dear perfection which he owes / Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, / And for that name which is no part of thee / Take all myself."
o Names are just titles that do not make a person.
o Juliet says she does not care what Romeo’s name is as it does not define who he is as a person.
· Mercutio: "Help me into some house, Benvolio,/ or I shall faint. A plague o’ both your houses!/ They have made worms’ meat of me. I have it,/ and soundly too. Your houses!"
o This is the climax (turning point) of the entire play, as it changes everything for Romeo (he is banished).
o Mercutio is cursing both the Capulets and the Montagues for their part in his death.
o This is an example of dramatic irony. As an audience, we know that Mercutio’s curse will come true with the deaths of Romeo and Juliet.
· When Balthazar tells Romeo that Juliet lies dead in her family's tomb, Romeo cries out, "I defy you stars!"
o This is an example of irony. In killing himself, Romeo will be fulfilling his own doomed destiny instead of rebelling against it.