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Romeo and Juliet

By William Shakespeare

Jane EyreBy Charlotte Bronte

1. Why did Shakespeare set his play in Verona, Italy?

Was it because: A: Everything Italian was fashionable in Tudor London in during Elizabeth’s reign

B: Italy was believed by English people to be a country full of hot-blooded people and warring families

C: Elizabeth I would not have allowed a play to shown that showed London to be the centre of the kind of lawless behaviour Romeo and Juliet portrays

2. Rome and Juliet are part of two of Verona’s rich and famous families – the kind of families who would be written about in Hello magazine .

Give Rome and Juliet their correct family names and explain why Romeo and Benvolio had to gate-crash Juliet’s dad’s party to find beautiful girls and would never have been given a proper invite.

3. The prologue, structured as a sonnet, gives a chance for the audience to settle down (the Elizabethans were a rowdy lot) and prepares them for what they are about to watch.

What is unusual about the prologue?

a. It tells the audience what happens at the end of the play

b. It is written in Italian

c. It is structured as a sonnet, but uses a different sonnet structure

4. Romeo and Juliet are described in the prologue as being ‘star-crossed lovers’.

What would this suggest to the play’s audience?

a. Romeo and Juliet are different star signs (Romeo a rash Ares and Juliet a careful Taurus)

b. They are innocent victims who do not control their own destiny and their fate is already written in the stars

c. They only meet at night, under the stars

5. Romeo describes Juliet and her beauty in many different ways, but the thing he most often compares her to is:

a. A heavenly angel

b. The virgin Mary

c. Light

‘She doth teach the torches to burn bright!’ (1,v)

Q6 Name two other light sources to which Romeo compares Juliet

Q7: Shakespeare used many different types of dramatic technique in Romeo and Juliet to express emotions, create foreboding and build tension. What type of dramatic technique does Shakespeare use in Act 2, ii (Balcony scene) which allows Romeo to find out that Juliet already loves him?

‘O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?Deny thy father and refuse thy name;Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.’

Q8: Why are Benvolio’s words ‘For now , these hot days, is the mad blood stirring’, important for introducing Act 3,i (The Fight Scene)?

Q9: What name does Mercutio call Tybalt which expresses all Mercutio’s disgust and lack of respect for Tybalt Capulet?

?Q9B: How does this insult express Mercutio’s feelings

for Tybalt?

‘This day’s black fate on more days doth depend:

This but begins the woe, others must end.’

Q10: What is the effect on the audience of Romeo’s word after killing Tybalt?

10B: State two of Shakespeare’s literary techniques that make these lines very effective?

Q11: Who is Romeo addressing with these words?

Q11B: Romeo has used the ‘bark’ (ship) metaphor before: When? and why would this make the audience find his words even more upsetting and tragic?

‘Thou desperate pilot, now at once run onThe dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!’

Q1: Approximately how many years after Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet did Bronte write her novel Jane Eyre?

a. 300 years

b. 200 years

c. 700 years

Q2: How would you describe the novel, Jane Eyre?

a. A Victorian novel about love, passion and revenge in which love conquers all

b. A Victorian gothic romance which deals with the themes of class, autonomy, love and morality

c. A Victorian novel which celebrates female power and independence and exposes male weakness

d. All three

Q3: Why is Jane so vulnerable in the novel?

Q4: Jane has been brought up and educated to repress (hold back) her feelings; but, she has one way that she can express her strong emotions. What is it?

Q5: What is the name of Rochester’s house where Jane goes to work as governess?

Q5b: What makes this house and its setting typical of a gothic novel?

Q6: What kind of hero is Rochester?

a. Unreliable

b.Byronic

c. Dishonest

Q7: What is the narrative structure of the novel, Jane Eyre?

a. First person narrative with a chronological structure – the story is told as if by Jane in the order the events happened

b. Third person narrative – Bronte is telling Jane and Rochester’s love story from the perspective of a third person narrator

c. First person narrative – Rochester tells the story of how Jane’s love for him gave him a reason to love life again after his life was ruined when he was tricked into marrying a mad woman.

Q8: Why is Rochester only honest about his feelings for Jane when they meet up outside?

a. Rochester, a Byronic hero, is a man of action and hates being cooped up inside a house

b. The house represents the Victorian social conventions which dictated how people should behave and especially supported the Victorian class structure. Only outside could Rochester feel free from these restrictions

c. Jane is always finding an excuse to post a letter or do some kind of errand to get out of her duties as governess to Adele and go and find herself some real action – after all, the house and her job and the whole being a woman in Victorian times thing is so boring and there is a limit to how much drawing she can do

Q9: Poor Jane, she really feels trapped. What is stopping her from being able to truly be herself?

a. Lack of money

b. Lack of family – her parents are dead and her aunt and cousins hate her

c. The Victorian class structure – how can a governess get anywhere in life when they are either invisible to other people or there just to be abused?

d. All three

Q10: After meeting Rochester and falling in love with him, Jane caught up in an emotional torture and the struggle of what against what?

a. Good against evil

b. Reason against passion

c. Hot against cold

Q10b: What does Jane compare her feelings towards Rochester with in Chapter 17:

d. A sick dog who cannot help licking his wounds

e. A man dying of thirst who drinks from a poisoned well even though he knows it will kill him

f. An overweight woman who cannot help herself from eating that fifth chocolate cup cake

Q11: What kind of literary technique does Bronte use to let the reader know that Jane has made a big mistake when she accepted Rochester’s proposal (that will teach her for letting passion rule reason) and that something terrible will definitely happen? (end of Chapter 23)

Q12: Rochester is a very troubled man, but does not always express his feelings very well, probably because he is a Byronic hero. Yet, somehow, the reader usually knows what he is feeling.

How does Bronte give the reader so much information about his feelings without letting us into his head to hear his thoughts?

Q12B: Can you give an example of this?