Romeo and Juliet – Analysis paper

Description

I. Given Circumstances

A. TIME (1 paragraph)
Can the time of day or season be determined accurately? Does that time change from scene to scene, act to act etc.? What about the time span during which the dramatic action takes place? Provide evidence from the spoken text to support your conclusions.

B. PLACE (1 paragraph)
In what country, region or city does the play take place? What is the specific location of each scene? What architecture and/or objects are in that location, based on a close reading of the spoken text?

C. SOCIETY & RELATIONSHIPS (3 Paragraphs)
Identify the central relationships between major, named characters in the play. What family relationships are present? Friendships? Professional and/or political associations?
What is the social order depicted in the play? Who has the most power and the least? What standards and values are part of the world of this play? How strongly are these values enforced? What social group controls standards for behavior, and how is normative behavior rewarded and non-normative behavior punished?

D. SPIRITUALITY & BELIEF (1 paragraph)
What are the accepted codes of spirituality and belief in the world of this play? What specific examples are there of specifically religious or spiritual practice such as prayers, rituals or ceremonies? Who controls the spiritual circumstances in the play? What are the rewards for supporting intellectual and spiritual conformity? What are the penalties for violating those standards?

E. WORLD OF PLAY SUMMARY: (2-3 Paragraphs)
Based on your answers above, describe the World of the Play as you see it. How does the world of this play affect (and/or reflect) the behavior and attitudes of the central characters at the beginning of the play? What different points of view about the World of the Play are expressed by central characters? Do any of the central characters’ views or understanding of the World of the Play change or develop as the action progresses?

II. Structural Analysis

A. Identify the overall story of the play in one sentence (This is a play about…)
B. Briefly summarize the play’s action, as though you were making a one-minute movie trailer (1 paragraph)
C. Identify & briefly describe the main events of the play : Exposition, Point of Attack, main complications, crisis, climax & denouement/resolution (3 paragraphs)
D. Discuss whether the play’s structure is Aristotelian (primarily linear, logical, time & place-limited), Absurd (circular, repetitive, and/or non-linear, not time-limited), Epic (episodic, linear or non-linear, not time or place limited), or some combination of the above—or something else entirely…(1 paragraph)

III. Character analysis

Choose 1 central character from the play, and perform an Action Analysis:
A. Identify an over-all objective for your character that motivates them throughout the duration of the play.(Super Objective)
B. Identify at least 1 significant internal and one external obstacle to the character’s super objective.
C. Analyze your character’s capacity for self-understanding (complexity), and their degree of willpower/strength/persistence in pursuing their objectives. (1 paragraph)
D. Analyze your character’s role in 2 of the major events of the play (choose from exposition, complications, crisis, climax, denouement) (2 paragraphs)

IV. Ideas & Images

Identify and discuss what you determine to be the main ideas/themes of the play. (1-2 paragraphs)
Discuss how those ideas are realized in the play’s title, through imagery and symbols, and through character types (for example, through chorus/narrator (Chorus in Oedipus), raisonneur (Horatio in Hamlet), confidant (Horatio again), norm characters (Olunde in Death of the King’s Horseman), or values-spectrum characters, like Murchison, Asagai and Beneatha in Raisin in the Sun). (3 paragraphs.)

V. Relevance

Discuss what you see as the value of the play to contemporary American society. Does it teach valuable lessons? Remind of history? Affirm universal aspect of the human experience? Of all the plays that are available to us, why should this play be produced today?

Also identify its personal relevance to you. Why did you choose this play? How does it speak to you, and why? What challenges you about the play? What experiences have you had or beliefs that you hold does the play address in some way?