Orlando Bloom performs a scene from the new Broadway manufacturing of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
A play that the Occasions theater critic Charles Isherwood recently called “the ur-drama of young adore,” “Romeo and Juliet” has been performed countless occasions in a great number of methods in excess of its 400-yr history, yet has managed to seem fresh and relevant whether staged in Stratford-on-Avon, Central Park or an Italian prison.
In fact, placing the title “Romeo and Juliet” into Times search returns far more than a million posts, essays and reviews, like practically a thousand from the 19th century. (For instance, from 1896: “‘Romeo and Juliet Interrupted: An Insane Guy Intrudes on the Balcony Scene in Chicago.”)
We combed through numerous years’-well worth of articles or blog posts to locate one particular piece we thought illustrated the play’s power especially nicely, but we’ve linked to 25 a lot more you may well decide on to substitute for your personal Text to Text.
Do you educate Shakespeare with The Times? How? We’d really like to publish your notion, so leave a comment beneath.
Background:
“Every generation, it appears, demands its personal movie model of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers… And every single generation, intentionally or not, puts its mark on the story,” writes Anita Gates in a 1996 piece accompanying the opening of the Baz Luhrmann film starring Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio. (A film that the Times assessment stated, “invents a complete new vocabulary for a story of star-crossed young enjoy.”)
We framed our Essential Question for this Text to Text pairing as a consequence of the richness we identified when we searched the play in The Instances archives — and found “Romeo and Juliet”-inspired musicals, ballets, films, operas and novels, as well as lesbian, Yiddish, hipster, hip-hop, Arab-Israeli, prep college and 15-minute versions.
A single of our preferred finds is a Occasions post from Sept. 23, 2001, written by a New York critic just two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks:
What part can theater perform when lifestyle is in upheaval? At a time of grieving, do men and women feel comfortable about becoming entertained?
Go to a display, political leaders tell us. Organization as normal, economic advisors say. It is the entertainer’s organization, as the song goes, to ”make ‘em laugh.” Men and women have turned to entertainment when there is a nationwide crisis, stated Jed Bernstein, president of the League of American Theaters and Producers.
Even now, final week Broadway theaters reported an 80 % decline in ticket revenue since the attacks, and 1 new musical, ”Assassins,” has been canceled.
The current manufacturing at the McCarter, which opened on Sept. 14, is indisputably a tragedy, but it could have been divinely chosen for the moment, for it fulfills the highest goal of theater — to enlighten and to purge, to generate purchase out of chaos.
The play is about the human impulse to hate, and as significantly about the require to love. In the end, every single audience member must reflect upon which force wins.
The perform was written in 1595. It is named ”Romeo and Juliet.” Even though you may have observed it prior to, after seeing Ms. Mann’s new staging, you could not be so confident. At least you will see it anew. And that is the distinction between timely and timeless.
Essential Concerns: What can we discover about ourselves and our world from a 16th-century perform? How has “Romeo and Juliet” been reworked to speak to new audiences in various instances and locations?
Activity Sheets: As college students read and go over, they may possibly consider notes making use of a single of these graphic organizers (PDFs):
Excerpt 1: From “Romeo and Juliet”: The Prologue
Two households, the two alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, the place we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
The place civil blood helps make civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers consider their daily life
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d enjoy,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s finish, nought could take away,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Excerpt 2: From “Montague and Capulet as Shiite and Sunni” by Tim Arango (April 28, 2012)
BAGHDAD — It is not poison or a dagger that takes the lives of the youthful lovers, but a suicide bomb. The Montagues and Capulets are divided not just by loved ones, but also by religious sect. And the dialogue in the Iraqi adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” is sprinkled with references to Blackwater, Iranians and the American reconstruction work.
Soon after a recent efficiency right here at the National Theater, where the dramatic arts have been once degraded to serve as a dictator’s propaganda, the audience filed out buzzing in excess of the return of severe artwork to the Iraqi capital. Cloaked as a Shakespearean traditional was a lively rendering of their personal lives in excess of the previous nine years.
“It was about our reality, the killing that took place in between the Sunnis and Shias,” explained Senan Saadi, a university pupil who was in the audience.
The killing, of program, nonetheless takes place. The morning after the show, explosions had been heard in Baghdad. By the end of the day, a string of attacks all around the country had left nearly 3 dozen folks dead. By then, the cast of the perform, which includes veteran Iraqi actors and younger up-and-comers, was preparing to leave for the World Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare’s birthplace.
“Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad” opened Thursday at the festival and runs for ten days as component of the cultural plan linked with the coming London Olympics. Its story line of a doomed cross-sectarian enjoy affair manages to touch on almost each element of the recent collective Iraqi encounter.
That it garnered numerous laughs — particularly over the buffoonish Qaeda character in an explosives-laden vest, who is Paris, Juliet’s failed suitor, in Shakespeare’s authentic — and lots of tears, too, is perhaps a little indicator that Iraqi society is beginning to reconcile with the trauma of the war.
“Romeo, he does not see Juliet for nine many years,” explained Monadhil Daood, a famous Iraqi actor and playwright who is directing the perform and spent two years writing the script. “At their initial meeting they speak about the conflict among Sunni and Shia.”
The words Sunni and Shia are not mentioned explicitly, but are symbolized in ways that are clearly recognizable to an Iraqi audience. Capulet, Juliet’s father, is denoted as a Sunni by his red-and-white checkered keffiyeh (not to mention that a Qaeda fighter seeks to marry his daughter). Romeo’s father, Montague, wears a black-and-white scarf far more frequently worn by Shiites.
“My message is that enjoy is far better than the conflict between the families,” Mr. Daood mentioned.
For Creating or Discussion:
- How does Shakespeare emphasize conflict and contrast in the language of the prologue? In which do you see twosomes, pairings, repetition and opposites?
- Shakespeare’s prologue gives away the story of the perform. Which lines mirror the situation in between the Sunnis and Shias outlined in the post? What threads run among the two?
- How does this manufacturing signify the “recent Iraqi collective experience”?
- At the end of the play, Mr. Capulet asks for Mr. Montague’s hand and Montague vows to erect a statue of Juliet so that all bear in mind their children. What understanding have they come to following the death of their kids? What does it say about human nature that it will take this kind of grief and sacrifice to reach widespread ground? How is this manufacturing of “Romeo and Juliet” itself a implies of helping to heal Iraq?
- How have Shakespeare’s plays been performed and acquired throughout current background in Iraq? What do the numerous methods in which they have been utilised educate us about their universality?
- If you had been a director picking a setting (time and location) for “Romeo and Juliet,” what other modern day day conflicts would lend themselves to its plots and themes? Why? Is it achievable to discover a fresh technique for a play performed so several occasions in so several techniques currently? Can you uncover some thing in this week’s Times that echoes these themes or suggests a setting and likely characters?
Going Even more:
The Biochemistry of Love: The Finding out Network contributor and English teacher Sarah Gross tells us that her favourite “Romeo and Juliet” assignment invites college students to look at the biochemistry of enjoy and its effects on human behavior or adolescent brain growth. She begins by displaying college students the TED talk embedded above, then provides them this prompt:
Romeo and Juliet are the most renowned pair of lovers in Western literature, but is their enjoy actual, or is it just infatuation? They make impulsive, existence-altering choices based mostly on their adore and finish up shedding their lives as a outcome of their relationship.
Activity: Using evidence from the text and two of the articles listed under, publish a nicely-developed essay explaining whether Romeo and Juliet must be held responsible for their impulsive conduct.
Here are the content articles she lists:
From The New York Times:
And from other sources:
Shakespeare and the Invention of the Teenager: The Instances Magazine just lately excerpted a short piece from “Flaming Youth,” a chapter in “How Shakespeare Altered Everything,” by Stephen Marche, that we quite nearly chose as the main Text to Text pairing for this characteristic. He writes:
…our total present day understanding of adolescence is there to be discovered in this perform. Shakespeare basically designed this new group of humanity, and in spot of the usual mix of nostalgia and loathing with which we regard adolescents (and adolescence), Shakespeare would have us search at teens in a spirit of wonder. He loves his youngsters even as he paints them in all their absurdity and nastiness.
College students may possibly use this idea as a lens through which to analyze the play: The place can they see evidence of Shakespeare’s “love” for teens? How does he control to portray this difficult stage of lifestyle so realistically that it even now resonates 400 many years later, however also make it “wonderful”?
Generate Your Personal Model: If it is true that each and every generation requirements its own version of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, how might you and your classmates stage a scene from this perform that teases out the themes, ideas, characters and conflicts that talk specifically properly to you? As you do this, you might take into account the argument recently opened up in the Occasions Culture part: Is Shakespeare greater with contemporary imagery, or clad in classical garb? Read what readers had to say in order to think about regardless of whether you want your Romeo riding a motorbike and utilizing modern slang, or sporting tights and speaking in Elizabethan English.
A lot more Sources
Standards
This resource could be employed to address the academic specifications listed beneath.
The Learning Network Blog: Text to Text | ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Montague and Capulet as Shiite and Sunni’
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