“But come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy”

“But come what sorrow can,
It cannot countervail the exchange of joy”
Post Viewing Lesson for Romeo and Juliet
Time Needed:
One 40-60 minute period
Learning Objectives:
Procedure:
Students will review the use
of opposition in the play to
demonstrate characters’
emotional turmoil and
highlight an emotional truth by
comparing it to its opposite.
1. After viewing a production of Romeo and Juliet, lead a discussion about the
oppositions, posing such questions as: remembering the list of oppositions
we looked at before we saw the play, which ones stand out for you and why?
What did you notice about how the actors in the play you saw spoke the
lines? What do the oppositions tell us about the characters who say them,
their states of mind and their actions?
Students will engage with a
partner to enact a scene.
Get students up on their feet and direct them to walk through the space
as in the Pre-viewing Lesson. Be sure they walk through the center of the
space as well as around its periphery. Have them speed up and slow down
their pace, keeping silent. Ask them to say “hi” to one another for a moment
or two, just “hi” but modulating their voices, softly and loudly, and using
their full vocal ranges when they say “hi.” Begin to have them move as “a
lark and not a nightingale,” as if “night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund
day stands on misty mountaintops,” as if “I must be gone and live, or stay
and die,” as if “more light and light, more dark and dark our woes,” making
sure they come back to a neutral walk between quotations. Tell them not to
worry if they don’t know what each word means, to just try to feel in their
bodies the sounds of the words and how the words move through their
bodies as they walk.
Alternative: Break up the text into shorter bits and then feed in the longer
lines as they get more comfortable- i.e. “lark” then “nightingale” then “a lark
and not a nightingale.”
Students will feel the effect of
textual oppositions in their
bodies.
Materials Needed:
Copies of Act 3, Scene 5, lines
1-36 for each student.
A space in which students can
move around freely.
2. Break students up into pairs and give each pair a copy of Act 3, Scene 5, lines
1-36. The pairs can be two girls, two boys or a boy and a girl. Ask students
to read the scene silently to themselves. Next ask each pair to assign the
roles of Romeo and Juliet to themselves and to read their lines to each other
making sure that before they read each line, they look up from their script
and look up at their scene partner for a moment. Have students do this on
their feet rather than sitting.
3. Have students read their lines to one another again, remembering to look at
one another before they say each of their lines, this time bringing into their
bodies some of the movements they made when they were walking through
the space and heard the lines. Direct students to moderate their physicality
so that it makes sense with what they are saying to whom they are saying
it, telling students to be sensitive to what their scene partners seem to be
feeling and saying to them.
4. Still standing, have students put down their scripts and move through their
scenes only physically, without words. Tell them to “freeze in place as if they
are statues,” to look around at the other pairs and notice what they see, and
then to continue to move through their scenes silently. Have them “freeze
in place as if they are statues” once again at the end and to notice the other
“statues” in the space.
© 2013 Actors’ Shakespeare Project
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5. Bring the students back together and ask them what they noticed when
they did the scenes silently. Ask them how they experienced feeling the
language in their bodies without saying the words and how that was
different from when they said the words. Ask what they noticed about the
other pairs.
6. Conclude the lesson by reminding students that oppositions demonstrate
characters’ emotional turmoil and highlight an emotional truth by
comparing it to its opposite.
Created by Lori Shaller for Actors’ Shakespeare Project
Created, in part, with support from NEA Shakespeare in American Communities, Edvestors BPS Art Expansion
Program & the YouthReach program at the Massachusetts Cultural Council, State agency.
© 2013 Actors’ Shakespeare Project
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