“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 page 1 of 2 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 page 2 of 2