Hello and welcome to "Read it and (Don't) Weep," the podcast that will help you breeze through your high school literature classes. Are you tired of struggling to understand the themes and characters in classic works of literature? Do you wish you could just read the condensed version and be done with it? Well, I’ve got you covered! I am your host, Jackey Taggart, and I taught high school English for almost 20 years. 

Join me each episode as I dive into the world of high school literature and break down the essential elements of each work. From Shakespeare to Steinbeck, I'll cover it all. My goal is to give you valuable insights and analysis on some of the most popular high school literary texts, as well as tips and tricks for acing your tests and essays.  Let’s start reading!

Helo and welcome to this episode of Read It and Don’t Weep, in this episode, we are starting a literary classic that has tortured students for ages!  The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by the one, the only, William Shakespeare. This play really is a rite of passage in literature classes. So, let’s get started reading!

If you do not have a copy of the play, I would highly recommend using the MyShakespeare website.  It is awesome!  The resource contains full text for six Shakespeare plays including Romeo and Juliet.  In addition to full text, the MyShakespeare  website includes videos, interactive content, and lots of tools to enrich your reading of the play.  You can set up a free account on their website, which I have linked in the show notes.  I have used this resource in several classes for different plays, and it is the best. Even if you are using a school-issued book, the MyShakespeare website can help you better understand the text. 

STRUCTURE

Before we begin our reading, I would like to start by discussing the structure of Shakespeare’s plays.  I am not going to get into the language and poetic structure.  Hopefully, your instructor is providing instructions on the iambic pentameter in the play, if not, there are lots of great resources on YouTube where you can learn all about iambic pentameter.  The only one I will mention specifically is my favorite Ted Talk given by Akala of the Hip Hop Shakespeare Company called Hip Hop and Shakespeare? It is linked in the show notes if you want to watch it. I’ve used it with my students as an introduction to several Shakespeare plays as it made Shakespeare’s language more relatable to students who enjoy hip hop music as hip hop has the same poetic structure as Shakespeare’s poetry.  So, if you struggle to understand Shakespeare but enjoy hip hop music, watch this Ted Talk and learn the similarities between the two. 

What I am going to discuss now is the structure of a Shakespearean play.  All of Shakespeare’s plays have five acts. Now, there may be different numbers of scenes within these acts, but every play is limited to five acts, and there is a reason for this.  The five acts in Shakespeare’s plays follow the five parts of a plot: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.  

So, Act 1 in any Shakespearean play will provide the audience with the exposition, The characters and setting are introduced in Act 1, and there will also be an inciting incident or complication that will set the actions of the play in motion.  In Act 2, complications occur and frustrate the protagonist’s efforts to achieve his/her goal.  In Romeo and Juliet, we have two protagonists, so there will be multiple complications that frustrate our two young lovers.  In Act 3, the complications continue to unfold until the protagonist, or in our play protagonists, has a reversal of fortune. In a tragedy, the protagonist’s good fortune will turn unlucky.  The climax of the play will occur at some point in Act 3. Shakespeare has placed the climax in different parts of Act 3 depending on the play, but it always occurs in Act 3.  Now, if we were attending the theater, the intermission would occur at the end of Act 3, and everyone would get up, go to the restrooms, grab a snack, and get ready for the second half of the play. In Act 4, the results of the protagonist’s reversal of fortune plays out. This may include a confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist which puts the final outcome in doubt.  Finally in Act 5, the complication is resolved, and loose plots are tied up. Shakespeare did not write sequels, so there will be no doubts left to the audience’s imagination.  

So that is the structure of a Shakespearean play.  This structure applies to Shakespeare’s comedies, as well as his tragedies.  

Hey teachers! Hunting for some top-notch resources to go along with this podcast episode? You'll find them right in my store. A quick click on the link in the show notes gets you right there. What awaits? A stash of guided questions, note-taking aids, and assessments to use with your students. Go ahead, make the most of these resources today!

The Prologue

Now, on to our play!  We are kicking things off with the prologue. The Prologue is right before the actual play starts, kind of like a preview of the play we are about to read. 

First, let's chat about who's doing the talking in the prologue. It's a group called the 'chorus' - but no, they're not singing, and it's not a musical. In Greek tragedies and Shakespearean literature, the chorus can be just one person or a bunch of people, giving the audience the lowdown on what's going on. Think of the chorus as the narrator, but since this is a play, we won’t hear from the narrator frequently. 

So, what's the deal with this prologue anyway? Why's it there? Well, it's like a movie trailer. It gets the audience excited about the story and gives us some insider information about what's going to happen and the mood of the play. Actually, SPOILER ALERT – unlike a movie trailer, the prologue gives the audience a summary of the whole play, including the ending. The Prologue also sets the tone and the mood of the play. 

Quick poetry lesson, the prologue is a sonnet, and a sonnet is a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter, which is a form of poetry. A sonnet is made up of three quatrains. A quatrain is four lines of poetry where every other line rhymes. These three quatrains are followed by a couplet, which is two lines of poetry that rhyme.  That is how we get to a total of 14 lines. So, if you are following along either in your book, or the MyShakespeare website, you will want to open up to the Prologue and take a look at the first quatrain or first four lines of the Prologue. 

“Two households both alike in dignity / in fair Verona, where we lay our scene / from ancient grudge break to new mutiny / where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”

First, look at the rhyme scheme. The first a third lines rhyme, dignity and mutiny,  as do the second and fourth lines, scene and unclean.  

But what does it mean? Well, two families in Verona of equal social status have recently started fighting with each other again. There will be bloodshed on both sides of this feud. That is the first quatrain.

Quatrain number two talks about the next idea. 

“From forth, the fatal loins of these two foes. / A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life / Whose misadventured piteous overthrows / Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.” 

Notice the same rhyme scheme as the first quatrain.  What does it mean? Two children, one from each family will fall in love, take their own lives, and end their family's feuding.” 

If you are taking notes, flag the line, “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.”  We will come back to this in a few minutes.  

On to quatrain number three. “The fearful passage of their death-marked love, / And the continuance of their parents' rage, / Which, but their children's end naught could remove, / Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage.”  

The story of their love and their parents' rage is the topic of this two-hour play. Note the rhyme scheme is consistent with the previous two quatrains. 

Lastly, the final couplet, “The which, if you with patient ears attend, / What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.” 

If you listen closely, we will do our best to explain everything.

Before moving on, look back at the rhyme scheme throughout the sonnet. If you are asked to explain the rhyme scheme of a sonnet, it is ababcdcdefefgg.  The first and third lines in each quatrain rhyme (in the first quatrain we note this with the letter “a.”  The second and fourth lines rhyme, so we note this with the letter “b.” That is how we get abab. The same pattern repeats in the next two quatrains, indicated with the letters cdcd and the efef.  Finally, the sonnet ends with a couplet, or pair of rhyming lines indicated with the letters gg.  So, the rhyme scheme of a sonnet is expressed as ababcdcdefefgg. 

That is the structure and rhyme scheme of a sonnet. If you have questions, you can reach out to me by email at readitanddontweep@gmail.com, or you can always reach out to your teacher for help.

Before I end this episode, I want you to look back at that line I asked you to flag, "A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life." Sounds heavy, right? Well, it's telling the audience that two children from these arguing families are going to fall head-over-heels in love, but things aren't going to end well. That's where this term 'star-crossed' comes into play—it's like saying their love was doomed from the start, which is kind of a big deal in this story. 

Here's something to chew on: Why does Shakespeare, the guy who wrote all this, give away the ending right at the start? It's all about fate, this idea that some things are just meant to happen, whether we like it or not. By telling the audience the ending, we get to see how everything leads up to that ending. It's like we're watching it unfold in slow motion, even though we already know what's coming.

To wrap up, let's talk about themes. those big ideas that come up again and again. First, we have fate—that's the star-crossed lover’s part. Then there's love and its opposite, violence—big time contrasts there. And, of course, the idea of family loyalty, which is a huge deal in this story. Those are the three themes I am going to focus on through our study of the play.

And that's it! The Prologue of Romeo and Juliet in a nutshell. Before finishing this episode, I want to encourage you to keep a reading journal as you read so you can make note of your thoughts as you read.  I will provide prompts for you to respond. To get started think about the following:

People are different in many ways - where they come from, what they believe in, how they look, or even their age. Sometimes, the way we act around others can make us feel different too. Do you think our differences are what make us who we are, or is it the things we share in common? In simpler terms, how do these differences impact our friendships and connections with others?

Stay tuned for my next episode where we dive into Act 1, Scenes 1 and 2. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of Read it and (Don’t) Weep. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you will be notified when new episodes are released. If you liked today’s show, please leave a review so others can discover my show.  If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes, drop me an email at readitanddontweep@gmail.com or reach out to me on social media. I would love to hear from you. The links are in the show notes.  

Thank you for listening.  I am Jackey Taggart and remember to read it and don’t weep.