Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
The other type of sonnet is called the English sonnet. Many sonnets were written in the English language in the Italian style, which can seem confusing. For this reason, the English sonnet is also called the Shakespearian sonnet, as Shakespeare is the most famous writer to have used this form. The poems are in iambic pentameter, just like English-language Italian sonnets, and have fourteen lines, rhyme structure, and even a sort of volta, but that is where the similarity between the English ad Italian sonnets ends. The Shakespearian sonnet is arranged in three quatrains, each four lines long, and a closing couplet. The rhyme scheme usually stays consistent for each quatrain, but the rhymes themselves change, and the final two lines of the poem rhyme with each other which is known as an heroic couplet, resulting in a rhyme scheme that looks like this: abab cdcd efef gg. There is also a volta sometimes at the start of the third quatrain or in the first line of the couplet (the thirteenth or second-to-last line of the poem), which often flips the rest of the sonnet upside-down, figuratively speaking.
The sonnet that Romeo and Juliet share is Shakespearian, which might seem a little obvious. The way it is split up is very clever and funny, though. First, Romeo has a quatrain in which he takes and kisses Juliet's hand. He compares the rough touch of his hand to a kiss, and says his lips are "pilgrims" that will repent for the sin. This is a clever way for him to move in for the real thing (a kiss, that is). Juliet , if you like -- that Romeo feels for Juliet and that she is certainly caught up in.
Like Romeo, Juliet believes that the only solution is committing suicide, but the Friar tells her of a secret potion, a drug that will make her only appear dead for almost two days. The Friar tells Juliet to take it the night before her wedding. Meanwhile, he will send a note to Romeo to tell him about this secret plan. For Juliet, this appears to be the only plan that
To Tybalt, he cries: "I do protest I never injur'd thee, / but love thee better than thou canst devise." His language is insistent, but Mercutio's death is more than he can bear: he takes it personally and is blinded by the abuse he feels that he has suffered. His language changes from insistence to accusation. First, he feels his pains: "This gentleman… / My very friend, hath got
This makes the film Juliet seem more mature and alienated, although the cinematic portrait of Romeo as somewhat estranged from his boisterous male friends, such as Mercutio's dim view of women, is consistent with Shakespeare's portrait. However, in the Renaissance Shakespeare, Romeo does not attempt to physically touch Juliet in the first balcony scene. In the film the more 'knowing' lovers soon transgress the physical boundaries of the balcony. The
Juliet's speeches to the Friar after learning that she must marry Paris in a week's time indicate this as she lists the horrors she would rather endure: "bid me leap... / From off the battlements of any tower...lurk / Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears..." (Riverside 1130, IV.i. 77-80). She continues in much the same vein, and this is not her only moment of such emotional extremity.
Of course, the question arises: why is the Andy Williams song a perfect theme for Romeo and not Juliet? Juliet, in contrast with Romeo, is more intelligent in her love than Romeo, and although she loves him, she does not as fully embrace his absolute belief that love will make everything come out right. "Though I joy in thee, / I have no joy of this contract to-night: / It is
" Perhaps because of this reference to contemporary political ideals, the romance of Shakespeare seems more archetypal than the immediately relevant sociological commentary of "West Side Story." Bernstein's musical is unapologetically topical, dealing with the 1950s obsession with juvenile delinquency and even common theories to explain it, as in the song "Gee Officer Krupkie" which suggests alternatively that delinquency is caused by society, psychology, and also a young thug being "no