Passing Time in the Loo: Shakespeare - Summaries of Shakespeares Greatest Sonnets and Plays (Comedie

(from Passing Time in the Loo: Volume 1 – Summaries of All-Time .. of Shakespeare's Greatest Sonnets and Plays (Comedies, Tragedies.
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When he was loved by the beloved it was like the glorious morning, but now, having lost the beloved, it feels like an overcast and gloomy morning. The narrator of Sonnet 73 is approaching death and thinking about how different it is from being young. The things that one gave him life have destroyed his life.

Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth

From that experience he has learnt that one has to love life as strongly as one can because it will end all too soon. He shows time passing through the seasons and the years, everything changing. Except the beauty of the beloved. He goes further by saying that no matter how long the world will endure, even though the beloved is long dead there will never be another as beautiful.

There are two striking definitions of love that we refer to again and again.


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Love is patient, love is kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. In this scene Juliet's nurse is introduced as a talkative and humorous character who has raised Juliet from infancy.

Meantime, Benvolio queries his cousin Romeo Montague, Lord Montague's son, to find out the source of his melancholy.

Four Tragedies

He discovers that it stems from an unrequited love for a girl named Rosaline, Capulet's niece. Upon the insistence of Benvolio and another friend, Mercutio, Romeo decides to attend the masquerade ball at the Capulet house, in hope of meeting Rosaline. Alongside his masked friends, Romeo attends the ball as planned, but falls in love with Juliet, and she with him.

Despite the danger brought on by their feuding families, Romeo sneaks into the Capulet courtyard and overhears Juliet on her balcony vowing her love to him. He makes himself known to her, and the two declare their love for each other and agree to be married. With the help of the Franciscan Friar Lawrence, who hopes to reconcile the two families through their children's union, the two are married secretly the next day. All seems well until Tybalt, Juliet's hot-blooded cousin, challenges Romeo to a duel for appearing at the Capulets' ball in disguise.

Though no one is aware of the marriage yet, Romeo refuses to fight Tybalt since they are now kinsmen. Mercutio is incensed by Tybalt's insolence, and accepts the duel on Romeo's behalf. In the ensuing scuffle, Mercutio is fatally wounded when Romeo tries to separate them. Romeo, angered by his friend's death, pursues and slays Tybalt, then flees. Despite his promise to call for the head of the wrong-doers, the Prince merely exiles Romeo from Verona, reasoning that Tybalt first killed Mercutio, and that Romeo merely carried out a just punishment of death to Tybalt, although without legal authority.

Juliet grieves at the news, and Lord Capulet, misinterpreting her grief, agrees to engage her to marry Paris in three days' time, threatening to disown her if she does not. The Nurse, once Juliet's confidante, now tells her she should discard the exiled Romeo and comply. Juliet desperately visits Friar Lawrence for help. He offers her a drug which will put her into a death-like coma for forty-two hours. She is to take it, and, when discovered apparently dead, she will be laid in the family crypt. While in her sleep, the Friar will send a messenger to inform Romeo, so that she can rejoin him when she awakes.

The messenger, however, does not reach Romeo. Romeo instead learns of Juliet's "death" from his servant Balthasar. Grief-stricken, he buys poison from an apothecary, returns to Verona in secret, and visits the Capulet crypt. He encounters Paris, who has come to mourn Juliet privately. Paris confronts Romeo, believing him to be a vandal, and in the ensuing battle Romeo kills Paris. He then says his final words to the comatose Juliet and drinks the poison to commit suicide.

Friar Lawrence arrives and, aware of the cause of the tragedy, begs Juliet to leave, but she refuses. At the side of Romeo's dead body, she stabs herself with her lover's dagger. The feuding families and the Prince meet at the tomb to find the three dead. In explanation, Friar Lawrence recounts the story of the two lovers. Montague reveals that his wife has died of grief after hearing of her son's exile. The families are reconciled by their children's deaths and agree to end their violent feud.

The play ends with the Prince's brief elegy for the lovers: Shakespeare follows the poem closely but adds extra detail to both major and minor characters, in particular the Nurse and Mercutio. It was published in a collection of Italian tales entitled Palace of Pleasure in Painter's version was part of a trend among writers and playwrights of the time to publish works based on Italian novelles. At the time of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , Italian tales were very popular among theater patrons.

Critics of the day even complained of how often Italian tales were borrowed to please crowds. Arthur Brooke's poem belonged to this trend, being a translation and adaptation of the Italian Giuletta e Romeo , by Matteo Bandello, included in his Novelle of Bandello's story was translated into French and was adapted by Italian theatrical troupes, some of whom performed in London at the time Shakespeare was writing his plays.

Although nothing is known of the repertory of these troupes, it is possible that they performed some version of the story. Bandello's version was an adaptation of Luigi da Porto's Giulietta e Romeo , included in his Istoria novellamente ritrovata di due Nobili Amanti c. The latter gave the story much of its modern form, including the names of the lovers, the rival families of Montecchi and Capuleti, and the location in Verona, in the Veneto.

Da Porto is probably also the source of the tradition that Romeo and Juliet is based on a true story. The names of the families in Italian, the Montecchi and Capelletti were actual political factions of the thirteenth century. The tomb and balcony of Guilietta are still popular tourist spots in Verona, although scholars have disputed that the story actually took place.

Romeo and Juliet borrows from a tradition of tragic love stories dating back to antiquity. One of these, Pyramus and Thisbe, is thought by many scholars to have influenced da Porto's version. The former contains parallels to Shakespeare's story: Brooke adjusted the Italian translation to reflect parts of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. The Ephesian Tale Ephisiaca of Xenophon of Ephesus, written in the third century, also contains several similarities to the play, including the separation of the lovers, and a potion which induces a deathlike sleep.

Shakespeare's sonnets

Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander and Dido, Queen of Carthage , both similar stories written in Shakespeare's day, are thought to be less of a direct influence, although they may have created an atmosphere in which tragic love stories could thrive. It is unknown when exactly Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet.

Juliet's nurse refers to an earthquake which she says occurred eleven years ago. An earthquake did occur in England in , possibly dating that particular line to But the play's stylistic similarities with A Midsummer Night's Dream , as well as evidence of performances at the time the play was becoming popular at around , place the writing between and One widely-accepted conjecture has that Shakespeare may have begun a draft in , which he completed in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was published in two distinct quarto editions prior to the publication of the First Folio of These are referred to as Q1 and Q2.

Q1, the first printed edition, appeared in , printed by John Danter. Because its text contains numerous differences from the later editions, it is labeled a 'bad quarto'; the twentieth century editor T. Spencer described it as "a detestable text, probably a reconstruction of the play from the imperfect memories of one or two of the actors. An alternative explanation for Q1's shortcomings is that the play like many others of the time may have been heavily edited before performance by the playing company.

It was printed in by Thomas Creede and published by Cuthbert Burby. Q2 is about lines longer than Q1. Its title page describes it as "Newly corrected, augmented and amended". Scholars believe that Q2 was based on Shakespeare's pre-performance draft, called his foul papers , since there are textual oddities such as variable tags for characters and "false starts" for speeches that were presumably struck through by the author but erroneously preserved by the typesetter.

It is a much more complete and reliable text, and was reprinted in Q3 , Q4 and Q5. In effect, all later Quartos and Folios of Romeo and Juliet are based on Q2, as are all modern editions since editors believe that any deviations from Q2 in the later editions whether good or bad are likely to arise from editors or compositors, not from Shakespeare. The First Folio text of was based primarily on Q3, with clarifications and corrections possibly coming from a theatrical promptbook or Q1.

Other Folio editions of the play were printed in F2 , F3 , and F4. Modern versions considering several of the Folios and Quartos began printing with Nicholas Rowe's edition, followed by Alexander Pope's version. Pope began a tradition of editing the play to add information such as stage directions missing in Q2 by locating them in Q1.

This tradition continued late into the Romantic period. Fully annotated editions first appeared in the Victorian period and continue to be produced today, printing the text of the play with footnotes describing the sources and culture behind the play.

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Shakespeare shows his dramatic skill freely in Romeo and Juliet , providing intense moments of shift between comedy and tragedy. Before Mercutio's death in Act three, the play is largely a comedy. After his accidental demise, the play suddenly becomes very serious and takes on more of a tragic tone.


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    • Still, the fact that Romeo is banished, rather than executed, offers a hope that things will work out. When Friar Lawrence offers Juliet a plan to reunite her with Romeo the audience still has a reason to believe that all will end well. They are in a "breathless state of suspense" by the opening of the last scene in the tomb: If Romeo is delayed long enough for the Friar to arrive, he and Juliet may yet be saved. This only makes it all the more tragic when everything falls apart in the end.

    Shakespeare also uses subplots to offer a clearer view of the actions of the main characters, and provide an axis around which the main plot turns. For example, when the play begins, Romeo is in love with Rosaline, who has refused all of his advances. Romeo's infatuation with her stands in obvious contrast to his later love for Juliet.

    This provides a comparison through which the audience can see the seriousness of Romeo and Juliet's love and marriage. Paris' love for Juliet also sets up a contrast between Juliet's feelings for him and her feelings for Romeo. The formal language she uses around Paris, as well as the way she talks about him to her Nurse, show that her feelings clearly lie with Romeo.

    Beyond this, the subplot of the Montague-Capulet feud over-arches the whole play, providing an atmosphere of hate that is the main contributor to the play's tragic end. Shakespeare uses a large variety of poetic forms throughout the play. He begins with a line prologue by a Chorus in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet.

    Like this sonnet much of Romeo and Juliet is written in iambic pentameter, with ten syllables of alternating stress in each line. However, the most common form used is blank verse, a more fluid, nonstructured approach, although Shakespeare uses this form less often in this play than in his later plays. In choosing forms, Shakespeare matches the poetry to the character who uses it.

    Friar Laurence, for example, uses sermon and sententiae forms, and the Nurse uses a unique blank verse form that closely matches colloquial speech. Each of these forms is also moulded and matched to the emotion of the scene the character occupies. For example, when Romeo talks about Rosaline earlier in the play, he uses the Petrarchan sonnet form.

    Petrarchan sonnets were often used by men at the time to exaggerate the beauty of women who were impossible for them to attain, as in Romeo's situation with Rosaline. When Romeo and Juliet meet, the poetic form changes from the Petrarchan which was becoming archaic in Shakespeare's day to a then more contemporary sonnet form, using "pilgrims" and "saints" as metaphors.

    Finally, when the two meet on the balcony, Romeo attempts to use the sonnet form to pledge his love, but Juliet breaks it by saying "Dost thou love me? Juliet uses monosyllabic words with Romeo, but uses formal language with Paris. Other forms in the play include an epithalamium by Juliet, a rhapsody in Mercutio's Queen Mab speech, and an elegy by Paris.

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    Shakespeare saves his prose style most often for the common people in the play, though at times for other characters, such as Mercutio. Also by William Shakespeare. See all books by William Shakespeare. Inspired by Your Browsing History. Looking for More Great Reads? Download our Spring Fiction Sampler Now.

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