Act 3 Questions

Fact Questions:
1. What does Mercutio tries to do when Tybalt comes to find Romeo?
2. What will happen to Juliet if she does not marry with Paris?

Thinking Questions:
1. Why Mercutio want to fight with Tybalt?
2. Why Romeo think that his banishment is worse than dead?
3. Why Nurse, who always is on Juliet side, "betrayed" Juliet and tells her she should marry with Paris, not Romeo?

Romeo and Juliet Quiz 2

6. Imagine that after the balcony scene, Romeo and Juliet go somewhere and write in their diaries. Explain how you would stage this scene and write a 100 word diary entry for each of these two characters. Be sure that the entries are both creative and believable.

   I will stage the scene that Juliet will write her diaries in her room, while Romeo is outside the Capulet house. Juliet will be on right side of the stage, where has her bed and some decorations to show she is in her bedroom. Romeo will be on the left side of the stage, where have some trees and the walls of Capulet’s house to show he is outside of the house but not really far away from Juliet. I stage the scene like this because I want to show that both Romeo and Juliet are excited about their future. Both of them can not hide their excitements and decide to write diaries to express the excitements.

Romeo:

Oh, tonight is such a beautiful night. I meet the angel of my life - Juliet. When I first see her, there is a secret sound tell me that she is the one I meant to marry. I still can remember every word we shared in the dance. She is the shiniest stars on the sky that expel all the darkness in my heart. But why she is a Capulet? Why? Why? The woman, who I totally forgot everything about her, also is a Capulet. Why God make my life such a tragedy! But I have to marry her, if I can not, there is no reason for me to stay in this world! Our family can not stop the love between us. Juliet and I need a wedding then nobody can stop us! I am going to arrange the wedding with her. But who will be the confessor in the wedding? Oh yes, Friar Lawrence will be the perfect choose. He gave me so many advice, he will understand the marriage between me and Juliet. I am so excited that I can not sleep! As soon as the sunrise, I will go to the church and arrange our marriage. Tomorrow will be a big day!

Juliet:

My dear diary, I can not describe how happy I am. I meet with my love tonight, who is absolutely not Paris, but Romeo. Oh Romeo, who make me fall in love with him when I first saw him. When I see in his eyes, I see the sea of stars. And every words of him move my heart deeply. He is my prince! He shows up just at the moment I talk about him! It is a miracle! He is so brave that he came into my house where he might be killed by the guards, as he says “My life were better ended by their hate, than death prorogued, wanting of thy love”! He is the man I am going to marry! I know parents will be really angry with me, but the nurse will also be my side. Yes, the nurse will be the perfect person to be the messenger to Romeo. Oh, I hope she will bring back good news!

Balcony Scene

Rujian, Zhou

9/22/2016

The Power of Details

   “Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo”, Juliet says this famous line in Balcony Scene. It is one of the most important scenes in the play Romeo And Juliet because it shows the first deep communication between Romeo and Juliet. In the several versions of the Balcony Scene, I think the Royal Shakespeare Company’s one is the most effective one because the tones, body languages, and understanding of the actors are amazingly well done.
Firstly, the actors speak out the line with great emphasis. The Juliet says “Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo” which emphasizes “thou” which stands for “to be”. She let the audiences feel that Juliet is deeply distressed by the fact that the man she loves is her enemy. And Juliet wishes the man Romeo would not be Romeo. Besides this, the body language of the actors shows more detail. When Romeo first hears Juliet says his name, he was shocked. The Romeo is pointing to the air, his whole body is stretched likes he is trying to touch the “clouds”. Suddenly, when Romeo hears Juliet says his name, Romeo’s body falls down really quick. This action lets me feel that Romeo is surprised and mostly happy to hear that Juliet is thinking about him. I can feel the Romeo is a lively person who is happy because he and his love share their minds. Even though it is an action, it shows audiences more things than lines and helps audiences get into the play deeper.

Both the tones and body languages are based on the understanding of the play. I can tell that the actors must read the lines thousands time and eliminate what would Romeo and Juliet think in their mind. Because it is not enough to say the lines with emotion on the stage, audiences need more descriptions from the actors. Only when the actors fully understand the plot, emotions of the character, they can act their character lively. Lastly, this is the only version that shows on stage. It is the simplest, it has no background music, no fancy costumes and no detailed environment on the back. It is the hardest situation for audiences to understand, but the actors, who express their emotions in the tones and body languages, make this version that impresses me the most.

The other versions of the Balcony scene are also good. The actors also say their lines with emotion, but still not as real as Royal Shakespeare Company's. Furthermore, I think the cartoon version is very interesting. It uses modern language, and put many jokes, funny scene into the plot. It is like a Disney movie and I think it is really cool. After all, a good play is based on the great understanding of the characters and great actors who act the characters out. The details such as tones, body languages and understanding make big differences in a play. This is the power of details!

In Class Writing 9/13

• Firstly, we should understand a play is made not only by the literature. We should read the play, but we have to understand it in a different way than reading an article.
• To get to know the play better, it is important to look the play as "a little planet". We should know the details about the play, and see the play as a whole story. This will help us to analysis the play better. 
• Knowing that there is no quescident in every plays. The actors' action, language, and clothes all contains something that the play want to show to the audiences. There is always a deep meaning that hides in every plays. And always have some questions when we are reading the or seeing a play, those questions will help us to get into the deeper part of the plays.

• I am confused about that about owning the changes. It is hard for me to find the specific changes like people's emotion in a play. And I am confused about how to get the main ideas from the play.
• I want to know more about after we understand the reading, what we can do to perform the play in a good way.
• I want to know more about how we can show our understanding to the audiences by a play. For example, after we know the setting, how to tell the audiences? how to light the scene? How to express our feeling through the actors?

The Way To The Goal

Rujian, Zhou

9/11/2016

The Way To The Goal

   “All roads lead to Rome” Like this famous phrase says, there are uncountable ways to achieve a goal. I think it is more important to choose the way than to achieve the goal itself. If a person chose a bloody, evil, unjust way to achieve his goal, then all he will get is the bad end. Just like King Claudius in Hamlet, who chose an evil way to achieve his ambition and die at the end.

   King Claudius is the villain. He is greedy, that he wants to be the King of Denmark; merciless, that he kills the old King with poison; and evil, that he sets up the fencing fight between Hamlet and Laertes. Especially in the last scene, Claudius’ actions show he chose a bloody, evil, unjust way. Claudius sets up a fencing fight between Hamlet and Laertes in order to kill Hamlet. Before the fight, Claudius prepares poisoned wine for Hamlet, even though Laertes also prepares a poisoned sword. After Hamlet wins Laertes the second times, the queen goes up and drinks the poisoned wine. The queen dies, and Claudius’ plan goes wrong. After that, Laertes tells Hamlet, that the poisoned wine is prepared by Claudius in order to kill Hamlet. At the end, the angry Hamlet attacks Claudius and kill him.

   During the last scene, Claudius tries to kill Hamlet because Hamlet knows Claudius kills the old king. At the point, Hamlet is a threat to his power. But Claudius can not just kill Hamlet directly because he has no reasons to justify. Then he uses Laertes as his sword to kill Hamlet. Laertes is very angry about the death of his sister Ophelia and his father Polonius, and he wants to avenge for them. From here, the audience can know that Claudius thinks a lot in his mind. Claudius is not stupid, but he uses his brain in evil ways. For example, he poisoned the old king from the ear, which make the death does not look like murder. Moreover, Claudius knows Laertes has the poisoned sword, but Claudius still prepares the poisoned wine. Claudius want to put Hamlet into a 100% death! All of these, Claudius just want to protect his power. We can see Claudius is such a greedy and brutal person. He can do everything to achieve his goal. Lastly, when the queen drinks the poisoned wine, Claudius does not show his sadness. Even though he tries to stop the queen, but he also knows he can not let other people know about the poisoned wine because he still hopes to kill Hamlet. So Claudius sees the queen drink the wine and dies. What a brutal, ruthless and coldblooded person Claudius is!

For all these things he down in the last scene, he just wants Hamlet to die in order to remain him as a king. Also, Claudius killed Hamlet’s father to become the new king. Claudius’ large goal in the play is to maintain his power. He wants to be the king, who control the countries and millions of people. As a villain in the play, Claudius shows all the dark side of the people. So he chose the bad way to achieve his goal. Neither to poisoned the old king, nor to kill Hamlet is right. These wrong ways harm Claudius and lead him to death.

Claudius gets what he deserves. It is very important to choose the ways, even though people with skills and knows exactly what their goals are, without going through  a right way, they will not succeed. Like “To be or not to be”, choosing the way to the goal is always a question. For Hamlet is the same, if he chose another way to achieve his avenge, a way that has less madness, crazy, struggles, and deaths, will he has a good ending?

James' Hamlet Scene Analysis

An Extraordinary Ending

In my opinion, the most interesting scene in the play is the last scene, when Hamlet fights with Laertes. The last scene is always the most important scene in a play because it has to give the ending of the play, and the quality of the play largely determined by the ending. So Hamlet's last scene has to conclude all the storyline in the play. This scene is memorable because all of the main characters, who are alive appear in this scene, and all the actions of the characters combine in the scene. For example, Hamlet wants to kill Claudius to revenge for the old King; Claudius wants to kill Hamlet to keep his crown; Laertes wants to kill Hamlet for Ophelia. All these setting come together at this scene and make it like a huge party, and this makes me, as an audience excited. More importantly, the ending scene concludes the play with emotions - sad, regrets, anger and many others. Hamlet feels sad and angers his own fate of being killed by the poisoned knife; Laertes regrets about his dishonor behaviors and the King was anger by losing the power, and the Queen was sad because of the King's poisoned wine. All the actions, thoughts, and emotions of the characters make the scene reach the maximum point of the play, then suddenly the all the characters die and the scene become silence. I like the way how Shakespeare ended the play, the raise, and drop of the plot fit with the story. It is an extraordinary ending that concluding the entire play as a tragedy, this is why the last scene in the most interesting scene to me.

Hamlet Interview

Rujian Zhou

9/4/2016

The Monologue From Soul

Hamlet as one of the most famous plays in the world, it has many unique and attractive dialogues. “To be or not to be” is the best-known line of the world theaters, which is a monologue from Hamlet at act.3. It describes the identity of character Hamlet, which shows the unique emotions on Hamlet as well as let all the audiences wonder the meaning of the monologue. So I agree with Benedict Cumberbatch says in the interview, the monologue “to be or not to be” should be a monologue and it allows audiences to empathizes with Hamlet.

   In my opinion, Hamlet stands as one of the greatest play for hundreds of years, one of the reason is because it has extraordinary dialogues that make all the characters alive. “To be or not to be” is one of them, it shows the struggles in Hamlet’s heart, it shows the pains, the wonders, the anger and many other emotions from Hamlet. When Hamlet says this monologue, he is crazy, or he is pretending crazy, the monologue shows the emotion to audiences with specific words. For example, “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles” shows the struggle of Hamlet. In my mind, Hamlet speaks out his anger of the unjust in the world. He was angry of his father’s died and his mother’s faithlessness, and this makes him think about revenge. This monologue is similar to many other dialogues in the play, which it does not simply describe the emotion, but hiding the emotion behind those specific words. And those words affect audiences to think and try to understand the characters. It is the words spoken from the soul of Hamlet.

Benedict Cumberbatch says in the interview, “to find the needs to say it” is what is in his mind when his Hamlet say “To be or not to be”. This impressive me very much, because I think the same way. Hamlet, as a play that made 400 years ago, it is amazing not only because of its story but because the way Shakespeare write it. Instead of writing directly that make every character have a clear identity, Shakespeare wrote the only the dialogues of the characters. The dialogues can easy find the needs of different people in different time, this makes the playlists for so many years. In different times, people think in different ways. But this “unclear” monologue let all the people can have their own thinkings about the characters. When the audiences curious about the personalities of Hamlet and try to understand Hamlet, they empathize Hamlet without notice.

“There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes” The success of Hamlet is not only because of the story, but also it has spaces to let audiences empathize the characters in different time. The power of the language has more effects than people knows, the monologue stands as the soul of the Hamlet and effect many people over 400 years. To be, or not to be: that is the question: