mrs p-c blog essai

Prologue and Act I scene 1 (down to "Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!" - Norton Shakespeare edition from line 1 to line 68).

READ the passage in the original version while WATCHING the 2 following video excerpts. Then go to JEOPARDY LABS to revise the questions done in class. Then VOTE: which film adaptation is your favourite?

Here is Luhrmann's adaptation (1996) of the PROLOGUE and ACT I scene 1.
Romeo + Juliet Opening par gmprunner

PROLOGUE = (from the Greek – 'before speech'): the opening section of a work; a kind of introduction which is part of the work and not prefatory. It was common in drama in the 17^th and 18^th c., when it was often in verse. Occasionally found in novels. In plays the prologue is usually a chorus. The most famous example in English literature is Chaucer's General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.

_{Source: Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory by J.A.Cuddon, 1976, 3^rd edition.}

SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET:

• A sonnet: the term derives from the Italian sonetto, 'a little sound' or 'song'. The ordinary sonnet consists of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameters* with considerable variations in rhyme scheme. The 3 basic sonnet forms are:

#the Petrarchan sonnet: an octave (abba abba) + a sestet (cde cde /or/ cd cd cd)

#the Spenserian sonnet: 3 quatrains (abab bcbc cdcd) + a couplet (ee)

#the Shakespearean sonnet: 3 quatrains (abab cdcd efef) + a couplet (gg)

The Petrarchan sonnet is the most common. The octave develops one thought; then, there is a turn or 'volta' and the sestet grows out of the octave, varies it and completes it.

In the Spenserian and Shakespearean sonnets, a different idea is expressed in each quatrain; each one grows out of the one preceding it; and everything is tied up in the binding-end couplet.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets – printed in 1609. Sonnets were usually used in love poetry in the Elizabethan era.

_{Source: adapted from Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory by J.A.Cuddon, 1976, 3^rd edition.}