Act 3 in-class writing

Fact questions:

1. Who killed Mercutio? 

2. Why Romeo has been banished?

3. Where does Romeo hide after he killed Tybalt?

Thinking questions:

1. What are Juliet's mental activities when she knows Romoe kills Tybalt and has been banished? And how does her mind change? And why is this important?

2. Why Nurse says " Shame come to Romeo!" & "Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin?" and then changes to " Hie to your chamber. I'll find Romeo to comfort you." ? How does this show the Nurse's characteristics?

Question 6 on the quiz

Juliet goes back to her room lying on her bed playing with the pillow. Then suddenly she sits up and opens her diary. At this time, Nurse comes in and asks her what was she doing? She jumps up and pushes Nurse out to the room saying, “No, nothing, just enjoying the sweetest moonlight.” Then she locks the door and opens her diary again starts writing.

 Dear diary,
What an unbelievable night! I don’t know how to tell. The only thing I want to do right now is to scream, scream out all my excited. Romeo, Romeo, all because of you Romeo! Let me just forget you are a Montague for a second, the only identity of you is my lover. You are like a gift god gives to me. Ay! Too rash, too unadvised, too sudden! O please, let tomorrow come as quick as possible, I cannot bear the rest of the long time myself. I’m afraid that this gift is just a dream. No matter how charming the rose in the dream, you still could not own it.  So is love. However, the first sunlight will bring the marriage message to you, my dearest Romeo, and we~will~be~together~forever~and~ever. 

Romeo is so excited, he jumps up several times. He waves to the moon and shouts, “She is mine!” and he says, “ I need to write this down, this definitely will be the most memorable night in my life.” And finally he sits on a stone in woods and clears his mind, then he takes his diary out. 

Dear diary,
My heart beats so fast right now. O! My brightest angle, you are the light illumes my night!  I must be the biggest winner tonight because I got you, my love. Your check, your lips, and your eyes are deeply written in my mind, never can be erased. O~ my little princess, let me be your knight to love you, to protect you, to fight for you.   Every word you said is like the sweetest wine, anesthesia me. O! I must be drank! I must cannot fall asleep tonight, let me just be drowned in your embrace, and never leave. Ay, hope you will have a sweetest dream!

Blog post#3 Balcony scene 4 versions

                                      Analysis of Balcony Scene in Romeo & Juliet 

The Balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet is very romantic and dramatic. I think the most important thing for this scene is to make this plot reliable, which can show this couple of young boy and girl’s desire of each other’s love. The four versions I saw was 1963 George Cukor, 1968 Franco Zeffirelli, 2010 Royal Shakespeare and Gnomeo & Juliet: "Balcony" Clip. 

 In my opinion, the most effective version is “2010 Royal Shakespeare” These two actors are not the cutest, but their high acting quality helps portray the scene a lot. Firstly, my overall feeling of this version is these two characters are very lively and reliable. Every single action or facial expression is mimicking the in love young boys and girls in our real life. Here are some examples. When Romeo is staring at Juliet, his coat falls down from his right shoulder, and he does not notice that. This detail shows that Romeo is so in to Juliet, and he pays all his attention to look at her, accomplish her and even forgets to fix his attire. Using a lot of body languages and changing talking tone freely are the strengths of this Romeo. When he says, “see, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that check.” he sighs a little bit, and he uses a kind of self-mockery way to say that line which makes me think he might feel a little bit jealous of that “lucky glove” because he is deeply in love and “Juliet”, this name, is burning his heart; he wants to touch her, to feel her like that little glove. When he hears Juliet says his name, he falls down because it is like a heart-attack for him. He cannot believe his name is saying out from the girl he loves so much. Because of those actions, audiences can easily read his mind. After kissing and talking to Juliet, Romeo jumps high and raises his arm above his head waving about which seems like he wins an important match. He is so excited because he wins his love, and his actions show that clearly to the audiences. And about Juliet, her tone is also very appropriate at every turning point. Her tears even come down in the middle of the scene which makes the character more colorful and emotional. Although this version shows the play on the stage where does not have many varied props, such as trees and moon, these two characters are good enough to qualify this scene. 

 The one I think is the least effective is the “Gnomeo & Juliet: "Balcony" Clip” version. I think one of the reasons is because it is an animation, it needs to make those “little guys” look as lovely as they can, so they are super active which are too much for this kind of scene. For example, the “red hat” and “blue hat” change too many actions at one time. Within only one minute, the “red hat” shakes her head, waves the rose, stands on tiptoe, makes funny face and so on; the “blue hat” touches his head, points to the right side, puts his hands on his hips and raises his eyebrows. Sometimes, actions help develop person’s characteristic, but sometimes, over active might lead to the opposite way. 

About EF's article

Three things I learnt from it/ interesting.

1. The essay tells me to ask as many questions as I could while I am viewing a play. And the way it describes the threater world is interesting. It asks us to imagine the play as a little planet.

2. The essay teaches me an order of viewing a play which is we should focus from the phycial setting, then the plots and finally the characters.

3. Always think more, not only the things we can actually see, but also the meanings and the conflicts behind them which we cannot see directly.

Three things I do not understand.

1. The author uses the planet to symbolize the play/threater world, so the elements the author mentions must represent somethings. I don't know what the "climate" in the paper represent.  Am I thinking too much? Or there actually some deep meaning exists?

2.I have a question. Normally, character is one of the first things we see on the stage. Why the author says we should focus on those characters last?

3. The auther does not mention much about how to read the music. I want to know more about it.

Blog post#2 Motivation&Action

Motivation is very important for both actors and characters. If they show their motivations on stage clearly, that will be easy for audiences to understand the scene, get in to it and even make connections. An overarching goal is builded up by many small goals so that it will be reliable and achievable.

 In one of the scenes, Hamlet asked some actors to play a scene in front of his uncle. The play is about a king's brother poisoned the king and became the new king instead which was exactly the same with what Hamlet's uncle did. In this scene, Hamlet urges the actors to play this scene seriously, and he even asks them to practice it again and again. " Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronouc'd it to you trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as live the town-crier had spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O!" (58, Shakespeare) He shows his concerns clearly because whether the play succeed or not will effect his goal. He even asks Hor. to put an eye on his uncle. And his goal is also shown directly which is to make his uncle feel guilty and see how his uncle react when his uncle watch this play in order to reach his overarching goal---revenge.

What Hamlet does make a big influence because when his uncle watches this play, he even could not hold his emotions because he stands up right in the middle of the play and asks people to give him some light. He needs to take a breathe, and he looks weird which proves his guilty to Hamlet. Hamlet's action succeed, and he reached his goal in this scene. In fact, it is hard to say whether Hamlet's actions help to achieve his big goal or not. Because firstly, he does know his uncle is the murder because of this play, and all the things he has prepared for revenge are meaningful. He will be more determined to kill his uncle. However, his wild ambition is thoroughly exposed. Because after this play, his uncle notices that Hamlet is danger and will do harm to his throne, even his life. As a result, the king decides to send Hamlet to England and kill him. Hamlet actually calls bad influence on himself. 

Any simple actions are able to lead the future to a very different direction. Motivation is the starting point of an action. The motivation of proving the king is guilty starts Hamlet's action of letting his uncle to see the well-prepared play. They connect to each other closely and make the scene reasonable and reliable. Above all, audiences also know Hamlet's big goal which also helps to make this small goal seem reasonable.    

Scene analysis

The most memorable scene for me is when Hamlet goes to see the ghost of the dead king, and the ghost tells him all the truth. I think the plot itself is very impressive. For me, I am really interested in this kind of mysterious stuff. The author used a ghost to lead the beginning of the story which was a very different way and  caught my attention. In that scene, Hamlet feels sick about the relationship between his mother and his step-father. It is not only because his step-father is his uncle, but also because his real father has just died for about two months. He was still overwhelmed by the sadness of losing his father, so he could not accept this inappropriate marriage. This mixture of sad, anger and frustrated is like a seed that has been planted in the character's mind. Naturally, readers all can feel this nervous atmosphere. Then the appearance of the ghost gives Hamlet a reason to break it which is his uncle is the murder.  The seed finally finds the way to growth the embryo. I think this news is like a trigger that makes Hamlet's all emotions explore and starts to revenge. This is also the starting point of the whole play which leaves a deep and strong impression successfully, so it is very memorable.

Why "to be or not to be" is a monologue?

"To be or not to be" is one of the famous sentences in Hamlet. It is very simple and easy to remember. Because it is too simple that can be comprehended to many different meanings. So there is no limits for what should the meaning of this sentence is. To be or not to be, there are only two answers of this question, and each way will lead to an very different ending. Hamlet wanted to claim what he was thinking at that point. Be alive or just die.

 

I totally agree with Cumberbatch that this speech is a soliloquy because it allows the audience to empathize with Hamlet. Dialogue cannot get to this point. I want to connect with a survey that I did in my Spanish class which is something like "which is the best way for you to accept and remember information/knowledge?" According to the result that my teacher told me, most people are either visual type or auditory type. This give me a hint that directly listening and watching will leave a great influence. 

In my opinion, one of the main functions of dialogue is to push the plots and make them become lively, interesting and reliable. Imagine that you are an audience of a live play, no matter what play it is, there is a random dialogue between two characters. You might not fully focus on what they are talking to each other, but you must notice and leave a deep impression in your mind of the fact that they are talking with each other. You will  focus more on their actions more than the content in their dialogue. I think that because for the visual part, you are watching those two characters on the stage directly, and you also can directly see what they are doing. So what you see will naturally leave you a great impression. But the thing is they are talking to each other, as A is talking to B, so B is the person who receive those audio message directly. Audiences are bystanders so the audio message they receive actually is second-hand. What I mean is useless you are mean to know what they are talking about, when you are listening to others' conversation, you might not pay that much attention. 

Instead, monologue is different because you can not only see the actor standing on the stage talking to audiences but also since the actor is talking to audiences, audiences become the direct recipients. So both strong visual and audio impressions will pass to audiences which will call their empathy more easily. Moreover, this speech is a turning point of the play, so it is both important for the character--Hamlet and the plot.