romeo and juliet sonnet assignment

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Home » Essays and Notes » Sonnets in Romeo and Juliet

Sonnets in Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare, who had begun writing his sonnets sometime in the 1590's, decided that the form would be useful in Romeo and Juliet . In fact, he wrote four sonnets in the play. The first, spoken by a chorus, opens Act 1 . The second appears in Act 1, Scene 5 , and it is dialogue spoken by Romeo and Juliet. The chorus returns to open Act 2 with another sonnet. And the play closes fittingly with  an abbreviated sonnet  — the first two quatrains, like Romeo and Juliet, missing.

The opening sonnet, which gives away the plot including the ending before any characters even step onstage, does not appear in the 1623 First Folio edition. It only appears in the earlier quarto editions. Why was it cut from the Folio? For that matter, why did Shakespeare feel the need to reveal the plot and ending at the opening of the first performances of this play? We can only speculate, so here is one theory. When  Romeo and Juliet  first appeared onstage about 1595, Shakespeare's early reputation was built on a handful of histories and comedies. His only tragedy to that date (and that's using the term loosely) was  Titus Andronicus , which is more in the genre of  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre . Audiences who enjoyed  The Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona,   A Comedy of Errors,   Love's Labor's Lost  and perhaps  A Midsummer Night's Dream  would have expected to see  Romeo and Juliet  end with at least one marriage. They would not have been prepared to see Mercutio's and Tybalt's corpses lying in pools of blood midway through the play, nor to witness Romeo and Juliet commit a double suicide in a dark tomb in the middle of the night at the end of Act 5. An audience must be prepared for what it is about to watch. Four centuries later Stephen Sondheim learned this with  A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum .

The early out-of-town previews of  Forum  opened with a sweet love ballad,  Love is in the Air . Audiences didn't like the play. Sondheim asked Jerome Robbins, with whom he had worked on West Side Story,  their modern version of  R&J , for advice. Robbins told Sondheim to write a new opening song that told the audience they were about to see a vaudevillian burlesque comedy, not a love story. Sondheim wrote  Comedy Tonight , a long hilarious song that ended with:

–No royal curse, no Trojan horse, And a happy ending, of course! Goodness and badness, Panic is madness This time it all turns out all right! Tragedy tomorrow, Comedy tonight!

The play became an immediate success.

Perhaps Shakespeare encountered a similar problem with  Romeo and Juliet,  so he wrote this sonnet to prepare his audiences for what they were about to experience comedy tomorrow, tragedy tonight. By the time the First Folio was assembled seven years after Shakespeare's death,  Romeo and Juliet  had been performed and published numerous times. In addition, all of Shakespeare's great tragedies were well established in the public mind. Finally, the First Folio actually grouped the plays, for the first time, as —Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Perhaps John Heminge and Henry Condell, who assembled the First Folio, felt this opening sonnet was superfluous and no longer served its original purpose.This, of course, is speculation. Some scholars believe that while printing the First Folio someone simply forgot to include the opening sonnet. Also speculation, but also possible.

In the second sonnet in  Act 1 Scene 5 , Shakespeare plays with the structure of the sonnet. Romeo and Juliet speak a sonnet in dialogue, slightly altering the rhyme scheme. Romeo speaks the first quatrain and Juliet the second. These two quatrains are cleverly linked. Rather than the normal rhyme scheme, ABAB CDCD, the quatrains rhyme ABAB CBCB. Juliet simply repeats Romeo's —this kiss rhyme, coquettishly tweaking —kiss metaphorically. They then alternate lines in the third quatrain after which each speaks one line of the closing couplet. And then he kisses her.

Romeo's reference to Juliet's person as —this holy shrine, contrasts with Juliet's later biting reference to Romeo as — this gorgeous palace , when she hears that Romeo has killed her cousin. Both metaphors are echoed about fifteen years later near the end of Shakespeare's career   when  Miranda in The Tempest speaks of Ferdinand in a similar figure of speech. Here Shakespeare's extended metaphor to a holy shrine, sin, devotion, saints, palms and palmers, prayers and faith is considered, in rhetorical terms, a conceit . And Shakespeare, being Shakespeare, probably loved the underlying irony of invoking all these spiritual references in the service of a sexual seduction.

Another standard sonnet opens Act 2 , and serves as a transition between the two acts. And fittingly, Romeo and Juliet  ends with an abbreviated sonnet — the first two quatrains, like Romeo and Juliet, are missing. The simplicity of the metaphor is strikingly beautiful. The dark night of this tragedy, the deaths of the two lovers in a tomb, gives birth as dawn breaks to a peaceful amity between their families, but it is a glooming morning peace.

For more on how Shakespeare used sonnets in his plays during this period of his career, see the  Post  and the  Notes on  Richard III' s, —Now is the winter of our discontent.

Richard III , Romeo and Juliet , The Tempest

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Sonnets in Romeo and Juliet

Learn about the structure and purpose of sonnets through one of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays. Includes student activities and thought provoking discussion questions. Vocabulary sheet included.

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Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet : ‘You Kiss by the Book’

Romeo and Juliet in the balcony scene.

Wikimedia Commons

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet presents "star-cross'd" lovers whose plight has become the subject of many of today's novels, plays, films, and television dramas. Explore with your students the techniques that Shakespeare uses to capture the magic of the couple's first meeting and to make that meeting so memorable. This lesson plan complements the study of plot and characterization in Romeo and Juliet in its focus on lyrical form and convention that heighten the impact of the action on the stage.

Students look first at the sonnet in which Romeo and Juliet meet, analyzing the imagery to gain insight into the way Shakespeare's use of love sonnet conventions characterizes the moment and the relationship between the lovers. Then students act the passage to notice Shakespeare's stage managing of this moment and to consider what perspective his making the lovers almost literally "kiss by the book" lends to our perception of their characters. Finally, students enact the scene in which this moment occurs in order to notice how Shakespeare's juxtaposition of poetic forms, ranging from the almost-prose of Capulet and the Nurse to the melodramatic style of Tybalt, further highlights the sonnet of the lovers. To conclude, students work in groups to find and examine similar moments in the play (e.g., the balcony scene or the tomb scene) where Shakespeare spotlights the action through lyric form and at the same time invites us to explore and question the idealization of lyric conventions by having the characters act out these conceits on stage.

Guiding Questions

How does Shakespeare's use of different lyric forms and conventions heighten the action in Romeo and Juliet?

How do these lyric forms and conventions differentiate and strengthen characterization in Romeo and Juliet?

What is the difference between love and desire?

Learning Objectives

Recognize and understand Shakespeare's use of poetic conventions as a principle of dramatic structure in Romeo and Juliet

Recount and explain the first meeting between Romeo and Juliet as an enactment of figurative language in a context of competing poetic styles

Identify and explain the use of poetic forms to impart perspective in later episodes of the play

Examine other Shakespearean plays, using close reading techniques, including analysis of verse structure and imagery

Lesson Plan Details

The EDSITEment-reviewed Teaching Shakespeare website, published by the Folger Shakespeare Library, offers the following textual history of Romeo and Juliet , situating its writing, performance, and publication in the last years of the 16th-century:

"Scholars generally date the writing of Romeo and Juliet to 1595-96, near in time to the composition of A Midsummer Night's Dream . Shakespeare based the plot on several sources, including Arthur Brooke's Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet . Romeo and Juliet was published as a quarto in 1597. A fuller text of the play, which has served as the basis of all subsequent editions, appeared in quarto in 1599."

For information about the play, its history, its staging, Shakespeare, and more lesson plans, explore the Royal Shakespeare Company's educational website for a rich portal of resources on  Romeo and Juliet .

The sonnet form, explored in the lesson activities below, was popularized by the 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch, who established the custom of presenting a problem, situation, or incident in the octave, followed by a resolution in the sestet. In Petrarch's work, these were usually problems, situations, and incidents arising from his love for the unattainable Laura. When English poets began imitating Petrarch's sonnets in the early 16th century, they continued this thematic focus on the pleasures and frustrations of love. But English poets eventually developed a more flexible sonnet form which could be divided into octave and sestet, in the manner of Petrarch, or into three quatrain-length variations on a theme followed by an epigrammatic couplet. More information about the Petrarchan and English sonnet forms is provided in " Poetic Form: Sonnet " via the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets .

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

• Review the lesson plan and the websites used throughout. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and websites. Download and print out documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.
• An online text of the entire play  is available from MIT's Complete Works of William Shakespeare website. 
• Another  e-text of Romeo and Juliet can be found in Folger Digital Texts from the Folger Shakespeare Library.
• Review the first sonnet in Samuel Daniel's sonnet sequence, "Delia," which was published in 1592. The poem is available in Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles: Delia - Diana by Henry Constable and Samuel Daniel from Project Gutenberg by scrolling down to the poem, TO DELIA.

Activity 1. Analyzing the Text

Begin this lesson by having students turn to the first meeting between Romeo and Juliet at the Capulet ball, in Act I, Scene 5 (lines 95-112 ) in the Folger Shakespeare Library digital edition. 

Have students count the lines and examine the rhyme scheme; ask them if it looks familiar. Point out to students that these lines make up a sonnet, followed by a sonnet quatrain. Review briefly the distinction between a Shakespearean or English sonnet, which divides its 14 lines into three quatrains and a couplet, with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg ; and a Petrarchan sonnet, which divides its 14 lines into an eight line octave and a six line sestet, with the rhyme scheme abbaabba cdecde . Discuss briefly with students the history of the sonnet form (detailed in Background, above) or have them research the form at the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets .

For practice understanding the sonnet form, teachers can assign either (or both) of the following activities:

• Sonnet Unscrambler , which is available as an Online Interactive . In this activity, students attempt to put the sonnet back in its proper order (best assigned in class to prevent students from simply using a search engine to discover the answer).
• Parts of a Sonnet , which is available as a PDF worksheet . In this activity, students use the hints from the "Bank" to fill in the rhyme scheme, names, and other parts of both forms of the sonnet.

When students are finished with any of the above activities, ask them:

• Why is a sonnet an appropriate poetic form with which to bring the two lovers together in Shakespeare's play?
• What did poets typically use sonnets for at the time when Shakespeare was writing Romeo and Juliet, in the early 1590s?

Provide students with a sample of Elizabethan sonnet writing to help them recognize the significance of Shakespeare's use of this poetic form—for example, "Sonnet I" in Samuel Daniel's sonnet sequence, Delia , which was published in 1592. The worksheet Reading Delia—Sonnet 1 (PDF) contains questions to guide student reading. Have students examine "Sonnet 1" for conceits and other descriptive language. Remind students that a conceit is an extended metaphoric comparison that establishes parallels between two seemingly dissimilar things or situations. Petrarch established the practice of including conceits in sonnets by using elaborate comparisons to praise his lady's beauty and portray his own suffering. Students might note, for example, that Daniel continues this tradition by describing himself first as a river drawn to the ocean of his lady's beauty and later as a business ledger in which his lady may see how much emotion he has invested in her. Finally, ask students to consider the name Daniel has chosen for his lady. "Delia" is an anagram of "Ideal." Like most ladies in Elizabethan love sonnets, she is indeed a distant ideal, more inspirational than attainable, ennobling his verse with her virtue and beauty.

Now have students look at what Shakespeare has made of these conventions in his play. First ask students to explain Romeo's conceit of pilgrimage, and then to consider other aspects of the poem. Consider breaking students into groups to discuss the following questions:

• What is a pilgrimage?
• Who is the pilgrim here?
• Who is the holy saint?
• How does the conceit characterize the relationship between the two soon-to-be-lovers?
• How does the wittiness and word-play with which they develop the conceit play off against their metaphoric roles?
• To what extent is Romeo really the unworthy suitor of the sonnet tradition?
• To what extent is Juliet really the idealized paragon of virtue?
• How are the lines divided between the two speakers in the sonnet?
• How does this compare with the speaker addressing his unresponsive lady in "Delia"?
• Whose sonnet is this, in the end?

Finally, look at the "extra" quatrain that follows Romeo and Juliet's sonnet. Ask students the following questions:

• How does the playful exchange of "sins" here look forward to the tragic outcome of the play?
• How does Juliet's closing, "You kiss by the book," reflect on this little episode? What does she mean?

Students might suggest, for example, that Romeo is following the sonneteers' recipe for courtship too diligently, or that he is taking her words too literally. Perhaps she is suggesting that his kisses are somehow make-believe, like sonnet conceits. If so, ask students to consider how does Juliet stepping out of their conceit with this line characterize her role in their relationship? How does it look forward to her actions later in the play?

Activity 2. The Text Alive

As usual, Shakespeare's poetic artistry in this passage is only half the story. To explore the drama he has built into these lines, have two student volunteers act this episode, taking direction from members of the class.

Ask students what actions fit these words. For example, what is Romeo doing as he speaks his first four lines? Perhaps more importantly, what is Juliet doing? How does Romeo catch and hold her attention? How does she react? What is the exchange of gestures in this first moment of their relationship? Have students experiment to find a way of playing Romeo's first lines that sets the stage for Juliet to enter into the conceit and extend it with her answering quatrain.

Proceed in this detailed way through the remaining fourteen lines of the scene, encouraging students to experiment with various deliveries of the lines and to draw from Shakespeare's verse the implicit stage directions for this key moment of his drama. How does he bring the relationship of the imagery and word-play of his poetry to life on the stage? Are the lovers caught up in their conceit, or do they speak with a tone of self-awareness, using the conceit as a way of signaling their intentions to one another? Focus especially on the dynamics of the two kisses in the episode, the first marked by stillness ("Then move not"), the second by impulse ("Give me my sin again"). How far has the relationship moved between these two moments? How does this "extra" kiss reflect on the elaborate build-up to the first one? How does it look forward to the impulsiveness that will lead to tragedy later in the play?

Acting this episode brings out the importance of Juliet's closing line, "You kiss by the book." In the text, this can seem a throwaway; on stage, it is clearly the clincher. Have students experiment with a variety of ways Juliet might deliver the line, in order to notice how it characterizes her relationship with and her attitude toward Romeo. (Her tone and manner might be anything from a dreamy "You really know how to kiss!" to a sarcastic "You've got a lot to learn about kissing.") Help students notice, too, that by giving her this last line, Shakespeare has effectively given her control over the episode, made her step out of their charade and comment on it. What does this suggest about her character as compared to Romeo's? What does it suggest about the tone and manner in which she should

Activity 3. The Text in Context

To gauge the full dramatic effect of the sonnet Shakespeare created for the first meeting between Romeo and Juliet, it is necessary to see it in the context of the action surrounding it at the Capulet ball. Have student volunteers take the roles of Capulet, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, and the Nurse, and read the scene from Capulet's "Go to, go to!" through Romeo's couplet, "Is she a Capulet?/ O dear account! My life is my foe's debt" (Act I, Scene 5, lines 84-120 in the Signet edition).

Call attention to the fact that, while all these characters speak in verse, each speaks in a distinctive poetic style. Have students describe each style and explain how Shakespeare achieves it.

• What makes Capulet's speech seem naturalistic and near to prose?
• What makes Tybalt's pair of couplets seem exceptionally formal, almost posed, like a stage villain's aside?
• What gives the Nurse's short speech an informal, chatty, prose-like tone?

As your student volunteers read through the scene, ask the class to note the effect of the shifts in tone that Shakespeare has built into it.

• How do the formal verse forms of Tybalt and the lovers stand out against the more naturalistic verse of Capulet and the Nurse?
• How do the verse forms of these younger characters in the scene stand out against one another?
• In what sense do the characters who speak in formal poetry stand out because of their words?
• To what degree does the extended formality of Romeo and Juliet's meeting—and their action within that formality—deepen the poetic lighting of their moment together?

Divide the class into study groups and have each develop a stage interpretation of this short passage in Romeo and Juliet , based on the dramatic effects Shakespeare creates through poetic style and verse form. Encourage students to imagine in detail how this stretch of action might be performed, to play out various scenarios in their discussions. When they have finished, have each group share its staging, and then debate as a class which ideas seem to capture best that first meeting of the lovers on the Elizabethan stage.

Activity 4. The Text Extended

Conclude this lesson by having students work individually or in groups to find other moments in Romeo and Juliet where Shakespeare spotlights the action through poetic form and language. Students might look at the balcony scene (Act II, Scene 2), the bedroom scene (Act III, Scene 5, which is modeled on the aubade, a lyric of dawn-parting), the tomb scene (Act V, Scene 3), and so on. Have students prepare production notes for their chosen scene, explaining how they would direct the action, with special attention to how they would have their actors perform the richly poetic language Shakespeare gives them. Should the characters seem exalted by this language? Should they always seem not quite able to measure up to their high-flown words? Should they seem, like Juliet leaving Romeo at the ball, somehow independent of this poetic language, as if endowed with a life of their own?

To evaluate students' skills in sonnet analysis, give them (individually or in groups) a Shakespearean and/or a Petrarchan sonnet to analyze for its physical and meaning structures, identifying the rhyme scheme, discussing the prevailing conceit and imagery, and explaining the couplet's ending comment. For practice examining sonnet structures, ask students to play Sonnet Unscrambler .

To evaluate students' understanding of the text in context, assess the thoroughness of their production notes created in their groups as they analyzed the language of their selected scenes and explained their direction of the action.

To evaluate students' skills in applying their knowledge of the text in a new context, give them (individually or in groups) a cutting they have not analyzed earlier, such as a portion of the duel scene (Act III, Scene 1, lines 35-90), explaining to them the Elizabethan uses of "thee" and "thou." Have them examine the dialogue for that usage, explaining its impact on action and characterizations in the scene.

• Romeo and Juliet is an effective play with which to introduce students to Shakespeare's stage and stagecraft. For background, visit " Teaching Romeo and Juliet ," available via the EDSITEment-reviewed Folger  Shakespeare Institute.

The following EDSITEment lesson plans, both of which take sonnets as their subject matter, have activities that would prove useful in the first activity of this lesson:

• Listening to Poetry: Sounds of the Sonnet
• Preparing for Poetry: A Reader's First Steps

EDSITEment's " A Teacher's Guide for Shakespeare "

Materials & Media

You kiss by the book': worksheet 1, you kiss by the book': worksheet 2, you kiss by the book': worksheet 3, you kiss by the book': worksheet 4, related on edsitement, a midsummer night's dream : conflict resolution and happy endings, shakespeare's othello and the power of language, shakespeare's macbeth : fear and the motives of evil, shakespeare's "macbeth": fear and the "dagger of the mind".

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet Shakescleare Translation

• Downloadable translations of all 37 Shakespeare plays (plus his sonnets).
• Downloads of 1,912 LitCharts Lit Guides.
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• Explanations and citation info for 42,282 quotes across 1912 books.
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Romeo and Juliet Translation Table of Contents

The Shakescleare version of Romeo and Juliet contains the complete original play alongisde a line-by-line modern English translation. Now you can easily understand even the most complex and archaic words and phrases word spoken by Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Friar Laurence, the Nurse, Tybalt, and all the Capulets and Montagues, throughout the entire play, including famous quotes like "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" and "Parting is such sweet sorrow / That I shall say good night till it be morrow."

Act 1, Scene 1

Act 1, scene 2, act 1, scene 3, act 1, scene 4, act 1, scene 5, act 2, prologue, act 2, scene 1, act 2, scene 2, act 2, scene 3, act 2, scene 4, act 2, scene 5, act 2, scene 6, act 3, scene 1, act 3, scene 2, act 3, scene 3, act 3, scene 4, act 3, scene 5, act 4, scene 1, act 4, scene 2, act 4, scene 3, act 4, scene 4, act 4, scene 5, act 5, scene 1, act 5, scene 2, act 5, scene 3.

The Shakespearean Sonnet in Romeo Assignment

Some were about romance and tragedy, while others were comedy. He is considered as one of the most talented writers of his time. This essay will talk about the three main sonnets of the story which are the prologue of Act 1 and 2, and the first conversation between Romeo and Juliet. A sonnet is a lyric poem of 14 lines, usually in an iambic pentameter following one or another of several set rhyme-schemes. There are two types sonnets. The first is the Italian or Patrician and the second is the English or Shakespearean.

The Shakespearean sonnet, the form of sonnets that will be explained in this essay, embodies four divisions. The divisions are classified as three quatrains and a rhymed couplet. Thus the typical rhyme-scheme for the English sonnet is “ABA CDC beef egg. ” Sonnets are mainly used to express feelings, ideas, and/or emotions regarding topics such as tragedy and romance. The first sonnet in “Romeo and Juliet” is the Prologue of the story. A prologue is the preface of a play or in other words the introduction. This sonnet is told/ spoken by the chorus of the play directly to the audience.

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This sonnet plays as n introductory to the plays plot. In its fourteen lines it reveals the essence of the plot. It states that the tragedy will involve a pair of ill-fated lovers who by their deaths will end the long and bitter feud that has been raging between their families. The reason Shakespeare chose to include this sonnet is to help the reader understand what the play is all about. The words chosen and the sentences used directly show the author’s emotions towards the theme Of romance and tragedy.

The impact it has on the play is that it foreshadows hat will eventually end of the two lovers, Romeo and Juliet. The second sonnet in “Romeo and Juliet” is line 95 through line 109 in Act 1, scene 5. It is spoken by Romeo and Juliet in the form of a friendly conversation. This sonnet is particular reveals Romeos true and great love for Juliet. This is where the plot begins to build up. Shakespeare revealed Romeos love for Juliet in a form of a sonnet, because sonnets are used to express one’s feelings and emotions towards something.

Here Shakespeare is expressing his feelings and emotions towards love. The effect’s of its language is that, other than explaining what love can be, it shows what Shakespeare thinks of love, and what his emotions are for it. Also this sonnet has a significant impact on the play. First of all, this is where the plays plot begins. Also this is where Romeo tells Juliet his true feelings for her. The third sonnet in ‘Romeo and Juliet” is another prologue. However, this is the prologue, not of the play, but of Act 2. This sonnet is told/spoken by the chorus of the play directly to the audience.

This sonnet plays as an introductory to the plays plot, and reveals some new information about the built plot. Once again in 14 lines this prologue shows and states that Romeos desire and love for Rosalie has gone and has been replaced by his new emotions towards his new love Juliet. It also reveals that Gullet’s emotions are mutual towards Romeo. The prologue also reminds the reader how difficult it will be for the two lovers to express their love to each other publicly and privately. Shakespeare also uses this sonnet to, once again express his feelings towards love.

This sonnet’s effect on the story is that it foreshadows a negative scene or even in the play. This sonnet shows the love between Romeo and Juliet and soon something will happen that will separate the two lovers forever. Shakespeare uses sonnets very well in expressing his feelings and emotions towards strong themes such as love and tragedy. The three sonnets mentions and talked about in this essay show what Shakespeare thinks of love and tragedy, the main themes of the story. They also foreshadow upcoming events such as the tragedy of the two lover’s death.

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Romeo and Juliet - Prologue

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• TEISimple XML (annotated with MorphAdorner for part-of-speech analysis) Download as TEISimple XML (annotated with MorphAdorner for part-of-speech analysis)

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