English at Brockington
A Guide to Year 9
Romeo and Juliet
Topic Overview
Romeo is your last topic of the school year. It is mostly simply learning about the play before studying it at GCSE level. It is in many ways a much less intensive topic compared to the others, especially after you have done your written tests in the topic.
You will begin by looking into the Elizabethan era and the particular beliefs of the people of the time. In particular you will explore honour, spiritual beliefs, marriage and the roles of men and women in society. This will help you understand the play and you will begin to see just how controversial its intended audience may have found it.
With this in mind you will begin to look into the play itself. As in the previous topic, you will also evaluate characters and how they change through the story, if at all.
Skills
This topic introduces many different writing techniques to you and allows you to see them in use. A single essential skill for your GCSEs is the ability to understand and analyse Shakespeare’s writing. You need to be able to understand exactly what the characters mean when they say certain words – such as “wherefore” meaning “why”.
You will also begin to understand oxymorons (two words that contradict each other – “found missing” etc.), foreshadowing (showing what will happen before it does – can often make something more tragic when it goes wrong), dramatic irony (when the audience knows something the characters do not) and many other techniques used by him in this play.
Recommended Reading? Well… Watching
Romeo and Juliet is a play, not a book, so instead of reading, I would rather recommend you watch a performance of this play and/or others (especially Shakespeare plays) and take in the atmosphere of the play and theatre. This will greatly assist you in this topic. It is so much better to understand how it was meant to be performed rather than simply reading it as you miss so much.
What you could do is read the play first before watching it so you can see just how different the two can make a story feel.
