Elizabethan England
The year 1588 saw two events which are of great symbolic importance for the English nation: the defeat of the so-called “invincible Spanish Armada” by the English fleet, and the building of yet another theatre in London called “The Rose”, the remains of which were found in 1989. Together these two events are part of what is called the Elizabethan Age. This is the queen this era is named after.
Who is Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen?
The plot of this famous tragedy is a familiar one about love reaching across the barriers of family and convention. This is the Italian city where the action of the play unfolds.
What is Verona?
These are the two distinct factors that dominated the development of Modern English: Shakespeare’s works and the translation of this book into English.
What is the translation of the King James Bible in 1611?
These are the two characters who are in love and have run away together from Athens.
Who are Hermia and Lysander?
This is the scene in which the weird sisters/the witches say: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: // Hover through the fog and filthy air."
What is scene 1 of Act I?
The River Thames was vital to London at Shakespeare’s time. London Bridge was the only bridge across the river and gained a greater importance as London spread to the south of the Thames, where the places of entertainment were built: theatres and bull baiting arenas, in which dogs attacked these chained animals.
What are bears?
The young lovers Romeo and Juliet are members of two influential and rivaling Italian families. These are the names of the two families.
What are the Capulets and the Montagues?
William Shakespeare is celebrated as a poet and playwright, admired for the inventiveness and beauty of his language. What is perhaps less widely known is that many words and idiomatic phrases that are common in Modern English were actually coined by the old Bard, for instance 'bloody', 'castigate' and 'impartial'. This is when Shakespeare was born and when he died.
What is 1564-1616? Do you think you were close enough to get the points?!
In the play humans don't usually rhyme, but the fairies do. This is what we should make of the fact that the two lovers start rhyming in the woods in scene 2 of Act II.
What is that the two lovers are clearly influenced by the surroundings in which magical creatures live?
This is the scene and act where Macbeth says: "So foul and fair a day I have not seen", thus linking him to the weird sisters.
What is scene 3 of Act I?
Then as now, the great cities attracted people from the countryside. The greatest cities or towns in England were Norwich, York and Bristol with about 20,000 inhabitants each. By many standards, that was considered as many, but nothing compared with London, which was growing rapidly in the latter half of the 16th century. It is estimated that London grew from 100,000 to about 200,000 inhabitants during Shakespeare’s lifetime. This is the number of people that lived in England around the year 1600.
What is 4 million people?
The first 14 lines of the Romeo and Juliet excerpt read on the Shakespeare day take the literary form of this type of poem, that is from the line 'If I profane with my unworthiest hand' to the line 'Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take'. We are looking for a word beginning with the letter 's'.
What is a sonnet?
The possessive pronouns ‘thine’ and ‘thy’ are analogous to ‘your’ and ‘yours’ of today. This is when we use 'thine', and this is when we use 'thy'.
What is that ‘thine’ is to be used before a vowel while ‘thy’ is used before a consonant as in “This above all: to thine own self be true” (Macbeth, Act I, Scene III) and “In thy face I see the map of honour, truth and loyalty” (Henry VI)?
This is the reason why the following line spoken by Lysander is a pun, a play on words: "For lying so, // Hermia, I do not lie."
What is that the verb 'to lie' can both mean 'to be false, to not tell the truth' and 'to lie down, to recline'?
This is the scene where Lady Macbeth speaks her famous words: "Come, you Spirits // That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, // And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full // Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, // Stop up th' access and passage to remorse;", indicating that she does, in fact, harbour female virtues and characteristics.
What is scene 5 of Act 1?
To those whose conscience could not accept the religious conditions in England around the year 1600, a new opportunity was open: emigration to the new colonies in America. Puritans crowded the ships together with country folks ambitious to have their own land, adventurers prepared to try anything that might make their fortune, and criminals escaping justice. The first colony in The New World, Virginia, was named after Queen Elizabeth, who remained unmarried all her life. This is the name of the first permanent English settlement in Virginia and in North America.
What is Jamestown (1607), named after King James I?
It is clear to see that the almost divine love between Romeo and Juliet in scene V of Act I can only be described through the vocabulary ['holy shrine', 'pilgrim', 'saints', 'sin', 'devotion', 'prayer', 'purged'] of ...
What is religion?
A heated debate in which two sides were formed, one that argued that the influx of foreign words must be condemned since it was a danger to the English language and culture, and another side that saw the influx as an enrichment of the English language and argued that a language will and must change with the times.
What is the Inkhorn Controversy?
This is how Lysander speaks: "One turf shall serve as pillow for us both", and this is the way Puck, the spirit in the woods, speaks: "Through the forest have I gone." Here, we are looking for the difference between the way humans and fairies/spirits speak.
What is that humans speak in iambic pentametre lines whereas magical creatures speak in trochees?
This is the scene where the following words are spoken by the Captain and King Duncan: Captain: "But the Norweyan Lord, surveing vantage, // With furbish'd arms, and new supplies of men, // Began a fresh assault." Duncan: "Dismay'd not this // Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?" Captain: "Yes; // As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion."
What is scene 2 of Act II?
In Spain the news of the execution of Catholic Mary Stuart by Protestant Queen Elizabeth and the English support of the nationalists in the Netherlands, who were fighting against Spanish rule, was received as a challenge which could not remain unanswered. In 1588 a fleet of about 130 ships with about 30,000 men was sent to England as an invasion army. However, what happened was symbolic of England’s rise and Spain’s decline on the world scene. This is the number of ships that made it back to Spain.
What is 22? Do you think you were close enough to get the points?!
In the famous balcony scene of scene 2 of Act II, Juliet says to Romeo: "How camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore? // The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, // And the place death, considering who thou art, // If any of my kinsmen find thee here." And Romeo replies: "With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls; // For stony limits cannot hold love out,". This is the symbolic and sexual reference that Romeo makes here.
What is that Romeo's climbing the orchard walls is comparable to his penetrating the virgin Juliet?
This is what it means that a line like “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is a so-called iambic pentameter line.
What is that the stress of an iamb - there are five iambs in one line - is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in e.g., ‘alone’ or ‘above’?
These are places in scene 1 of Act III where we can (perhaps?) see the fun in Quince's, Snug's, Bottom's, Flute's, Snout's and Starveling's conversations in the woods.
What are the names of the craftsmen, the fact that women cannot tolerate to see blood and killings (the sword), that they will be afraid of the lion, the writing of two prologues in which women will be told that a play is being performed and that the lion is no real lion?
This is where we find the Porter Scene, the scene functioning as comic relief in the play.
What is scene 3 of Act II?