The method is on Reading Shakespeare: unscramble the syntax, check the false friends, read to the punctuation.
1. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”
Answer 1
Wait — what is that light coming through that window over there? It is the east, and Juliet is the sunrise. Note what a paraphrase loses: “breaks” (violent, sudden) becomes “coming through”. That loss is exactly why we analyse the original rather than the paraphrase.
2. “Deny thy father and refuse thy name; / Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”
Answer 2
Disown your father and give up your name. Or if you will not do that, just swear you love me, and I will stop being a Capulet. Notice the order: she asks him first, and offers herself second. That sequence is worth a paragraph.
3. “A plague o’ both your houses! / They have made worms’ meat of me.”
Answer 3
Curse both your families. They have turned me into food for worms — that is, they have killed me. “Worms’ meat” is the point: Mercutio refuses a dignified death speech and describes his body as material. The joke is still a joke, and it is also his last one.
4. “These violent delights have violent ends, / And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, / Which as they kiss consume.”
Answer 4
Passions this intense end violently; at their high point they destroy themselves, the way fire and gunpowder destroy each other the moment they touch. The Friar says this at the wedding. Ask why Shakespeare puts the play’s clearest warning in the mouth of the man who marries them.
5. Take twenty lines from the scene your group is staging and paraphrase them in the right-hand column of your notebook. Mark the two lines you could not do.
Answer 5
No fixed answer — the marks are the point. Bring them to class; twenty lines paraphrased with two marks is a better use of a period than forty lines skimmed.
Curriculum connection
B2.1
identify a variety of characteristics of literary, informational, and graphic text forms and explain how they help communicate meaning (e.g., explain the function of setting in a short story; explain the function of rhyme in a sonnet; explain the role of a refrain or repeated phrase in a ballad or story; explain the function of transition words in an opinion piece or argument; explain the role of a comparison and contrast structure in a persuasive essay or a book review; explain why some characters in a Shakespeare play speak mainly in verse and others mainly or only in prose)
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B3.1
automatically understand most words in a variety of reading contexts (e.g., idioms, euphemisms, and slang expressions in literary texts; academic and technical terms in reports and essays; the different meanings of a familiar word in different contexts)
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