In an elegant orchid garden, with the moonlight peeking through the clouds, Juliet is leaning over the high balcony of her house morose because she might never see Romeo again and frustrated that the only barrier between her and her beloved Romeo is that he is a Montague and she is a Capulet. Unknown to Juliet, Romeo who is hiding underneath her balcony is just as willing to drop his Montague name so that the two lovers can be united in love.
In this scene Shakespeare utilizes emotional dialogue such that even without stage directions, one can almost sense the body language of the characters such as sigh, or a shaking of the head. In addition, what Juliet and Romeo say reflect their inner thoughts and both characters use metaphorical and poetic language to converse.
Initially, I was confused about what Juliet and Romeo were talking about, and the words didn’t make sense because this type of language isn’t what I usually learn of speak in school and in my culture, however as I re-read the scene, I realized that I could relate to the subject of their conversation. In addition despite the old lexis, I have still managed to understand the holistic meaning of the scene because the words such as “thy” and “thee” are the ancient versions of “you” and “your”. This applies to our discussion in class as the words that Shakespeare chose to use was a communication too in his time period, and people would have understood it, and gradually these words have evolved to English of our time.
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2 comments:
Good explaination of the setting, really told what was going on. I agree that it is difficult to understand the language in the scene; it's quite 'old-fashioned' really, I can help but also agree that some of the language got evolved to today; for example, we are using metaphors. We might not be, if Shakespeare didn't use it!
I like your introduction into the passage, both presise and consise!
Your association with what we learnt in class of evolution of language over time can really clearly be seen here. I never thought of your idea, that the language of the script itself was confusing to us even though it was English. It is very true there is a barrier here but we in the end we can still guess what they are talking about.
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