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Scene Study prepares you to perform key scenes for your theater class or audition. We've got all the information you need for a great performance.
Excerpt from Act 4, Scene 3 Monologue: Juliet
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Understanding the Given Circumstances
- Juliet is alone in her room, having just sent the Nurse away for the night.
- Juliet is in a difficult situation because Romeo, to whom she has been secretly married, has been banished, and her family plans to marry her to Paris.
- To help Juliet, Friar Lawrence has given her a potion that will make her appear dead. His idea is that she will be placed in the family tomb, where Romeo can find her and take her away after she awakens from the effects of the potion.
- Juliet has misgivings, but she is trying to talk herself into taking the potion.
Blocking and Movement
In theater, blocking is the process of planning the actors’ physical movements and positions. Be sure to show respect and establish trust when working with scene partners. As you prepare to block this scene, ask yourself the following questions:
- What scenic elements do you imagine are present during this monologue? The stage directions only specify a knife, a vial (a small glass bottle for medicine), and a bed with curtains. This is Juliet’s bedroom, however, and you are free to imagine other props and scenery that might be present, such as a chair, a makeup table, and a mirror. Don’t introduce material unless you plan to use it effectively in blocking. Inexperienced actors will sometimes gravitate to stage props as a crutch—keep things simple.
- Since she’s alone on stage, Juliet is technically speaking to herself, but the most important goal for an actor in any soliloquy is to reach out to an audience and take them on a journey with her. How can your movements and gaze best open the speech up to the audience and hold their attention? There are times when you must direct your gaze at objects (e.g., the knife and vial), but think about how you can share your contemplation of these objects with the audience.
- This speech is notable for its changes in direction. As one does when anxious and afraid, Juliet keeps thinking of new things that can go wrong with her plan. Think about how you can signal these changes in direction by changing your position, including facing toward or away from the audience, and by delivery, allowing pauses in which your character can think up the next objection.
- The pace of this speech increases gradually up to the frenzied climax when Juliet, in an act of bravery, drinks the potion and falls on the bed in a sudden release of tension, presumably as the potion quickly takes effect. What can you do to keep the pace from developing too quickly?
- Falling onto a soft bed might not seem very dangerous, but any stage fall needs to be carefully planned and practiced to minimize the risk of injury.
Meaning in Heightened Language
When approaching a piece of Shakespeare for performance or audition, it’s important to closely examine the text so that you have a clear understanding of it. Begin by studying SparkNotes’ No Fear Shakespeare Translation of Romeo and Juliet, so you can be sure to know what each unfamiliar word or phrase means.
Next, consider Shakespeare’s use of heightened language. Even in Shakespeare’s time, Juliet’s speech would not have sounded like an average 13-year-old. In part, this is because she’s speaking in verse, a form Shakespeare frequently uses in his plays. Juliet’s diction is also full of sophisticated vocabulary and figures of speech. Shakespeare uses heightened language for Juliet in this speech to help draw the audience into her imagination, which is complex and powerful, and to give emotional depth to her situation. For example, she addresses both the vial and her knife in the second person, a form of speech called “apostrophe,” as a way of drawing our attention to these significant objects. As Juliet’s speech proceeds, her imagination becomes more and more wild and rich in words. She doesn’t just imagine the tomb as a place for bad smells and scary sounds. Instead, she imagines “loathsome smells, / And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth” (the mandrake plant was thought to shriek when uprooted in a way that could drive anyone who heard it insane).
Sometimes actors think they need to make Shakespeare sound more conversational and natural, but it’s usually a much better choice to deliberately use the verse and the other features of heightened language. The wording is designed to help an audience understand a character’s argument by drawing attention to important words, phrases, and connections. Shakespeare highlights these moments by repeating consonants (alliteration), by changing the standard rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables, and especially by line breaks.
Unlike ordinary conversation shaped by sentences, the verse of Romeo and Juliet is structured in lines. Therefore, pay careful attention to the way individual lines end and how they connect (or fail to connect) to the next line. Many lines continue directly into the next one with no pause or punctuation, but your audience should still be able to hear the end of each line by your emphasis. Shakespeare’s lines of verse always rise, rather than fall, at the end, so try to give them that lift. Finally, pay attention to the rhythm of the lines, which generally have ten syllables, alternating stressed and unstressed. You’ll notice that the name “Romeo” is generally pronounced with only two syllables (“Roe-myo,” not “Roe mee oh”).
When the rhythm of the lines is broken, it’s usually because a character’s thoughts are shifting. For example, the line “Nurse!—What should she do here?” is much shorter than other lines and doesn’t follow the regular rhythm because Juliet is first thinking about calling the Nurse back to comfort her (and beginning to call) and then changing her mind. In the second-to-last line, the phrase “Stay, Tybalt, stay!” interrupts the regular rhythm because Juliet’s imagination has become so powerful that her story suddenly seems real, and she has to call out to Tybalt. Overall, consider how you can use the interruptions to Juliet’s rhythm to dramatize her shifting thoughts.
Full Act 4, Scene 3 Monologue: Juliet
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