On Stage
Along with his plays, Shakespeare wrote 154 love sonnets – 14 line poems. He also included several sonnets within his plays, namely Romeo and Juliet.
It is notable that Shakespeare gives Romeo and Juliet exactly 14 lines to speak to each other, before their first kiss.
Read the below extract from Act 1, Scene 5:
Romeo
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much
Which mannerly devotion shows in this.
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
Romeo
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Juliet
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
Romeo
Oh then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do,
They pray--grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Juliet
Saints do not move, though grant for prayer’s sake.
Romeo
Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.
- Research the structure, rhyme and meter of a Shakespearean sonnet.
- List the components that make up a sonnet and the themes that they often discuss.
- Choose one of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets to analyse, or analyse one as a class.
- Read the sonnet and translate each line, so you understand the meaning.
- Identify different symbols or imagery that Shakespeare is using in the sonnet. Can you identify any recurring themes, or images?
- What symbols or images does Shakespeare use in the extract above? Why do you think he has chosen these types of symbols/images?
