When it comes to revising for your Shakespeare set text, the prospect of it can seem pretty overwhelming for various reasons, not in the least because Shakespeare can feel a little scary! However, there are lots of ways to overcome this, with the main one being to find tools and techniques to help make the text feel easier to work on, so without further ado, let’s begin!
Understanding the Play
This might sound obvious, but making sure that you have a really solid understanding of the play itself is going to serve you so well in your exams! Unfortunately, it’s not enough to have a rough idea of what happens in the play overall, and instead you need to know what happens in each scene and in each act, as this detail is going to help you to not only get top marks, but will make you feel much more confident when it comes to the exam!
The best way to begin is to read, re-read and re-re-read the play, until there are no longer parts of the play that take you by surprise, or characters that you forgot even existed! Once you know the shape of the play, you can do the same thing but re-reading individual acts, so that you can track the action and journey each character goes on as the play is taking shape. If your play text doesn’t have footnotes, it’s good to make a note of any words or phrases that you don’t understand,, so that you can look them up later and know that there is nothing in the play that is going to catch you off guard.
This is when you can begin to test yourself by making flash cards, or tasking yourself with writing down the key events of each act and seeing if there’s anything you forgot, left out or misremembered. You will be surprised by how much this extra work will dramatically increase your knowledge and understanding of the play, so that by the time your exams come round, there won’t be any question too intimidating for you to answer!
Consider the Themes of the Play
The themes are the thing that really brings the play together, and once you become aware of how different elements of the play connect with different themes, you will begin to see it in a whole new light. The main themes of Romeo and Juliet are: love, fate, conflict and family, and whilst you might be able to find more as you work through the play, try and think about the play under these four banners, and what connections you can make from the text to these themes. A useful exercise might be to list the characters in the play, and think about the themes that they and their plot line correspond to, and to do this again with key moments of the play, for example the meeting at the party, the wedding, the (numerous) fights etc. Once you have these listed out in front of you, you will hopefully begin to see some of your own themes emerging, and where the themes overlap.
Shakespeare, like all other writers, used themes in his work as a vehicle to tell his stories, and they are the ‘why’ of the storytelling, and it makes the themes feel like a less overwhelming aspect of the exam when you are able to break it down in to simply thinking about how Shakespeare chose to tell a story about love, family and conflict.
Be Specific in Your Revision
By this I mean revise with your exam board in mind, and make sure that the type of revision you are doing matches the assessment objectives set by the exam board your school is working with. Whilst all exams will require roughly the same thing, the style of the exam papers can vary, as well as the type of questions that might be asked, so it’s always a good idea to make sure that you look at past papers as early as possible in the revision process. Not only will you have more of an idea of what to expect when you open your exam paper, but you will be able to form your revision around the paper itself, meaning that you’re using your time as productively as possible!
Once you have discovered which assessment objectives are being assessed, you can also ensure that you have got your historical, social and political contextual revision down (AO3) so that you can talk about how unmarried daughters from wealthy families were expected to behave at that time, for example, or what Shakespeare’s inspiration was. You can also think about the form and structure of the play (AO2), and what impact this has on the text and its meaning (for more information on this, take a look at this blog post!). This preparation will impress the examiner, as well as helping you to feel as confident as you can when the exams roll around.
The Play’s the Thing!
Although the quote above is from Hamlet, it’s still very relevant to us in remembering that Romeo and Juliet is a play, and was written to be performed and watched by an audience. A great way to connect to the play is to actually watch it! Now, whilst watching a live performance of the play (as wonderful as that would be) is not always an accessible option, there are a huge amount of resources that mean you can watch lots of different versions from lots of different time periods and settings. The benefit of watching the play as it was intended to be seen, is that it gives you a stronger understanding of the meaning of the play overall, and even scenes that you were perhaps struggling with before, as seeing the action combined with the language engages our brain in a different way.
There are some great clips and helpful tips from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s YouTube channel, and likewise on the Shakespeare’s Globe channel. If you were able to, you can purchase a couple of productions of Romeo and Juliet through Globe Player, which is an archive of past productions from Shakespeare’s Globe. There’s also the famous Baz Luhrman film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which is put in a modern setting, but still using Shakespeare’s language, and then there’s the 1960s Franco Zaffirelli film, which is worth watching, too!
We hope this helps with gaining some guidance as to how to revise for Romeo and Juliet, and if you feel like you could benefit from the support of an English tutor, please contact us here.
Blog Post Crafted by Cicely
Cicely works on our Admin Team, and also tutors extensively.
In 2020, Cicely discovered her love of teaching, and has been tutoring English Literature and Drama ever since, as well as running a drama school audition help service with her friend and fellow actor to help prospective drama school students with their audition speeches.
Cicely has had her poetry published in anthologies and online, and in her free time is an avid reader. She loves living by the sea, a good podcast, and taking long walks in the countryside.
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