1. Pick two or three words or phrases from the prologue that you feel are powerful or imaginative. As you read through the play, add other key words to your list. Note these in your journal for future reference. Look over your list of words and note down any patterns or groupings that you see.

2. A student wrote about Samson and Gregory, "Times never change. Like typical men, these two boneheads boast about their sexual prowess and turn everything into a sex joke (stand, thrust, maidenheads, tool, weapon). Why on earth did Shakespeare put such crude characters and language at the beginning of a play that's about love, not sex?" What would you say in answer to this question?

3. Tybalt speaks only five lines but they tell us a great deal about him. Choose one word from each line to show Tybalt's character and write a short paragraph explaining what you learn about Tybalt from each word?

4. The language of Benvolio and Montague is different from the style of all the other language used in the play up to the point of their entrance. Identify some of the differences.

Some students find these two speeches rather static after all the action that had gone before in the opening scene. If you were directing the play, what would be your advice to the actors playing Benvolio and Montague on how to speak their lines?

(questions above are adapted from Rex Gibson's writing prompts in the New Cambridge edition of Romeo and Juliet)

(image source: postcard from the home page of Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet)