1. This Act is rich in single sentence (and sometimes even half-line) speeches (as is Act I). How do these single and part-line speeches effect the action? Why do you think they occur where they do, and what do they reveal about the character(s) speaking those lines?.

2. The director often composes detailed notes for actors on the way s/he would like the performances and scenes to develop. Choosing either the balcony scene or Juliet's conversation with the Nurse (scene 5), write your set of notes for the actors on how to stage the scene.

3. In this Act, Shakespeare writes in many different styles (prose, iambic pentameter, a mixture of the two, different rhyming schemes, no rhyme at all, etc.) Identify all the different styles Shakespeare uses. Then choose one, and explain what the author achieves by using this particular style. Pay close attention to where Shakespeare moves into your chosen style and then shifts out of it again.

4. Choose three or four lines form this reading which you find powerful. Why does each appeal so strongly to you, and how does each relate to the material you have already read in the play? (Does it, for example, use familiar images or vocabulary - such as the vocabulary of sickness, of astrology, of sight, etc.?)

5. Choose the character you want to follow throughout the play. Write a paragraph in which you explain, with apposite quotation from the script, what you have learned about your character in this reading.

(question 4 above is 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)