"…with patient ears attend"

This lesson for high school students helps enhance students' ability to analyze and interpret dramatic scripts. Through this lesson, the structural and linguistic intricacies of Shakespeare's text will become accessible to your students. Students will also develop their own interpretations of the text.

The study of any dramatic script is enhanced by the combined approach of close textual analysis and "hands-on" interpretation. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet lends itself particularly well to this treatment for grades 9 through 12. With some teacher guidance from these two perspectives, the structural and linguistic energies of the play become accessible to this age group. Mining the richness of the structure and the intensity of the language provides inspiration for students to want to develop their own interpretations of the dramatic possibilities inherent in the script. Following are suggestions for classroom implementation of the twofold approach of analysis and performance.

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