Second draft

“Romeo and Juliet” is one of the most famous drama works of William Shakespeare. In this lovely but tragic story,  Friar Lawrence is a character who stayed in the middle but he is one of the most important characters in the story to promote the plot. He was a combination of a friar and an alchemist, which showed the positive aspect and also the negative aspect. Then, I chose the Act 4 Scene 1, when Juliet went into the basement of the church to find Friar Lawrence and used a knife to threat him. She was comforted by Friar Lawrence and then took a vial in order to escape the marriage. The change of atmosphere and the mood change between two characters in the play demonstrates the change of theme of the whole play. Because this scene is a transitional point in the story of Romeo and Juliet,  Shakespeare used foreshadowing to show the main style of story transits from love to death. Playing a role of Friar Lawrence, I learned that his patience, decisiveness and clam push the whole story development, therefore even though Friar Lawrence is not main character in the play but by using the emphasis and body language, which make his personality continually influence the main characters and also be different with others characters in the play. 

Our scene started inside the church and ended in the church. In this scene, Friar Lawrence used a lot of “ Hold Daughter! Hold, then go home. Hold, get you gone!”(4,1, 68—122) to indicate his worries. In the talking of Juliet, we chose the line “ Come weep with me, past hope, past cure, past help.”(4.1.45), we want to show that Juliet was upset and very helpless because of the marriage with Paris and also got “ betrayed” by her mother and nurse. The love between Romeo and she make her struggle between family and lover. In comparison, Friar Lawrence was very polite and calm due to the lines “ I do spy a kind of hope…As that is desperate which we could prevent.” (4.1.68—70) , Friar Lawrence in the story is more like a director for Juliet and Romeo, he had lots of life experience. So from Juliet’s perspective, when there was no Romeo to rely on, Friar Lawrence became the man who she could believe in by saying that “ Tell me not, friar, that thou hearest of this, unless thou tell me how I may prevent it.” (4.1.50—51) Then in the end of the play, Friar Lawrence said that: “ Hold, get you gone, be strong and prosperous in this resolve. Tomorrow I will send a friar with speed to Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.” (4,1,122—124) The first sentence: he comforted Juliet that she did not need to be afraid and she needed to face the difficulties resulted from her choice of marrying Romeo. The second sentence: he summarized what he would do the next day and let Juliet believe that everything would be resolved. During the conversation between Friar Lawrence and Juliet, Friar Lawrence never used negative words and attitude to Juliet. After the readers finished reading the whole play, they would have direct understanding of the positions of the two main characters. Friar Lawrence stood in the higher position. Also, there was one word that reflected their relationship: in the setting of the play, Juliet was the daughter of the Lord Capulet and Lady Capulet, and Friar Lawrence was only a friar who worked in the church. Whenever Friar Lawrence wanted to call Juliet, he needed to say Young Capulet rather than daughter. However, in the show, Friar Lawrence called Juliet as “ daughter”, which revealed that under his mind, because he watched Romeo growing up, he had already treated that boy as his own son. So when his son has a girlfriend and they were about to get married, he would not allow another person to destroy their happiness. Then due to the death threat from Juliet, he suddenly showed his worries and impatience in front of her, that was why he used daughter rather than Young Capulet. 

Our performance started when Juliet went into the church to look for Friar Lawrence in order to seek a solution for the marriage. This play mainly focus on the interaction between Friar Lawrence and Juliet, including their speaking tones and their actions showed the mood of Juliet and also the characteristics of Friar Lawrence and Juliet. For my performance, I tried to show the patience and calm of Friar Lawrence during the soliloquy and the conversation with Juliet. First, in the beginning of the play, Friar Lawrence was sitting on the chair on the left side of the stage because Juliet interrupted Friar Lawrence’s negotiation with Paris about the marriage. So I set up the stage with two chairs in order to clearly show that I, Friar Lawrence, was talking with someone in the church. Then Juliet stood on the stage right in order to show that she was not in the church and she went to church to find Friar Lawrence. Then she knocked on the door and said her first line, “ Are you at leisure, holy father, now;” (4,1,37—38) Then I turned around but did not stand up because even though Juliet was the daughter of the Capulet, Friar Lawrence was a friar and was older than her.  Then after I saw off Paris, I turned around and faced Juliet. Then my action showed Juliet that we would begin our conversation. During our conversation, I remained calm and smart, my voice was stable comforting, for example: After Juliet used a knife to threat me, I replied immediately” Hold daughter ! I do spy a kind of hope. And this shall free thy from this present shame.” (4,1,68) Because Juliet had a mind to death, which indicated by the line: “Be not so long to speak, I long to die.” (4.1.66)However, I also needed to apply Shakespeare’s foreshadowing into our performance, so when Juliet emphasis the words “kill” and “ death”, I would try to hold her and comfort her, but she rejected vigorously because it can let the audience know clearly about the foreshadowing part and also to remind audience that even Juliet seek for the solution, in her mind she already planned for death. At the same time, Juliet was helpless and not very calm, especially when I said that: “Hold, then, go home, be marry and give consent to marry County Paris.”(4,1,90—91) She acted angrily and did not understand my idea, she used much body language, like tugging hair and walking around to show her anxiety but what i did was only tapped her arm because Lawrence was only a friar, he could not more things than comforting her.  Then we designed two different ways of performing for Juliet and Friar Lawrence through our actions and lines, so during our rehearsal time, Ms.Guarino taught us that we could use different colors underlined our lines to analysis different emotions when we spoke out the lines, we, as actors on the stage, need to performance each liens with different emotions to help audience understand ing our roles and the plot deeply. 

On the stage, even though Friar Lawrence’s lines contained all of calm and smartness, but I can use the body language on the stage to show his stress and worries. When Friar Lawrence tapped her arm, at the same time he was looking down, which I wanted to show his unconfidence. After comforting Juliet, Friar Lawrence explained everything for her in details, which included the whole plan, vial’s effect and what they would do after she woke up. Especially when he talked in the part of the vial, he would express fanaticism towards the vial, so at this time, I moved from stage left to the center of the stage, not only to show my actions more obviously but also to show the change of the theme when following the change of my position. From the book the readers knew that after Juliet drunk the vial, she would be buried in the vault and Romeo would miss my letters and died in front of Juliet.The readers would know the change of the theme from love, marriage to death, however the audience may not know it, so the change of my position and Juliet’s emotion, which show clearly about the situation. Then after I finished talking everything about the plan and vial, Juliet quickly answered that:” Give me! Give me! O, tell not me of fear!” (4,1,121)So immediately I answered her that: “Hold, get you gone, be strong and prosperous in this resolve, I will send a friar with speed to Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.” (4,1,122—124) which indicated my worried. Then I would be silent for a moment, and then I went out. For the moment of silence, I wanted to create a feeling that Friar Lawrence wanted to remind Juliet something but he didn’t speak out.  In the end, my last line was to say Farewell to Juliet, so at this time, I did not face her and say Farewell, insteadI just waved my hands turning my back to her. I think this action had a feeling about resignation and helplessness, even though Friar Lawrence always comforted Juliet and guided her what should she do throughout the play. Sadly, he was just a friar, he did not have much power. So after he went out, he may had a feelings about powerlessness, In the end, I added this action to reinforce this feeling. Furthermore,Friar Lawrence’s movements also showed his feeling, his movement was not fast, but step-by-step, and then I closed the door. 

Performing an epic story was very challenging but also interesting. What was the most challenging was that I could hardly combine the speaking part with the action part. In the beginning, I could not do speaking and acting at the same time. Then I watched a lot movie versions about church scene, and I found out a way of using lines to remind me the actions and using actions to remind me the lines. In the preparation of the performance, I did a lot of analysis of Romeo and Juliet’s language and stage settings. That gave me a lot of ideas of how Shakespeare described characters’ movements. Also, analyzing the language use in the scene helped me to understand each character deeply. Through the whole scene, even though Juliet and Friar Lawrence had different characteristics, their final goal was to let the couple of Romeo and Juliet out of the shame and be re-united.