At the beginning of our Elizabethan and Romeo and Juliet unit, we did research on what the Elizabethan era was all about: What food they had, what the housing was like,the types of servants. Everything.

For this research we got into groups of two and got assigned a topic from the era. We had to create a Keynote presentation and present it to our class. I worked with my friend Anatolia for this project and I thought that it turned out really well.

If you want to check out our slides from our presentation, here they are:

As I said above, I think this was a great project, but it could have been improved. Anatolia and I could have practiced a lot more, to get a bit more familiar with the topic and what we were saying. And know for a fact that we both procrastinated on this project, which made it a lot harder to know our scripts and get the project done on time. But I also know that we had fun on this project and it gave me a lot of knowledge about the Elizabethan era and our world history.

This last week in class, we almost completed reading the play, “Romeo & Juliet”. During Act 3, Scene 1, two deaths occurred; those of Mercutio and Tybalt. These deaths played a big part of the story line, and influenced the actions of some other characters in the play.

I have created a newspaper article that announces Mercutio and Tybalt’s deaths; but I have chosen not to use Shakespearean english, and instead written it in modern english. I then thought about the Chorus at the start of the play, and how it acts as a commentary, of sorts. So I decided to attempt to become the Chorus in the article. I based this newspaper article on the 1996 movie interpretation of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo + Juliet”. Some parts are also based off our modern day societies.

I really liked making this newspaper article; it challenged me to use my creativity and writing skills. Next time I will try and make the article less descriptive and more report-like. I would add in some more “witnesses tell…”, and less descriptive writing techniques.

I’ve enjoyed diving deeper into “Romeo & Juliet” and really getting to understand the play. This is our final “TWIL” post, and I think these activities have helped me with my work layout, and they have also given me a new way to view and think about different topics. Overall, I am really quite proud of these posts, and am looking forward to doing something similar again soon.

So this week in class, we continued reading the play, “Romeo & Juliet”, by William Shakespeare. During Act 1 of the play, Lady Capulet describes Count Paris and Juliet’s potential love with an extended metaphor to a book. I found that this was a very interesting and graceful way of poetry and description. So I decided to write my own extended metaphor, describing someone that I know to an object.

But, I ended up writing two different paragraphs; one about my late grandma, and one about my younger brother.

Here they are:

First I pondered upon who I would write about; Who did I know well enough to dive deep into their persona and explain all about them, in just a paragraph of words? I chose my grandma first. She was a huge part of my life, even if it was just for a small amount of it. Writing about her was just so natural for me.

In my mind, autumn leaves represent her.

Next I wrote about my brother. He is crazy and annoying and endlessly buzzing; everything a brother should be. Describing him as a circus was super simple and it made me smile.

I represented him with a travelling circus.

Overall, I believe that writing is one of my strengths; I just love to let my mind go free and let my ideas turn into something that I am, in the end, really proud of. I think this process happened with this mini project. And even if these paragraphs weren’t perfect ones, I’m very happy with them and I wrote them with a lot of effort.

Circus

Autumn Leaf

During the week, we started to talk about Shakespearean times and Elizabethan theatre.

As we looked through the information, I learned that in this time period, women weren’t allowed to perform on stage; only men. Therefore young boys played the roles of women, and they had to wear layers of female clothing, wigs, and make-up. During the Elizabethan era make-up was lead-based and highly toxic, so the young actors were quite unhealthy with skin problems, and some even died from lead poisoning.

I found this quite interesting, I mean were women not good enough for the theatre? Were they less experienced than men? Women in this time period were brought up being taught that they were inferior to men. That men were the superior beings. So the thought of them up on stage where everyone could see them was preposterous. Women in groups were commonly mistaken as prostitutes, and to see them in a travelling troupe was inappropriate and immoral. Females were so looked down upon that very few attended the theatre, and if one were to attend, they were higher classed women wearing masks to protect their reputations.

This all changed when, in 1942 theatres were closed down, as England was on the brink of a civil war. The Puritan Parliament forbid plays, arguing that theatres distracted and split apart the nation from it’s endeavours to “appease and avert the wrath of God.” It wasn’t until King Charles II came into power, about the year 1660, that women could finally act in the theatre, when they were reopened and in full swing once more.

Personally, I believe that women should have been granted more rights in Elizabethan times. And they sure as heck, should have been able to act on stage. But to counter this, I wonder if women, even if they were granted the right to be in the theatres, would have actually done it. Because I am betting that men probably would not have liked the fact that women were on stage, despite the law. This leads into a whole new topic that I won’t be discussing in this blog post but it’s something to think about for later.

Here are my sources:

Elizabethan Theatre

Why Weren’t Woman Allowed To Act

Elizabethan Women

Elizabethan Theatre History

Elizabethan Globe Theatre

Elizabethan Woman