Script Analysis for Actors: Relationships

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Here’s an activity that will give your students a lot of detail on their characters and their relationship with the other characters in the play. It starts with some pretty simple information gathering.

Instruction

Read the play and while doing so, make three lists:

• Everything your character says about every other character.
• Everything that other characters say about your character.
• Everything your character says about themselves.

Example

Share this model with students using the character of Romeo from Romeo and Juliet. Romeo is a huge role so there’s a lot of work involved. This model is just for Act One but someone playing Romeo would do it for the entire play.

You’ll see that sometimes direct quotes are used, some paraphrasing and sometimes it’s just a record impression. Emphasize to students that they should use whatever format they find useful as they prepare their role. 

What Romeo Says About Others - Act One

Rosaline

• • “Out of her favour where I am in love”
  • Romeo loves her.
  • She is fair.
  • She does not love him back.
  • She is remaining chaste.
  • “She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair”
  • “She hath forsworn to love”
  • “the all-seeing sun ne’er saw her match since first the world begun”

Benvolio

• • Doesn’t laugh at my pain.
  • “thou canst not teach me to forget”

Mercutio

• • “You have dancing shoes with nimble soles”
  • “Thou talk’st of nothing.”

Juliet

• • “I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
  • “Is she a Capulet?”

What Others Say About Romeo - Act One

Prologue

• • Star-cross’d lovers take their life
  • Misadventured piteous
  • With their death bury their parents’ strife
  • Death-mark’d love

Lady Montague (mother)

• • He was not at this fray.

Benvolio

• • Walking early in the morning
  • They are cousins
  • Your heart is oppressed
  • I’ll help you or die trying
  • Romeo loves Rosaline
  • You only love Rosaline because you haven’t checked out any other women

Montague (father)

• • Often walks early in the morning, crying, sighing
  • When daylight comes he locks himself in his room and blocks out all light
  • “Black and portentous”
  • Does not know the cause of Romeo’s problems.
  • Romeo is “his own affections’ counsellor”
  • “So secret and close, so far from sounding and discovery”
  • Would love to help Romeo, but doesn’t know the problem.

Mercutio

• • You are a lover
  • Queen Mab has been with you

Tybalt

• • Romeo sounds like a Montague
  • Slave
  • Antic face
  • I am going to kill him
  • Villain
  • I’ll not endure him

Capulet

• • The whole city brags that he’s “virtuous and well-govern’d”
  • I wouldn’t disparage Romeo for anything
  • “Gentlemen”
  • “honest gentlemen”

Juliet

• • Pilgrim
  • “You kiss by the book”
  • Doesn’t know who Romeo is
  • Wants to marry Romeo
  • “My only love”
  • “a loathed enemy”

Nurse

• • Bachelor
  • He is a Montague, he is the enemy

What Romeo Says About Himself - Act One

• • In love with Rosaline
  • I have heard it all (referring to the fight at the beginning of the play)
  • “This love feel I, that feel no love in this.”
  • Griefs lie heavy in my breast
  • “I have lost myself; I am not here; This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.”
  • “I do love a woman”
  • “Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipp’d and tormented”
  • “I can read.”
  • “I am not for this ambling” – referring to the party
  • “I have a soul of lead”
  • I fear that going to this party is going to bring about death.

What This Tells You

There’s a wealth of information here. Imagine you know nothing about the story of Romeo and Juliet. You’ll learn quite a bit about what happens in the play just by reading these small snippets. 

Share with students: It’s better to write down too much than too little. Write down things that might not seem immediately important. For example, Romeo’s line “I can read” doesn’t seem significant until you study the time period in which the play takes place. Most people were illiterate so knowing Romeo can read gives you information about his education and the fact that he comes from an upper class family.

Class Exercise

Do the same exercise, but this time for Juliet. For Act One of Romeo and Juliet, create the following three lists:

• Everything Juliet says about every other character.
• Everything other characters say about Juliet.
• Everything Juliet says about herself.