Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
Romeo speaks these lines in Mantua just before Balthasar arrives. His joyful dream of dying and being revived by Juliet's kisses will meet its exact reversal within minutes.
If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand. My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne; And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit Lifts me above the ground wi...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize the act concisely, then name the one moment where the catastrophe becomes unavoidable. What does that moment reveal about Shakespeare's purpose in closing the play this way?
Discussion Questions
- Romeo dreams Juliet kisses him back to life, then Balthasar reports her dead. What does Shakespeare gain by staging the dream as the exact reversal of the news, and where do you feel its force strongest?
- Romeo answers the news with I defy you, stars, then orders horses. The prior plan depended on perfect timing; this act breaks it. Does the chapter treat the deaths as accident or as choice?
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
to be a sign of something about to happen. Romeo says his dreams presage some joyful news at hand, and the play lets the morning's real news answer that dream.
Item 2
an unlucky accident or mishap. Balthasar warns that Romeo's pale, wild looks import some misadventure, naming exactly the kind of accident this act keeps delivering.
Item 3
a deadly spreading disease, here the plague. Searchers seal up a house where the infectious pestilence did reign, and that quarantine is what stops the Friar's letter.
+ 3 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 7 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free