Before the first scene a single figure who takes no part in the story comes on, tells the audience about the feud and about the lovers' deaths, and then leaves. Which convention of the play is this?

The Chorus's opening speech runs fourteen lines, from 'Two households, both alike in dignity, / In fair Verona, where we lay our scene', through three quatrains, to a closing rhymed couplet. What form is it?

Shakespeare opens the play with two Capulet servants, Sampson and Gregory, trading jokes in prose about fighting Montagues, before any lord, lady or the Prince has appeared. What does starting here accomplish?

Sampson: 'I mean, if we be in choler, we'll draw.' Gregory: 'Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o' the collar.' What is Gregory playing on?

At the feast Romeo begins 'If I profane with my unworthiest hand / This holy shrine...' and Juliet answers 'Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much'. Their exchange builds fourteen lines and ends on a couplet, then they kiss. What have they spoken?

Refusing to dance, Romeo tells Mercutio: 'you have dancing shoes, / With nimble soles, I have a soul of lead / So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.' What is the pun?

Mercutio's Queen Mab speech, 'She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes / In shape no bigger than an agate-stone', runs on at length with Romeo and Benvolio standing there listening to him. What is this speech?

Romeo, unseen in the Capulet garden, says 'But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!' Juliet is above at her window, has not yet spoken, and does not know he is there. What is this speech?

Romeo's 'But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!' holds a five-beat line but the line endings do not rhyme. What is this kind of verse called?

In the garden Romeo is hidden below and hears Juliet, who believes herself alone. The text prints his single line 'Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?' with a bracketed direction, and Juliet does not hear it. What is his line?

In the garden scene the text prints, in italics and spoken by nobody, the line 'Juliet appears above at a window.' What is this line?

The Chorus has already told the audience that 'A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life'. What does that advance notice do to Juliet's line at the feast, 'My grave is like to be my wedding bed'?

Friar Lawrence enters at dawn with 'The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night, / Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light', and the lines that follow keep pairing off the same way. What is he speaking in?

In the Act III street fight Romeo speaks in verse, but the stabbed Mercutio answers him with ''tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'tis enough' and keeps joking. What is Mercutio speaking in?

Dying, Mercutio tells Romeo: 'Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.' What are the two meanings he is holding together in 'grave'?

Mercutio, the play's great joker, is killed halfway through, at the start of Act III, when Romeo steps between him and Tybalt. What does placing his death there do to the play?

Juliet, frantic for news, tells the Nurse: 'Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but Ay, / And that bare vowel I shall poison more / Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.' What is she playing on?

Alone in her chamber with the Friar's vial, Juliet asks 'What if this mixture do not work at all?' and imagines waking among her ancestors' bones. Nobody else is on stage. What kind of speech is this?

Which statement about the language of Romeo and Juliet is NOT true?

Which statement about the staging of Romeo and Juliet is NOT true?