Describe Romeo and Juliets first time meeting in a paragraph

Answer 1

When my students asked, "Why did Shakespeare use so many WORDS?" the answer was, "That's all he had!"

The Elizabethan theatre had no scenery, few special effects, no lighting (plays had to be performed outside, during the day), and no costumes (the actors wore what we would call formal dress). The audience came to a play for VERBAL fireworks because that's really all the performances had to offer.

So, when Romeo and Juliet lock eyes across the crowded party scene, and fall instantly into a devastating attraction, the audience would expect some very lofty poetry. What most people don't realize is that Romeo and Juliet's first lines to one another are an Elizabethan sonnet: a fourteen-line poem, in iambic pentameter, with a very specific and complicated rhyme scheme!

In this sonnet -- to the audience, apparently thought up IN THE MOMENT -- Romeo and Juliet declare their love in using complex religious allusions and metaphors, marking their growing attraction as holy, as blessed by God. This, of course, is dramatically ironic because the audience has been made aware from the Prologue (another sonnet) that their love is ultimately doomed, and that both of them will be dead by the end of the play.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is verbal fireworks!