Aug 30, 2008

Romeo and Juliet | Time and Haste

Tom Driver, in the first excerpt, examines Romeo and Juliet in terms of the necessity of condensing "real" time into stage time in such a way that the audience will believe the events of the play have actually taken place. In the second excerpt, Stirling offers a detailed analysis of numerous elements that contribute to the theme of haste in Romeo and Juliet.

Tom F. Driver
[Driver examines Romeo and Juliet in terms of the necessity of condensing "real" time into stage time in such a way that the audience will believe the events of the play have actually taken place. The critic points out that Shakespeare compressed the action of Romeo and Juliet in two ways: first he considerably shortened the length of the action as it appeared in his source, Arthur Brooke's The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet; second, he used very brief scenes to account for longer periods of time. This compression, Driver asserts,...