Revising Romeo and Juliet
Our GCSE revision guide for students studying Romeo and Juliet covers all the key acts, characters and themes with active revision strategies and practice exam questions and answers for all exam boards.
Perfect for independent study and remote learning, it includes a helpful overview of the play, an act by act summary of events and guidance on key quotations.
Revising Romeo and Juliet also helps to build students’ confidence and develop their understanding through self-checks, quizzes and a detailed exploration of character, setting, Shakespeare’s language and the play’s tragic structure.
What's included?
- Covers key characters and themes (love, fate, family, death, conflict, roles of women) plus a summary of the play.
- Includes practice exam questions for all exam boards and suggested answers.
- Features active revision strategies to build students’ knowledge.
What's inside?
Introduction (pages 3-4)
Plot summary (pages 5-7)
Overview: whole play revision activities (pages 8-17)
- Terminology – language and structure
- WYOO (What’s your opinion on …?)
Love revision activities (pages 18-28)
- Revision activity 1: Types of love
- Revision activity 2: A love timeline
- Revision activity 3: Stickman summary
- Revision activity 4: Structure (and language) analysis
- Love practice exam questions
Fate revision activities (pages 29-39)
- Revision activity 1: True or false
- Revision activity 2: Close analysis
- Revision activity 3: The Prince’s perspective
- Revision activity 4: The wheel of fortune
- Fate practice exam questions
Family revision activities (pages 40-50)
- Revision activity 1: Rules were meant for breaking?
- Revision activity 2: Surrogate parents
- Revision activity 3: All the married ladies (all the married ladies …)
- Revision activity 4: Exploding quotations
- Family practice exam questions
Conflict revision activities (pages 51-62)
- Revision activity 1: Types of conflict
- Revision activity 2: Ordering the fight scene
- Revision activity 3: Context and conflict
- Revision activity 4: Analysing Juliet’s inner conflict
- Conflict practice exam questions
Death revision activities (pages 63-75)
- Revision activity 1: The ‘extra’ deaths
- Revision activity 2: Understanding the key elements of tragedy
- Revision activity 3: Romeo’s imagery
- Revision activity 4: The families unite
- Death practice exam questions
Roles of women revision activities (pages 76-90)
- Revision activity 1: Juliet’s change
- Revision activity 2: What did Shakespeare think?
- Revision activity 3: Strong or weak?
- Revision activity 4: Close analysis
- Roles of women practice exam questions
Example student revision activities from the pack:
Timeline:
Using the notes from Revision activity 1, create a quick timeline of love-related events in the play.
Stickman summary:
In the centre of the page, create a very quick cartoon strip (with simple stick people), focusing only on the main events of Romeo and Juliet’s relationship.
Write brief summaries alongside each image. Then, in a different colour, put some of the events that happen outside of the relationship above and below your cartoon strip, using arrows to show where they happen.
Once you have finished this visual diagram, think about how the romance between the couple is or is not affected by other plot events.
- Do the other events slow down or hinder the relationship?
- Do the other events make the relationship speed up?
- How do you think audiences feel when reflecting on the play’s action taking place in less than a week?
- How does Shakespeare want us to react?
Structure and language analysis:
Use the questions below to closely analyse this quotation from Juliet during the balcony scene. Though she is very much in love with Romeo, she admits that her feelings are more complicated.
‘It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say ‘It lightens’.’
- What do you notice about the pattern in the first line?
- What words are repeated and what do they show about Juliet’s feelings?
- What technique is used in the second line?
- Why might Juliet worry about their engagement being like ‘lightning?’ What does this show she wants from Romeo?
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