DISCUSS and REHEARSE ❍ Speak to each other about the emotions in the scene. ❍ Try diff erent tones of voice, gestures and facial expressions.
❍ What emotions do you want to convey in your performance? What feelings do the lines express – desperation, compassion, fear …?
❍ How will you stand? Will you move as you speak? ❍ Will you bring in a prop or wear an item of costume for the performance?
APOTHECARY Who calls so loud? ROMEO
Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor: Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins That the life-weary taker may fall dead And that the trunk may be discharged of breath As violently as hasty powder fi red Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.
APOTHECARY
Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua’s law Is death to any he that utters them.
ROMEO
Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness, And fear’st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks, Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back; The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law; The world aff ords no law to make thee rich; Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
