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Actor Lolita Chakrabarti rehearses Juliet’s speech from Act 4 Scene 3 in William Shakespeare’s play - before she drinks the poison. She focuses on how the words should be pronounced and the motivation behind the speech. A ‘final production’ of the scene is also included.

After reading the scene, ask the students to walk around the room, quietly saying the speech, changing direction every time Juliet changes her mind or her train of thought. Ask them to mark on their paper every time this happens and then count up and compare with others. Discuss what this tells us about Juliet’s thought process. Students could then underline all the words or lines about emotions and discuss the language Shakespeare has used and alliteration. Challenge students to work in pairs to explore how they could use these two aspects of the speech to make it effective. Alternatively, you could ask them to work in groups to prepare the speech, splitting the lines, having different people showing the different aspects of the speech. Discuss what this brings to the speech and how you could use an idea like this to create an ensemble piece.