GCSE English Literature podcasts - Romeo and Juliet

HOLLIE McNISH: Hi, and welcome to our Bitesize English Literature podcast. My name's Hollie McNish. I'm a writer and a poet. Across seven episodes, with the help of the brilliant writer, rapper and beatboxer Testament…

TESTAMENT: Yo! Whassup!

HOLLIE McNISH: …and holder of the Guinness World Record for leading the world's largest human beatbox ensemble – is that true? I've never met anyone that–

TESTAMENT: It's fact. It's all fact.

HOLLIE McNISH: OK, fact! Just to clear that up before we talk about Love! Right now we're looking at one of William Shakespeare's best-known tragedies, "Romeo and Juliet". It's a play about what happens when two teenagers from families that hate each other meet and fall in love.
Feel free to pause us any time you want, scribble down notes, re-listen, repeat ideas in your head – whatever works for you, really; whatever makes it less stressful. Today we're gonna be focusing on one of the text's key themes, Love. Here's a clip from Juliet just after she's met Romeo for the first time.

CLIP

JULIET
Go, ask his name.

[footsteps as Nurse walks off; sounds of a gathering of people]

JULIET
If he be married, my grave is like to be my wedding bed.

[footsteps of Nurse returning]

NURSE
His name is Romeo, and a Montague. The only son of your great enemy.

JULIET
My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown and known too late. Prodigious birth of love it is to me that I must love a loathed enemy.

END OF CLIP

HOLLIE McNISH: So it is Juliet saying it, and it's from Act 1, Scene 5. "My only love sprung from my only hate." She's so disappointed when she finds out that Romeo's a Montague. It's like, "Ah! Come on!" Like, that's so bad. If I was listening to that and I was doing my GCSEs, I would probably find that bit, I'd walk around the room and read it out loud myself. 'Cause it's so-, it's so important, that part, isn't it?
Right, so, Testament, in this play, for you, what are the main forms of love that we see?

TESTAMENT: Well, the biggest one is obviously romantic love. Romeo and Juliet, they fall in love. Devastatingly. They fall hard in love. It's love at first sight as well. Also, they're both really smart. They're both amazing with words and language. And you can see, they match up and they fall in love. In fact, their love is so powerful it brings peace to a whole city, the city of Verona, between two families that were at each other's throats. That's how powerful their love is.

HOLLIE McNISH: So I think that's such a good point about the language there. Because actually, one of the things that I love about this story is that the language is intelligent. It's ridiculous at times. It's so dramatic.

TESTAMENT: Yeah, Romeo and his language, and Juliet as well, are constantly trying to use words to capture this emotion and also how amazing this other person that they're in love with is. So Romeo's calling her a saint. You know, she's like a holy figure. She's like a… he compares…

HOLLIE McNISH: The sun!

TESTAMENT: Yeah, he compares her to the-, to the sun! Er, she's "light through a window," you know. She's above the ordinary. She's magical.

HOLLIE McNISH: And her as well, doesn't she? She describes him as a god. There's so many metaphors and so many similes when these two young people are trying to describe their feelings that it's almost like it's just too much for their hearts; they, like, can't. "It's like-, it's like the sun!" "Yeah, he's a god!" "Yeah, she's a saint!" It's like, "What words can I use?" They're, like, desperately grappling to describe something! I think their language it's quite sort of chaotically full of metaphors and similes!

TESTAMENT: Er, we should actually point out that, like, this is the world's most famous love story between Juliet who's thirteen years old! We're not exactly sure how old Romeo is. He's a little bit older, but we're not sure by how much. But he's got the advantage, of course, he's a boy, and he'd probably have much more say in who he marries than poor Juliet who's, you know, got parents trying to marry her off to this–

HOLLIE McNISH: Much older guy!

TESTAMENT: Yeah. So you've got all the-, the hormones of a teenager, and then having to-, to navigate love. And then even being willing to sacrifice things for the other person. Juliet asks him from the balcony, she says, "Are you-, you Romeo? Are you a Montague?" And he says, "Well, I'll be neither if that's what you want." You know, he's willing to change his identity so he can be with the person that he loves.

HOLLIE McNISH: So love is important in terms of a theme, but how important is it for the actual storytelling? Like, the plot?

TESTAMENT: Love powers the whole play. Like, from the very beginning. Romeo's already in love before the play even starts. So when we meet Romeo first of all he's already in love with this girl called Rosaline, and unfortunately she doesn't return his feelings. And, in fact, the only reason he ends up going to the party where he meets Juliet is because he hears that Rosaline's gonna be at the party. So he's like, "Right, I betta go to that party."
And of course he goes there and boom, love at first sight. He sees wonderful, intelligent, strong-hearted Juliet. And the rest, as they say, is tragedy.

HOLLIE McNISH: And, also, importantly, that, like, their love obviously drives them. It's sort of… it's like a wind-up toy, innit? You pull it and it's love that makes you, du du du du, go different places. But he probably wouldn't have met Juliet any other way.

[music plays]

HOLLIE McNISH: Right, if you go into your exam, I think this is really important, to talk about the fact that there are different types of love. You have to get in to the exam that there's not just one type of love in this play. Alright, so, Testament, if I said, "Oh, surprise, I've booked you in for a GSCE exam of "Romeo and Juliet" – yes! Great! Love it! – what would be the "these are the three types of love that Shakespeare shows" and why?

TESTAMENT: Romantic love, obviously, between Romeo and Juliet – and that's the thing that drives the play and keeps the whole story together, and makes them wanna overcome the obstacles that their families have put in place.
You've got family love and wanting to honour your family, and the pressure that Juliet in particular gets from her dad. He says, "I'll disown-," you know, basically says he's just gonna disown her…

HOLLIE McNISH: That was awful, that scene.

TESTAMENT: …if-, if she doesn't marry Paris, and he's calling her ungrateful and stuff like that.

HOLLIE McNISH: OK, so Paris is the man who Juliet's father, mother and father, father in particular, want her to marry because he is a very upstanding, wealthy member of the community.

TESTAMENT: You could also talk about brotherly love or camaraderie. So you've got people like Mercutio who stands up for Romeo, erm, when Romeo doesn't wanna fight. He doesn't understand why Romeo doesn't wanna fight. He doesn't understand that. And the reason Romeo doesn't wanna fight is because he's gonna marry into this new family and he–

HOLLIE McNISH: –And he doesn't tell them. I wish he'd just tell them.

TESTAMENT: I know!

HOLLIE McNISH: So many missed opportunities.

TESTAMENT: A hundred-, one hundred percent. And Mercutio, he stands up for his friend. He says, "I'll fight for you." You know, that friendship love, which Benvolio has got as well.

HOLLIE McNISH: Right, I wanna add one more. Er, I would love it if you had a question on love and you put in the two relationships that Romeo and Juliet have with these older sort of mentor types. You know, it's definitely platonic, but there's Romeo with the friar, and Juliet with the nurse.

TESTAMENT: Yeah.

HOLLIE McNISH: I think those are really nice relationships as well to look at when we talk about love. Because this is seen as such a romantic play, but Shakespeare showed us that love is this incredibly complicated idea with so many different varieties and so many different outcomes.

TESTAMENT: Oh, a hundred percent.

HOLLIE McNISH: There's so much love. There's so much love.

TESTAMENT: Lovely.
The word "love" is used 163 times in this text.

HOLLIE McNISH: Ah! That's interesting.

[music plays]

HOLLIE McNISH: Right, so for your exams it is not enough to just talk about the themes. Your opinions, everything, has to be backed up. And quotes are the best way to do this. In every episode we're gonna give you some quotes that we think will make your essays really, really good. If you talk about the language, even better. So, Testament?

TESTAMENT: My one's from Act 2, Scene 3. And the friar says to Romeo, "For this alliance may so happy prove to turn your household's rancour to pure love." And I love that. And the idea… he's happy. He basically-, he's saying he wants Romeo and Juliet to get married. Why? This is the bit you really need to file safe in your brain: "to turn your household's rancour to pure love."
"So this alliance may so happy prove" – and "alliance" is there, the marriage between Romeo and Juliet – "to turn your household's rancour to pure love." So your family's anger, basically, to pure love. And you could say pure love could be the romantic love, or you could say the pure love between, er, the love of humanity. And it's good for the other themes as well.

HOLLIE McNISH: So it's got family in it, doesn't it?

TESTAMENT: Yeah. It's got conflict, it's got family.

HOLLIE McNISH: That is a great quote that you can put in loads. So my memory is not great. How would you remember that quote?

TESTAMENT: I'd remember it, personally, because there's a monster in "Star Wars" who Luke Skywalker fights called a rancor. And it's big and it's evil and it's scary. And we know that the Montagues and Capulets are doing big, scary things, aren't they? So they've got a rancor! And, er, if you wanna turn your household's rancour to pure love, get Romeo and Juliet married. So.

HOLLIE McNISH: Maybe stop the podcast and say it out loud. Do you find that? I find it really helps me with quotes. I used to, like, walk around my room just saying them.

TESTAMENT: Er, I turn them into songs. So I'd be like: [sings] "To turn your household's rancour [clicks his fingers to the beat] to pure love. Why? To turn your household's rancour to pure love.""Why, Friar?"
[sings and clicks his fingers to the beat] "To turn your household's rancour to pure love."

HOLLIE McNISH: That was the best! I am never gonna forget that quote! That was beautiful! So, my quote is Juliet saying it, and it's from Act 1, Scene 5. And I'm gonna read, like, the four lines, but I would definitely only be able to remember one. So it's: "My only love sprung from my only hate. Too early seen unknown and known too late. Prodigious birth of love is it to me that I must love a loathed enemy."
And it's like, "Oh! Why has that happened? Why is fate–" Maybe Fate; listen to the episode on Fate; this is very good for Fate as well. But, "My only love sprung from my only hate," that's the line that I would remember.

TESTAMENT: It's beautiful.

HOLLIE McNISH: It is beautiful, isn't it? And I think it also covers family, conflict, youth. And in the exams it's really important to talk about the language of a quote.

TESTAMENT: Can I give you a big ol' word?

HOLLIE McNISH: Yeah.

TESTAMENT: Juxtaposition.

HOLLIE McNISH: Nice. Go on. Explain.

TESTAMENT: Juxtaposition. So juxtaposition is when you contrast two things. So, like hot/cold; heavy/light. And so it's putting two things that seem like opposites together. And what Shakespeare's done there is "only love…only hate". Rappers use it all the time. You know, "I'm a Ferrari, you're a Nissan Micra." They use juxtaposition to get their points across. And it makes you remember it. And it makes… the difference between the two things make you remember it. And it feels really powerful, you know? So, "My only love sprung from my only hate."

HOLLIE McNISH: And there's a symmetry to it, huh? The way that the sentence is done, it uses juxtaposition but it's also so symmetrical. So it's really balanced, huh? Juliet is stuck in the middle like a see-saw. On one side she's got "My only love", the other side "My only hate", although they're the same thing. So there's this juxtaposition and there's a symmetry to it.
There's obviously repetition in it, which… just get "repetition" in the exam because she keeps saying "My only, my only." There's loads to say about that. And it's quite an easy one to remember in general, I think, "My only love sprung from my only hate." But you can, like, just make-, just get in, like, the bullet points about the language.

TESTAMENT: I think that's wicked. I'm… I'll file-save them in my brain.

HOLLIE McNISH: Alright, so, one last time, my quote is, "My only love sprung from my only hate!" And, Testament, what's yours?

TESTAMENT: It's the friar, Act 2, Scene 3, and he says, [sings] "To turn your household's rancour to pure love."

HOLLIE McNISH: Ah! So, hopefully you've now got the key theme of Love in "Romeo and Juliet" a little bit closer to your heart. We hope you enjoyed listening. There is plenty more on the theme of Love in "Romeo and Juliet" on the BBC Bitesize website.

TESTAMENT: [in a deep voice] Oh yeah!

HOLLIE McNISH: [chuckles]

TESTAMENT: [in a deep voice] Love!

HOLLIE McNISH: [giggles] And you can check out the other episodes of the Bitesize English Literature podcast about this play on BBC SOUNDS, where me and the lovely Testament will be looking at five more key themes: Youth, The Individual verses Society, Conflict, Fate, and Family. Good luck.

TESTAMENT: [in a deep voice] Love! Oh yeah!

HOLLIE MCNISH: Hi, and welcome to our Bitesize English literature podcast. My name is Hollie McNish. I'm a writer and performer and I use GCSE Bitesize to help me with a lot of my exams. So I'm very excited to be here.
Across seven episodes, which the help of the brilliant beatboxer, rapper and writer Testament,

TESTAMENT: Ahhh.

HOLLIE MCNISH: We'll (laughs). We'll take you through the key themes of one of William Shakespeare's best-known tragedies, Romeo and Juliet.

It's a play about what happens when two teenagers from families that hate each other meet and fall in love. Today were focusing on one of the text's key themes. Conflict. All of the themes cross over each other, so please go and listen to the other episodes to get more hints, which I'm sure will also be useful for this theme.
Before me and Testament get into it properly, here are a couple of clips, starting with the prologue at the very beginning of the play.

CLIP: In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
Come forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.

TYBALT: Turn thee Benvolio. Look upon thy death.

BENVOLIO: I do but keep the peace. Put up they blade or manage it to part these men with me.

TYBALT: What drawn and talk of peace? I hate the word. As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee! Have at thee, coward! [fighting]

UNKNOWN: Down with the Capulets.

UNKNOWN: Down with the Montagues

HOLLIE MCNISH: So that last speech was from Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, and that is one of my favourite lines in the whole play. So I'm very excited to have heard that.

TESTAMENT: Have at thee, coward?

HOLLIE MCNISH: Oh no, the peace, peace "I hate the word as I hate hell, all Montagues and thee." It's like oh, and even in the prologue, even before any action in this play begins, Shakespeare has made it so clear that conflict is one of the biggest themes.
The narrator says "civil blood making civil hands unclean".

TESTAMENT: So like civil b - civil hands, so like

HOLLIE MCNISH: Civil blood making like civil hands unclean.

TESTAMENT: Right, so you've got like normal people, not army, not

HOLLIE MCNISH: No.

TESTAMENT: Civil - civilians, like regular people, they've got blood on their hands.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Yeah.

TESTAMENT: Oh my gosh.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Yeah.

TESTAMENT: They've been involved in violence, not cool

HOLLIE MCNISH: From the very beginning this is

TESTAMENT: Not cool.

HOLLIE MCNISH: No, it's not cool. This is the background.

TESTAMENT: And as soon as the prologue's done, like scene one, boom, you've got some servants for the Montagues and Capulets, just going about their business, and a fight breaks out from nothing, just because they’re on basically different sides, and they start having this stupid argument about like, oh what you saying then, what you saying?
Do you bite your thumb at me? No, I do bite my thumb though. And it's like why are you actually killing each other over work? We don’t even really know what this ancient grudge, as it's called, an ancient grudge which goes back, you know, decades or whatever, and it's between these two families. You don't even know what started it.

HOLLIE MCNISH: But I think that's the point, isn't it, that Shakespeare's making. There's so many conflicts, like it's been going on for so long.

TESTAMENT: Yeah.

HOLLIE MCNISH: We don't learn why.

TESTAMENT: No, but we just see this escalation, like constantly, like it starts off small and these massive fights break out where, you know, people's lives are taken, these two houses, two families that are in conflict with one another.

HOLLIE MCNISH: The Montagues and the Capulets.

TESTAMENT: The Montagues and the Capulets, and you get these people that are sort of the minions, the people that are smaller, lower down the ranks, about to start to fight because their superiors are involved in this grudge, and they've got this thing about biting your thumb, and yet - and as - when you - you know, here I am in the 21st century and I'm like well what's this biting thumb business?

HOLLIE MCNISH: Yeah.

TESTAMENT: But it's kind of like doing something rude with your hands, it's like that equivalent, but back in the day in Renaissance Italy, you know. Do you bite your thumb at me? Well I might be biting my thumb at you. I - I do bite my thumb. And there's a sort of tension that builds and it builds, and then the fight breaks out and then Romeo's friend, Benvolio, has to come in and try and break it up.
And then Tybalt from the other side comes over and you think oh maybe he's gonna help. No. He wants to like get - he wants to start the ruckus. Tybalt is a Capulet, and he is Juliet's cousin. Every time he pops up he's like - he's all about this bravado and he's like I'll take you on, I'll take you - he's constantly there, amazing character.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Well that's like the quote, isn't it, that we've just heard. Where it's Tybalt that's speaking,

TESTAMENT: Yeah.

HOLLIE MCNISH: And he literally says "peace, I hate the word." Like, it's amazing.

HOLLIE MCNISH: So so far we've talked about conflict, but actually all the characters that we've been talking about are male.

TESTAMENT: Yeah.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Mostly young.

TESTAMENT: Yeah.

HOLLIE MCNISH: There's not only

TESTAMENT: Even old Montague pulls out his sword in act scene 1, cheeky chap, wants to get involved in the fight.

HOLLIE MCNISH: So what about the female characters?

TESTAMENT: Well this is the thing, so the thing that stops old Montague is his wife. She sort of restrains, so there's much more common sense going on with the mothers in the play. But they're affected by the conflict too. When Romeo is exiled because he's murdered someone, that conflict affects his mum, and she's so heartbroken, at the end of the play, old Montague says alas my Liege, my wife is dead tonight. Grief of my son's exile has stopped her breath. So she dies, I guess w - you could say of heartbreak, we don't quite know why. And then you've got the prince, the law and order in this city.
Everybody is a victim. As the prince says, all are punished.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Yeah, all are punished. It's really important to get into your head, and to get down on paper, in your GCSE exams, that just like with the theme of love, which we've got an episode on too, just like the fact that there are different types of love, there are different types of conflict. So there's these two big themes of external conflicts and internal conflicts.
So maybe stop this, write those two down. Internal conflict, external conflict. So we've got the internal conflicts in the characters minds, in their head, what should they do, what can they do. And then we've got the external conflicts of the political situation, social situations, families.

TESTAMENT: And it - it's beautiful, but you were about to say, there's other types of conflict as well, I think.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Yes, and so if you were talking about conflict in an exam, it's a great way, and quite a sort of simple way, to structure any answer, that there are these forms of external conflict that we've just spoken about. There's also internal conflict in so many of the characters. So internal conflict like the sort of conflict in your head, not knowing what to do, not knowing who you are, just that sort of confusion, that - we all - we all have internal conflict.

TESTAMENT: I really also like the conflict that Romeo's got, and it's - there's lots - so much about secrets, so Romeo can't say why he wants peace once he's fallen in love with Juliet. He can't say I don't wanna fight the Capulets anymore, um, because he's got a secret relationship.
And there's that moment just before Mercutio dies where Tybalt's trying to get a rise out of him and get a fight on with - between Tybalt and Romeo, and Romeo's like no, I can't fight you and I can't tell you why but I love you now. So Mercutio stands up and gets involved in the conflict. He's standing up for his mate, for Romeo, so a switch clicks inside of Romeo when he sees his best, you know,one of his best friends, Mercutio, killed by Tybalt, and he's enraged and he, gosh, he fights and he murders Tybalt, you know, takes revenge right there and then. And we see the internal conflict afterwards and how he's conflicted and think - he's got that internal conflict and guilt that he's dealing with.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Yeah.

TESTAMENT: And - and he knows that he's hurt the family of the woman he's in love with.

HOLLIE MCNISH: So quotes, quotes and quotes. Quotes are a great way of helping you to explain themes and illustrate the points you're making. They're also a great way for you to remember themes that you want to talk about. So find quotes that work for you. Right now we're gonna give you some of our favourite quotes on the theme of conflict.
So I'll go first this time, maybe.

TESTAMENT: Go on.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Alright. So, I've said it all through this episode really, but the - the Tybalt, in act one, scene one, when he sort of says to the group of Montagues 'peace'. He's questioning it.
'Peace, I hate the word, as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee'. And I know that's not that long a quote but I do not have that great a memory, and if I'm in an exam, sometimes I used to panic and think oh, and you have to get these quotes accurate. So if I couldn't remember the whole quote, 'Peace, I hate the word, as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.'
I would remember 'Peace, I hate the word'. It's oh, it just sums up everything for me, in terms of not being able to get out of the conflict and what the conflict is about. Also in terms of language, cos it's excellent and very important to talk about language. Examiners…love language. That fact that it starts with a question, like he's questioning the whole idea of peace, and then it's just such a set response.

TESTAMENT: So Peace question mark. I-

HOLLIE MCNISH: Peace question mark. Yeah.

TESTAMENT: I hate the word.

HOLLIE MCNISH: 'Peace question mark. I hate the word'. I hate the word is all monosyllables. It's like dum dum dum dum. This is what I think. As I hate hell. And then the next part of the sentence, 'As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.'

TESTAMENT: It's almost like he's pointing his finger and says 'and thee'.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Ooh, imagine someone saying that to you.

TESTAMENT: I've got this one from the Friar, from act two, scene six, where he says 'These violent delights have violent ends'. 'These violent delights have violent ends'.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Oh, that's a good quote to remember.

TESTAMENT: Which is - which is another good one. So these people that are living a life of violence and conflict, you know, as we know at the end of the play it is a tragedy, so it has a sad ending. Violent delights have violent ends.

HOLLIE MCNISH: I think that's one of Shakespeare's intentions, no? To show that. Like we have so many films and so many songs that really romanticise violence, and I think Romeo and Juliet absolutely does the opposite. It does not end well. All are punished.

TESTAMENT: It's the idea that these families are delighting themselves in violence, in - in conflict, but yet it's gonna end in violence again. It's just quite nice, there's good repetition of violent in it, so it really drives the point home.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Nice. If you wanna stop us now, maybe write down these quotes that we've given you, go back, rewind, write them down, record them, listen to them over and over again, work out which themes you could use them for, work out three points to say about the language that you can get down really quickly in your exam, then I think that would be really helpful.
I've got one, because it scared me. Juliet, it's said by Juliet's father to Juliet when she says she doesn't want to marry Paris, but he says to her 'Hang, beg, starve, die in the streets. For by my soul I'll never acknowledge thee'.
But I would just remember, (laughs), again because my memory's not great, 'Hang, beg, starve, die in the streets'. And the reason that I like this is cos I feel like it sums up this idea of like, of conflict in family, that the language it uses also, I think it's so clever. It's full of verbs - hang, beg, starve, die, it's like the crescendo of using lists, it like builds up the tension, or it builds up the symbolism, so hang, beg, starve, die. And 'in the streets' at the end, just reminds me that this is also an external conflict. This is like a family conflict.

HOLLIE MCNISH: Hopefully you're feeling a bit more at peace with the theme of conflict in Romeo and Juliet. Listen again however many times you need. You'll also find loads more on Romeo and Juliet at the BBC Bitesize website. And you can check out the other episodes of the Bitesize English Literature podcast on BBC Sounds about this text, where me and Testament will be looking at five more key themes: fate, youth, individual versus society, conflict and love. Thanks for now, and good luck.

TESTAMENT: Do you Bitesize your thumb at me, sir?

HOLLIE MCNISH: Ohh!

HOLLIE: Hi, and welcome to our Bitesize English literature podcast, my name is Hollie McNish and I'm very excited to be here. Right now, we're looking at one of William Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies, Romeo and Juliet.
It's a play about what happens when two teenagers from families that hate each other meet and fall in love. Across seven episodes with the help of the brilliant writer, rapper, and beat boxer, Testament, we'll take you through the key themes of this tragic play so you're as well prepared as possible to tackle your GCSE in English literature.
Feel free to stop us - any time you want - to scribble down notes, to relisten, to repeat things in your head or out loud, whatever works for you, whatever makes it less stressful. Today, we're gonna be focusing on one of the text’s key themes, family. But first, here's a couple of clips, starting with the very famous balcony scene.

[CLIP FROM ROMEO AND JULIET]
Juliet: "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet."

[music plays]

[CLIP FROM ROMEO AND JULIET]
Prince: "All are punished."
CAPULET: "O brother Montague, give me thy hand."

TESTAMENT: "O brother Montagu, give me thy hand" - this is about when the two families come together as a new fam-, you know, the Montagues and the Capulets, that's a chink of hope.

HOLLIE: Family, as we've heard there, is a huge theme in this play which crosses over in many ways with the themes of love and conflict, so if you're talking about family go and listen to the episodes on love and conflict as well, because we talk about family a lot in those episodes.
The whole play is built [chuckling] around the conflict and the love between these two families, after all. So, Testament, these aren't your everyday families.

TESTAMENT: No, the-, these are not just the people that lie down the road and you see them at the fish and chip shop, this is-, these are like two wealthy land-owning families in renaissance Italy, so old school, olden times, pow-, two powerful families, they're almost like two companies, or two institutions or-, almost like two massive football teams.
You've got these two estates, these two households, which-, and a family doesn't just mean, as we can see from the text, literally who's your mum, your dad, your cousin, it's down to the servants, the servants are part of this family in a-, in a, sort of, uh an old-fashioned, sort of, grand sense.

HOLLIE: How would you maybe talk about that if you're answering a question about this theme in particular?

TESTAMENT: It's this "ancient grudge", um which is a nice quote there, in the prologue, at the b-, very beginning of the uh play, "ancient grudge", file save that one, is-, is what this story is about, is a grudge so old between these two different families and we don't know why they hate each other. And even the servants of the family hate the servants of the other family.
So, you've got these two families and you've got other people that are kind of family as well, you've got the prince and his kinsman, Mercutio and-, and Paris, who are also caught up in this. So, you've almost got three different families with the Capulets on one side, Montagues on the other, and then the prince and uh, his people uh trying to keep the peace.

HOLLIE: And as well as conflict in that way, this ancient grudge, um in the context of Verona at the time, there's also such a big sense of duty, isn't there, in Romeo and Juliet. Like, at the time that idea of honouring your family is huge.
I guess for me, Juliet is the character that Shakespeare shows this idea of family duty and loyalty maybe most powerfully, this scene which I've talked about before, but this scene with her father, with Capulet telling her she's supposed to marry Paris, like this much older man.

[CLIP FROM ROMEO AND JULIET]
CAPULET: "I'll give you to my friend; and you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, for, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee, nor what is mine shall never do thee good".

HOLLIE: This is part of doing her duty to her family. One of the most interesting things in this play in terms of family, is that the actual-, the idea of parenting in Romeo and Juliet is-, is very clever, is very interesting, so both Romeo and Juliet, not one or the other, but both of them are in a way, they're failed by their parents, it's not their mother or their father, who's really caring for them, that-, the parents are more interested partly in this conflict in-, in social advancement, they're not so interested in what their children actually want.
But Shakespeare does put in two other characters, which in any essay or any exam on family I would definitely mention - who are like family to both Romeo and Juliet, and who you could argue are more of a mother, and more of a father to Romeo and Juliet.

TESTAMENT: Yeah, a hundred per cent, I think. The nurse, well, has compassion for Juliet; the friar has compassion for them both, and you-, and you see, like, these are two people that Juliet and Romeo can pretty much tell anything to. Juliet can not say everything that she wants to say about her inner life and who she's in love with to her parents, and the same with um Romeo to the Montagues as well.

HOLLIE: And I think that they're put there to show that family is not just blood ties, I mean, Shakespeare's added these characters, they-, they don't gain anything by caring from-, for these children, for these young people. The fact that the-, the nurse was actually Juliet's wet nurse, which is somebody that was brought in, not only to look after the child, but also to actually breastfeed.So women that ha-, also had a baby, so they were producing breastmilk, so she's-, you know, she's nursed Juliet, she's had this absolutely maternal bond with Juliet, and I think these two characters are shown as so much more thoughtful.

[music plays]

TESTAMENT: What I love about the marriage between Romeo and Juliet is, even though it's in secret, it has, in-, certainly in the minds of Romeo and in Juliet have united, so now, Tybalt isn't an enemy anymore, now he's a family member.

HOLLIE: Yeah, even though he doesn't know it!

TESTAMENT: Even though he doesn't know it, and so a family's actually growing in this play without the Capulets and [chuckling] Montagues realising it, because of the love, the "pure love" to quote Friar, that uh Romeo and Juliet have got.

HOLLIE: And that's a-, that's a turning point in the plot, isn't it? [Testament: Yeah.] It's one of-, one of the first family themed turning points when they get married and they have actually combined these two families.

TESTAMENT: Yeah, and it's a point of no return because once they're married, actually you're uniting the two households. They're all family now, they don’t realise it. And uh what I love is by the end of the play, after the tragedy is done, what does Capulet call Lord Montague? He says, "O brother Montague, give me thy hand." [Hollie: Yeah.]
Um so now you've got what were two separate families, so these two-, two tribes - now they're brothers.

[music plays]

HOLLIE: Right, so each episode as well as talking about the theme, chatting about the theme, we're gonna give you some great quotes, [sniggering] or quotes that we think are great that you can use to make your essays sound excellent that you can easily remember and that you can talk about the author's intention and the language.
So you might wanna write down these quotes, highlight them in your text or go through and-, and think of your own if you've got quotes that you prefer, so Testament, you go first, give us a line that really speaks to this question about the theme of family.

TESTAMENT: I've got a very bitesize one, it's just the two words "ancient grudge", and if you want the long w-, long version of it, you could say, "from ancient grudge break to new mutiny." Later-, later on, in the same opening monologue, it talks about, "the continuance of their parents' rage". So yeah, "the continuance of their parents' rage".

HOLLIE: One of the ways that I find it easy to remember is to choose quotes that I like the sound of. [Testament: "Mm."] Do you like the sound of the quote?

TESTAMENT: Uh you'd have to pull some right faces to say the word ancient grudge, it's like you're eating, like, a giant ball of chewing gum, "ancient grudge", and as a beat boxer, I love a lot of the sounds that are used for different syllables and different parts of words.
Ancient grudge, ancient grudge, [repeats "ancient grudge" in a beat box manner] yeah? Let's beat box it, fam.

HOLLIE: I wish I had so many skills as you in this respect. [chuckles] Some-, so my quote here is another quote that I've already used and then I’ll give you a new one that I haven't used in another theme, and it is when Juliet's father, Lord Capulet, is telling her "Hang, beg, starve, die in the streets." And I think this is just such a sad moment in terms of the theme of family.
The other quote I'll use for this, for family, is, "Deny thy father, and refuse thy name … and I’ll no longer be a Capulet." It's like refuse the entire ancient family heritage, it's-, it's not a small thing. And that is like the 'Lurve' scene in Act One, Scene Two.

TESTAMENT: It's very patriarchal, it's not, deny your mother, nope, it's your father, coz the father in this society's dominating and bullying everyone into fights.

HOLLIE: And I liked this because-, basically, I just always choose quotes that have stuff that I can say about the language. Language analysis is what will make the essay stand out to an examiner, they 'lurve' language. There’s obviously repetition, "Deny thy father and refuse they name" there's a kind of rhythm and a rhyme to it that kind of makes it for me seem-, seem simple.
"I'll no longer be a Capulet", the use of the future tense here, quite nice easy way to talk about language is talk about tenses, so she says, "and I'll no longer be a Capulet", it's not, I might no longer, I'll try, it's like, I will no longer be a Capulet.

TESTAMENT: I-, I like the use of three there, you've got three chunks of that quote, you've got, do that, then do that, and this'll be the result. [Hollie: [laughing] Yeah.] One, two, and three. [Hollie: Yeah, it's simplicity again.]
[over Hollie] So first of all, "Deny thy [sniggering] father", then, "refuse thy name", "I'll no longer be a Capulet." So, you've got-, that might help you um land in your brain and-, and, sort of, sort it in your brain, "Deny thy father," yeah, "refuse they name … I'll no longer be a Capulet." I've got a bit of a hopeful one uh to end on, when Capulet says to Montague, "O brother Montague, give me thy hand."

[music plays]

HOLLIE: Thank you so much for listening to this episode, hopefully you've now got a better grasp on why family is such an important and interesting theme in Romeo and Juliet.
Check out more information about Romeo and Juliet on the BBC Bitesize website. And have a listen to other episodes of the Bitesize English Literature podcast on BBC Sounds about this text where me and Testament will be looking at five more key themes: fate, youth, individual versus society, conflict, and love. Good luck.

TESTAMENT: "O, the blood is spilt of my dear kinsman!"

HOLLIE: Hi and welcome to our Bitesize English Literature podcast, where across seven episodes, we’ll take you through the key themes of the texts you’re studying so you’re as well prepared as possible to tackle the GCSE English Literature exam. GCSEs can be really stressful, so if I were you, listening, I'd do it while going for a walk or getting some air, or if you're really tired, lying down with your eyes closed.
Put your phone away though, and maybe have a notepad ready to stop us whenever you want and scribble down ideas or thoughts or quotes.
Right now, we’re looking at one of William Shakespeare’s best known tragedies, the play Romeo and Juliet, about what happens when two teenagers from families that hate each other meet and fall in love. Today we’re gonna be focusing on one of the text’s key themes: the individual versus society.Here’s a clip with the prince who's in charge of the city of Verona where this play is set.

CLIP
PRINCE: Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word,
By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,
Have thrice disturb'd the quiet of our streets,
And made Verona's ancient citizens
Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments,
To wield old partisans, in hands as old,
Canker'd with peace, to part your canker'd hate:
If ever you disturb our streets again,
Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.

HOLLIE: I'm so delighted to be joined again by the exceptionally lovely writer, wrapper and beatboxer, Testament, to talk about another key theme in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, so get comfy.
Individual versus society sounds very grand and maybe a bit daunting when you first hear it in terms of answering an exam question, but it really just means the difference between the character as an individual, as an individual person and the character as a person living in society.
So the society is all the rules and pressures, the culture, the religion, patriarchy, ideals, traditions, that affect the character, that affect who you are and what you can and cannot do.

TESTAMENT: Yeah, I mean, it's, the institutions really present the obstacles to our main protagonists of um, Romeo and Juliet 'cause you've got the individual, them, what they want to do, as individual people that wanna live their lives the way that they wanna live it and fall in love with who they wanna fall in love with, and then you've got the world in which they're living, society around them, putting pressure on them and barriers in front of them and, and problems, causing them problems uh- …

HOLLIE: So what are the specific institutions?

TESTAMENT: Well, bear in mind, Verona, where this play is set, is a city state, which mea-, kind of means it's almost like it's got its own laws, it's got its own rules. You know, it's not like cities today where it's just a big place with lots of people in it.

HOLLIE: With a cathedral. [laugh]

TESTAMENT: With a cathedral, exactly, or a shopping centre, you know. It's, a city state like Verona back in Renaissance Italy hundreds of years ago would've had its own army, would've had its own laws, would've had its own form of government. So if you were living in Verona, you'd better listen to what the prince, who's in charge of Verona, says is the law.
And so if he says no fighting, that means okay, well you better uh, have no fighting otherwise you could end up getting executed or sent to prison or exiled like Romeo was.

HOLLIE: So Renaissance, you just said Renaissance Italy, what exactly does that mean, 'cause it's a gre-, that's a great word and I would write it down. It's a very good word to get into your exam pad.

TESTAMENT: So Renaissance Italy is, hundreds of years ago in Italy, around the time, you know, when Leonardo di Cap-, uh, Leonardo di Caprio … [both laugh] Not Leonardo di Caprio! He's a great actor, but he wasn't, he wasn't alive then. We're talking at the time when Leonardo da Vinci was painting the Mona Lisa, not Leonardo di Caprio.

HOLLIE: [laugh]

TESTAMENT: Um, but back in them days Europe was going through a massive rebirth, which is what renaissance means, of ideas and, and thinking about philosophy and, and literature and things like that, and art. So that, that, these are really important times, very exciting, but this was where the play was set, Verona, this city state, and …

HOLLIE: And it's a real city in Northern Italy.

TESTAMENT: And – yeah, this is where Romeo and Juliet takes place. And these are two young people that fall in love, we famously know that, but what people don’t uh, think about so much is that the, you've got the, the prince and his family, the person in charge of law …

HOLLIE: So it's a legal institution.

TESTAMENT: Yeah, a legal institution and a sort of state institution, and then you've got the Capulet family and the Montague family which are two really powerful rich and wealthy families.

HOLLIE: It's important when you're talking about these institutions, like the reason that we've said family is 'cause these families are institutions in [TESTAMENT: yes] this society. You know, they really have such control. Not all families are [chuckle] but the Montagues and Capulets are known, they have wealth, they have power.

TESTAMENT: That's right, yeah.

HOLLIE: So we've also got this idea of patriarchy which is, it crosses, in, in this case, it crosses through all of them.

TESTAMENT: Hmm.

HOLLIE: So w-, it's a, it's a very patriarchal society where Romeo and Juliet is set. So can you just explain this idea of the word patriarchy?

TESTAMENT: Yes, and basically it's like where men are in charge and when you think about all the women in the play, like they haven't got much power, much agency, they don’t have much to say on their lives.

HOLLIE: And all of the institutions are patriarchal, the family …

TESTAMENT: Yeah, the church.

HOLLIE: The law and the church.

TESTAMENT: For Juliet, she's actually really owned by her father until she gets married, when legally she would be owned by her husband. So she's treated as property and she cannot make her own decisions and choices.

HOLLIE: I think she's such a good character for this topic 'cause she has all of these institutions against her.

TESTAMENT: Hmm.

HOLLIE: You know, these different institutions. There's family, there's the church, there's the law, the patriarchy which k-, kind of crosses all of those and I think she's one of the only character that does, she's a young girl, and as you say, in those times women were not allowed their own money. You know, nothing was consensual. You had to have sex, you know, it was your husband’s right.
And you know, for a 13-year-old girl I can't imagine how horrendous that is.

TESTAMENT: And think about what her father, Capulet, said to her, saying that if she didn't agree to marry Paris, who she's not in love with, he, she could go hang, she could beg, she can starve and die on the streets. But despite that, she still chooses to follow her heart, to be an individual and not uh, back down to what society is telling her to do.
And she continues to make choices even when people are putting pressure on her and telling her to do something else.

HOLLIE: The laws are against her. In many ways, the family, family duty, this power of her father, in particular, is really against her as an individual; and I think the church is an interesting one 'cause the church actually isn’t portrayed in such a negative way at all by Shakespeare.

TESTAMENT: No, I mean, like we've got really one sort of representative of the church strongly portrayed in this play, and it's the friar and he's a good guy.

HOLLIE: Yeah.

TESTAMENT: He wants the best for the young people, even going against what the state, what the prince would want in order to try and defend Romeo and Juliet.

HOLLIE: So what's the specific example of that?

TESTAMENT: So one really good example is that when Romeo is banished, exiled from Verona and will probably never see Juliet ever again …

HOLLIE: For murder.

TESTAMENT: For murder, he did commit a murder! The friar, even though he knows the prince wouldn't be happy about it and he certainly knows the Capulet and the Montague families might not be happy about this, he shelters Romeo in the church. So the friar, actually, although he's part of a societal institution, the Catholic church, is actually using his authority in society to protect the rights of the individual.
But what I love about Shakespeare is that you've got complexity, so when Romeo is buying poison 'cause he wants to take his own life and, and die alongside Juliet, he persuasively argues to convince the apothecary to sell him this, this horrendous poison.

HOLLIE: Okay, let's just stop there and take a breath 'cause I know you've got a great quote coming from that scene, which we're gonna discuss in a moment.

[music]

HOLLIE: So each episode we've chosen our favourite quotes, quotes that we think are brilliant to discuss this theme, quotes where we think the language is easy to talk about and quotes that will really make your essays shine in an exam. Examiners love quotes. So Testament …

TESTAMENT: All right, here's-…

HOLLIE: Would you like to give us that quote?

TESTAMENT: Yeah, oh, I love this. This is Act 5, Scene 1. Romeo has been banished from Verona, so he's now in Mantua. He's never gonna see the love of his life again and then he's had the news that, oh my gosh, Juliet has died. He's in grief and he goes to buy some poison from a poor apothecary, which is like a pharmacist or doctor, something like that.
So he rocks up and Romeo says to the apothecary, "The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law. The world affords no law to make thee rich." So in that he's saying, you know what, the world is against the individual, society is against the individual. So "the world is not your friend" and then "nor the world’s law". So it's like the world’s laws aren’t your friends either.
Um, so both the world and its laws are not on your side. That's why you should give me the um, poison and I'll give you money. I know you're f-, not feeling good about giving me this poison, but this is the way of the world and we need, you need money, don’t you?

HOLLIE: So in t-, it's very persuasive, isn’t it?

TESTAMENT: Argh.

HOLLIE: it's an example of such a persuasive, sort of manipulative, in a way. He's using his power, he's using his, his wealth over this, this poor seller.

TESTAMENT: Totally, totally, and it is a good bit of repetition. "The world is not they friend, nor the world’s laws." Quite easy to remember, which is great when you're digging for quotes.

HOLLIE: In terms of the language for that, I would also say that the use of the word world, like Romeo has not travelled around the entire world. He's a young boy who's mainly been in Verona. [TESTAMENT: hmm] mainly small parts of Verona, [TESTAMENT: hmm] I imagine, but he uses the word – he doesn't say the city is not your friend. He says the world is not your friend and he repeats it three times. I think it just increases this idea of he feels like everything is against him.
For my quote I'm gonna do what I've done a lot and use a quote that I've already used.

TESTAMENT: Come on!

HOLLIE: And I keep doing this. Now, this isn’t lazy, [chuckle]. I think this is a smart way to do your exams.

TESTAMENT: That's good revision.

HOLLIE: It's good revision, because if you can remember, I used to remember three good quotes that can cover many different topics. So I've talked about the language already, but the quote is, "Deny they father and refuse thy name", and it's in Act II, Scene I, where Romeo and Juliet meet.
It's the balcony scene where they're talking to each other, but also in monologue form. And I think this is such a powerful quote 'cause Juliet, who is one of the… victims, I'd say, [TESTAMENT: yeah] of all of these different social institutions, "Deny thy father and refuse thy name." It's a huge thing. It's sort of saying deny thy father, deny thy family, deny the hold that these social institutions have over you.
It's really powerful, like this is your father and your name, and I want you to [clicks] obliterate them, as if that's the only way that these individuals can be free to, to love, in this case, how they want to.

[music]

HOLLIE: I really hope you understand more clearly now and feel a bit more comfortable writing about how hard it was, how complicated for individuals in Romeo and Juliet to follow their own will when they came up against these powers, these different powers within society.
And you can check out the other episodes of the Bitesize English Literature podcast about this play on BBC Sounds, where me and Testament will be looking at five more key themes; family, love, fate, youth and conflict. And go to the BBC Bitesize website for more information about the theme of the individual against society.

[music]

TESTAMENT: One, two, three and …

BOTH TOGETHER: The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law. The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law.

MAN: Boom.

HOLLIE: [laugh]

TESTAMENT: That's power.

HOLLIE: Hello and welcome to our Bitesize English Literature podcast. I am Hollie McNish, I'm a writer, and across seven episodes we'll take you through the key themes of the text you're studying so you're as well prepared as possible to study GCSE English Literature. Right now we're looking at one of William Shakespeare's best known plays, Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy about what happens when two teenagers from families that hate each other meet and fall in love. Today we're gonna be focusing on one of the text's key themes: fate.
People who believe in fate believe that events in your life or the world are governed by some sort of supernatural power outside your control, predetermined. So in this play when we talk about fate we're asking whether what happens in the play - especially to young Romeo and Juliet - was already determined. Was Shakespeare's suggestion that they were in control of their lives, or that their lives and what happened to them was already decided by some greater power?
I'm so delighted to be joined again by the superb writer, rapper, and beatboxer, Testament.

TESTAMENT: It was fate!

HOLLIE: It was fate brought us together to talk about the theme of fate in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Here's a clip from the prologue.

TESTAMENT: What the prologue does, it is before the play, but it's actually it's almost like they stop the play and they just, the actors are talking to the audience going, we're going to tell you this story, it goes like this, now we're gonna fill in, you know, here are the big things that happen and now we're gonna actually tell it you properly.

NARRATOR: From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life, whose misadventured piteous overthrows do with their death bury their parents' strife.

HOLLIE: And what would they have believed about fate within the culture, the society?

TESTAMENT: Well it's a heavily religious society, and part of that is this idea - well, in their version of God, God has planned out what's gonna happen to us. In the prologue we talk about "star-cross'd lovers" [H: Yeah.] so that's almost like astrology, the idea that the - the universe, the stars, you know, we have it today people believing in horoscopes, astrology has destined these two children to meet, and they're gonna fall in love and it's gonna end in tragedy.

HOLLIE: And they're star-cross'd –

TESTAMENT: Star-cross'd right.

HOLLIE: - it's not, it's not them, it's the stars that destined them to be together so he does, he does imply with that line that this is a fated romance, and like you said star-cross'd lovers is in the prologue, the fact that the prologue it tells you what is gonna happen. So in the play itself there's this idea of fate because you already know the ending by the time you've started reading that and - [TESTAMENT: Yeah.] and the fated death I get, this - [TESTAMENT: That's right.]
This idea of the stars - let's just talk about the language, like the idea of the stars is so prevalent in this play, and if you're talking in your exam then I would use the word symbolism - there's constant symbolism of stars, there are so many examples. I think Romeo for me is the character that most believes in this idea of fate, the characters within the play are very conscious of the idea of fate,and Romeo says in Act 1, Scene 4, "Some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin", and he also says, "I defy you stars" -

TESTAMENT: That's foreshadowing there isn't it?

HOLLIE: - Yeah it's foreshadowing bad things are gonna come and he also says, "I defy you stars", and so he's like blaming the stars which I think makes it, for me it makes it more interesting because this character, I'm not sure if Romeo believes in fate, or if he blames fate.

TESTAMENT: I think he's in a tussle with fate, it's like I want to have my choice, I want to be able to do what I want to do, um, so when he says, "Is it even so? Then I defy you stars!" he's saying, well if this is what fate wants for me I'm going against that.

HOLLIE: But he's also saying that that's hard because there is this supernatural power –

TESTAMENT: Exactly.

HOLLIE: - so he does believe in it –

TESTAMENT: Yes.

HOLLIE: - he does believe in it or, I feel like in some way, he calls himself "fortune's fool".

TESTAMENT: Well yeah I mean that's after he kills his wife's cousin. [H: Yes.] Um, he kills Tybalt which is exactly who he doesn't want to kill, and rather than saying, I made a big mistake, at that point he goes, "I'm fortune's fool". [H: Yes.] so it's fortune's fault it's not his fault.

[music]

TESTAMENT: I think there's, there's that and I think there's a pleading with fate to try and fix things. Juliet, when she's feeling down, you know, she gives this calling out to, "O fortune, fortune", she – she sort of prays to fortune, you know, not to keep Romeo long, so she doesn't feel like, oh Romeo's gonna sort it out, she doesn't feel like the Friar's gonna sort it out, she has to appeal to some higher power, or to chance, or to fate to - to fix things.

HOLLIE: So there are so many moments in this play where Shakespeare intentionally gives us events where you have to ask, is this fate? Is this a coincidence? Is this just a mistake somebody's made? So, maybe let's have a look if you've got examples to give in an exam.

TESTAMENT: So the first one like, but it's a good one - well it ends badly but it starts well, Romeo goes to a party that he's not meant to go to.

HOLLIE: Yes.

TESTAMENT: He runs into the messenger who's got the, ah, the guest list who's got the invite list for the Capulet party, he's not meant to be going to the Capulet party but he manages to get his hand on the list of the people invited to attend - Rosaline's invited, he decides to go, and -

HOLLIE: Da da!

TESTAMENT: - as fate would have it -

HOLLIE: Ha! Or, as coincidence would have it [laughs].

TESTAMENT: Exactly, Juliet is there and they fall in love at first sight.

HOLLIE: That's a positive example isn't it? [TESTAMENT: Yeah.] in the play of like things being fated in a, in a positive way.

TESTAMENT: Another example of 'is this fate or is this not fate?' - 'is this just coincidence or just the mistakes of life?' so to speak, ah, the Friar had got a message for Romeo, [H: Yeah.] and Romeo's in Mantua and he needs to know, he needs the secret knowledge that Juliet hasn't died, it's just a sleeping potion and she's gonna wake up in a few days and it's gonna be alright.
But unfortunately Friar John who's got the message has ended up quarantined, and, ah, it means that Friar John can't get to - get the message to Romeo in time, so Romeo is absolutely devastated and now wants to take his own life and visit the tomb of Juliet, so -

HOLLIE: And is it fate - is it fate [TESTAMENT: Yeah.] or is it just a coincidence or is it just a mess up? This is the whole point that Shakespeare is not giving us an answer I don't think he's just asking us to question it, as part of the drama.

TESTAMENT: I don't know like - the prologue is, like these are star-cross'd lovers - it's not, ARE these star-cross'd lovers question mark.

HOLLIE: Ah, true.

TESTAMENT: Discuss in 300 words, he doesn't say that, it's like, these are star-cross'd lovers.

[music]

HOLLIE: For each episode we've chosen what we think are great quotes for you to use to make your essays really stand out, examiners love quotes, any idea you put down you have to back up with quotes and examples from the text. So Testament, could you tell me what quote you've chosen for the theme of fate?

TESTAMENT: I'm gonna choose a quote from Romeo in Act 3, Scene 1, after he kills Tybalt, his wife's cousin, which is exactly who he doesn't want to kill. He says, "O, I am fortune's fool!" so you've got the alliteration in fortune's fool, and it's an apostrophe which is like a calling out, a statement that calls out to someone or to something, "O, I am fortune's fool!"

HOLLIE: So I - also had that quote, [laughs] that was MY quote, and I chose it as well because I find the language, it can say a few quick things about the language, the fact that it starts with the exclamation "O", is very - very dramatic it's like "O - I am fortune's fool!" and I think it's quite an easy one to remember cos it starts with the "O", so just remember "O", "O", "O", [TESTAMENT: Yeah.] and I can remember that.
It's got two exclamation marks, so the use of exclamation means that the actors, these are- he's exclaiming it, and I think the alliteration really - it combines the word "fortune" and "fool" as if they're really intertwined; there's also a possessive so he's fortune's fool, he belongs to fortune, he's literally saying, [TESTAMENT: Wow.] which the alliteration really adds to, that it's possessive; he's possessed by fortune and the fool is owned by fortune. I think all of that adds to the drama.

TESTAMENT: And rather than saying, I made a big mistake, at that point he goes, I'm fortune's fool. [H: Yes.] So it's fortune's fault, it's not his fault.

HOLLIE: So this is why I think it's interesting, um, and the idea of what the - remember you've always got to talk about what the, what the authors say and what Shakespeare's saying about fate, and - I feel like there are two sides to this, I feel like this kind of supernatural, the universe, stars, this is like the but, I'm not sure if Shakespeare is saying that there is this, or that Romeo is using fate, this idea of oh it was the stars, and it was fortune, so I couldn't have done anything about this, as a kind of excuse. I don't think there's a definite message from Shakespeare in this play about things being fated or not. I think he's questioning, it's through the entire plot of this play, whether things really are fated and whether we really can blame fate for our own actions.
I'd chosen a similar quote, but I'm actually letting myself off a little bit learning a quote here, so I had, I had the previous one as well, "O, I am fortune's fool!" - but I also think sometimes, um, you have so many quotes to learn, and sometimes I just talk about words when I'm answering an exam question, so the symbolism that runs through, or the imagery that runs through a play.
So I would take the word star, or stars, which is repeated in many different exclamations, proclamations, to just repeat this idea –

TESTAMENT: Yes.

HOLLIE: - constantly throughout this play there's this idea of the star, star-cross'd, I defy you stars, mainly spoken by Romeo. Er, it's also really good to learn a few specific words to use in your exam, so for example if we're talking about fate you could try and learn the word predetermined, predestined, foreshadowed, just something to really make your essay stand out as you're explaining your thoughts - Shakespeare's intent, talking about the language - to just have those kind of up your sleeve so I would stop this, write down some of the quotes, write down some of the symbolism, and write down a few words that you might just get into that essay.

[music]

HOLLIE: I really hope you now see how fate works in Romeo and Juliet, what Shakespeare maybe intended to do, and how you could talk about language within this theme. I also hope that you're now inevitably going to do better in your GCSE because of it. Check out the other Bitesize English Literature episodes about Romeo and Juliet on BBC Sounds, where me and Testament will be looking at five more key themes, Conflict, Family, Individual versus Society, Youth, and Love. Thanks for now, and really, really good luck in your exams.

TESTAMENT: You can do it, [with reverb effect] it is your destiny…

HOLLIE: Hi there, and welcome to our Bitesize English Literature podcast where across seven episodes we'll take you through the key themes of the texts you're studying, so you're as well prepared and hopefully as comfortable as possible to tackle you GCSE English Literature exam. And please remember to pause us any time, scribble down notes, rewind, listen again, listen while you walk, get some fresh air, have a lie down and listen, whatever works for you.
Right now we're chatting about one of William Shakespeare's best known plays, 'Romeo and Juliet', about what happens when two teenagers from families that are feuding, fighting, hate each other meet and fall in love. We have six podcast episodes covering key themes: family, individuals and society, conflict, love, fate, and youth which we'll be focusing on today.
In episode seven, we'll be giving you some top tips on how to remember, how we remember, key themes and quotes from the play to back up your writing. First of all, here are some clips related to the theme of youth, starting with the scene where Juliet's father is discussing how she is not old enough to be married yet.

[Clip from Romeo and Juliet]
CAPULET: "My child is yet a stranger in the world; she hath not seen the change of fourteen years. Let two more summers wither in their pride, ere we may think her ripe to be a bride."
PARIS: "Younger than she are happy mothers made."
CAPULET: "And too soon marr'd are those so early made."

HOLLIE: It's so nice to be joined by Testament, who is a brilliant writer, rapper, and beatboxer, and a big fan of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'. All right, Testament, you know this play very well and you love it, do you love it?

TESTAMENT: Well, no doubt, it's amazing.

HOLLIE: So, the play is based on a poem, and Shakespeare actually made Romeo and Juliet younger than they are in the poem, so he made them very young for a reason. So, what do you think that reason is and what would you say about the theme of youth in the play?

TESTAMENT: I think you’ve got a couple of things going on. One is that this is a play in many ways that is about young versus old. So, you've got an "ancient grudge".
HOLLIE: Good quote, you can use that [chuckling] for many things.

TESTAMENT: "Ancient grudge" from the prologue, fam. [Hollie: "Ancient grudge".] From the prologue. And you've got the parents' grievances versus what happens to children. The prologue calls them children.
So, you've kind of got the innocent love of Romeo and Juliet versus all the baggage that the world and age has given to these older people, who have got contorted by hatred over years and years of-, of anger and revenge.
So that is the backdrop for-, for youth, this, this sort of, new young flower that's trying to break through of love against this-, the horrib-, almost like bricks and concrete and stone of-, of what the old people have set up.

HOLLIE: That fits so well doesn't it, like, the idea of youth adds so well to the themes of [sniggering] conflict and the themes of individual versus society. The fact that they are young, [Testament: Yeah.] makes them powerless in the world that they live in, in terms of the family feud, in terms of family duties.
Yeah, I agree; the idea that they're so young, it makes them powerless, it adds to the conflict.

TESTAMENT: It adds to tragedy coz when-, when lives are taken early, and you know, they're not old, and they haven’t, like, lived a great life and earnt their GCSEs yet, you know. So for their lives to be take away so young is very, very tragic. And it-, and it's so tragic that it brings the two families to a place where they think, you know what, we need to rethink how we're living our lives.

HOLLIE: Which may not have happened were it two of the older characters. So in terms of the play, this-, this theme of youth it adds to the tragedy and it adds to the drama, it adds to the conflict. You can see the difference between these generations. In terms of how the story actually plays out, in terms of the plot and what happens, how do you think youth is important there?
Would the narrative have been different if these characters were a bit older, a bit more mature?

TESTAMENT: Well if-, if these young men all had jobs and-, and families, they wouldn’t be on the street larking about. Like Mercutio seems very full of very youthful, sort of, teenage energy and it would be very different. And you get that, sort of, young man energy of a, sort of, competition between the young men of the Montagues and the young men of the Capulets.

HOLLIE: They're also more vulnerable, no? I feel-, I feel like exactly in that example, the youth of-, of these characters, all these characters, Romeo's friends, it adds to the drama, it adds to the excitement. Maybe because they're so vulnerable, they're so prone to these ideas of you should be out fighting.

TESTAMENT: Yeah, there’s almost a naivety to it, so, like, I don't think they quite realise the consequences of what it means to fight and die. So, Mercutio when he fights Tybalt, he's full of this braggadocio, this pride. But when he dies, he's not saying, oh I'm dying for a really good reason, he's no, like, "plague o' both your houses!"
Now, it's-, yeah, you know, he's really realising that actually violence has consequences. You could even argue for Romeo and Juliet, they fall in love and they're-, like, they're following their hearts. I mean, with Romeo, he's terrible, he's in love with Rosaline, and then he's in love with [chuckling] Juliet two minutes later.

HOLLIE: That's a really important point.

TESTAMENT: There's a real big youth thing going on.

HOLLIE: That is-, that's a really important point, because Shakespeare puts that in, he puts the backstory of Rosaline in. It's quite funny at first, it makes us question Romeo a lot more. We see him as this young boy who has just fallen so madly deeply in love with this person, now he's like, no, no, no, this person.
So it's-, it's so exaggerated, but it makes more excite-. I think Shakespeare d-, does it on purpose, it's like the excitement of-, of youth is really present in this play. And in their language, the way that Romeo and Juliet both talk about each other: Juliet calls him a god; he calls her a saint, he calls her the s-. We've talked about this [Testament: Yeah.] in the-, in the Love episode. But it's youthful, the language is so exaggerated and dramatic, and it just adds to the love story.

TESTAMENT: What I-, and you've got the c-, all this grand language coming from Romeo and Juliet, and then you've got these adult figures in their life, like the nurse who's like, oh I remember when you were a baby. You've got Juliet's dad saying, well, she doesn't know much about the world yet, give her two more summers.
And you've got the friar talking to Romeo when Romeo rocks up at the friar’s place and he's like, oh I'm in love with Juliet, I want you to marry us right now. The friars like, what, "Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here! Is-, is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear, so soon forsaken?" Like, have you just switched off Rosaline, you've just forgot about her have you?

[Clip from Romeo and Juliet]
FRIAR LAURENCE: "Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here! Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear, so soon forsaken? Young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. Jesu Maria."

TESTAMENT: And when he says, "Young men's love lies-, young men's love lies-" like it's telling you a lie, but also, young-, young men's love then lies "not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes." So, it's like, oh you're so young, it's just-, you're just following your eyes, you're not following your heart really.
And then he goes on to contrast it with older love, you know, and-, and being a bit more steady. And so this whole thing is a-, a dichotomy, which is like a split between two sort of ideas; a dichotomy between youth and age and the-, the wisdom that should hopefully come with age.
However, by the end of the play, it's actually the wisdom of Romeo and Juliet and putting their love first actually teaches all the people that are older a lesson.

HOLLIE: For me it would be a really good way to kind of start or end an essay on this, that Shakespeare, he uses youth in many ways to-, to make the play more dramatic, to make the play more tragic. But he doesn't finally say that with age comes wisdom. That's a-, such a good final point.
This idea of youth plays so many parts, in everything about this, it makes the language more dramatic in many ways, it makes it more comical.

TESTAMENT: More emotional.

HOLLIE: There's-, um it sets up these ideas of conflict between the generations. But at the end, I totally agree, Shakespeare is not saying that the grown-up characters, as a whole, are necessarily wiser.

[music]

HOLLIE: Quotes are an excellent way of helping you to explain themes and illustrate the points you’re making. And I'm not gonna stop going on about quotes in this-, in this podcast series. So, now, Testament, you go first, can you give us a quote that you think would help, [chuckles] remind you of this theme, give you ideas about the theme, or back up ideas about this theme.

TESTAMENT: So, this idea of this dichotomy, this split of two ideas of youth and age and how the young people feel different. When Romeo was talking to the friar, he basically says look, you don't understand because you're old, basically. He says if you were young like me, you'd understand. So he says it like this, "Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel. Wert thou as young as I."

[music]

TESTAMENT: So, you can't speak of what you don't feel, you know, you need to be as young as me, basically. "Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel. Wert thou as young as I".

HOLLIE: That quote is such a tongue twister; that is so hard to say, so if-, if you were just picking out a shorter bit, if you couldn’t remember the whole lot, what would you pick out?

TESTAMENT: Um I would pick out, "Wert thou as young as I". Wert-, so it's like Romeo is using that to differentiate, to show the difference. Basically, were you as young as me, is what he's saying. "Wert thou as young as I". So, the fact that Romeo uses that phrase is highlighting, look me and you, friar, we're different ages.

HOLLIE: So weirdly, my uh quote that I use for this theme is actually from the same act, [chuckling] same scene, so it's from Act 3, Scene 3. But instead of it being, I guess, Romeo telling the friar, like, you can't understand it if you're not as young as I am, it's the opposite. And I think I like it because it's one of the positive examples for me of an-, an-, an older character actually helping a younger character and actually being able to teach them something.
So it's the repetition of, "there art thou happy". Romeo’s coming in, he's-, he's basically complaining and he’s crying, so he's like, you know, you've been charged with murder and you're not being executed, you've been banished and you're not happy. Um Juliet is alive, are you not happy? Um so he's like, "there art thou happy" and he lists all of the things that Romeo should be grateful for.
And I think this is one of the good examples of slightly more wiser, older character just having more of an outlook. You know, not the whole world is against you, like, look at these things that haven't gone wrong or that are still that you can pick the positive out of them. So, I really like this, "there art thou happy", "there art thou happy", "there art thou happy" - at the end of every sentence. Just the repetition, like, just stop and think and here is a kind of wider world view.

[music]

HOLLIE: Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Hopefully you can now see how the theme of youth works in Romeo and Juliet to add to the action, to add to the language, to add to the excitement and the tragedy.
Do go to BBC Sounds and look out for the other Bitesize English Literature episodes about 'Romeo and Juliet' where me and Testament will be looking at five more key themes: fate, love, family, individual versus society, and conflict.
You can also find plenty more information and ideas about 'Romeo and Juliet' on the BBC Bitesize website. And really, really good luck.

TESTAMENT: "There art thou happy".

HOLLIE: [laughing] "There art thou happy".

TESTAMENT: Huh? What you saying?!

HOLLIE: Hello, and welcome to our Bitesize English Literature podcast. This is the final episode on William Shakespeare's best-known tragedy, 'Romeo and Juliet'. My name's Hollie McNish, I'm with the brilliant writer, rapper, and beatboxer, Testament.
Hopefully you've listened to all the other episodes, the six episodes on the key themes of this tragic play. So now we're just gonna go through some of our top tips to help you remember which quotes we might be thinking of in the exam and how we might get them right into our heads and what we would do to revise. Testament.

TESTAMENT: Yo.

HOLLIE: If you could choose one quote to remember that could encompass as many themes as possible, could you give it? Well one quote from all of these, we've done so many episodes and we've talked about this play so much, we've talked about all the different themes. So is there anything that really stands out that you're like, yes, this would be good-.

TESTAMENT: Well, as a general overview, 'cause there's loads of stuff hidden at the very beginning and at the very end of the play, so read the prologue a million squillion times and loads of clues are hidden in there. "Star-cross'd lovers", talking about "ancient grudges", things like that.

HOLLIE: "Civil blood".

TESTAMENT: "Civil blood, make civil hands unclean". They got some great catchy quotes in the prologue which sum up the-, the whole play.

[clip from Romeo and Juliet]
NARRATOR: "In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life."

TESTAMENT: And then at the very end, the prince is summing things up, and what a disaster it's been uh for these two families.

[clip from Romeo and Juliet]
PRINCE: "Capulet, Montague, see what a scourge is laid upon your hate, that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love for winking at your discords too, have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished."

HOLLIE: So, you would say if you're, like, really looking for quotes-.

TESTAMENT: So, he's got like "All is punished." And talking about these different things-, uh different ways that their families have been affected at the end. So, the top and the tail, it's reading them a lot. And then if you pepper that in with some juicy quotes, then you're all right.

HOLLIE: [laughing] Love the word juicy! Yeah, [Testament: Ripe.] I-, that's great-, the prologue is great. And to talk about the prologue, 'cause if you have a quote from the prologue, you can say, this is at the very start of the play. So, you’re talking about the language already. Any quote you've got from the prologue, say it's from the prologue - that is very important because it's before any of the action's started. So, this is from the very beginning the audience wants to know this.

TESTAMENT: It's very exciting coz-, 'cause the prologue is a very clever device from Shakespeare because he tells you the ending, he spoils you, and then it's like, how's it going to happen? How's-, how are the cards going to fall? How is this tragedy going to get worse and worse and worse before we-?

HOLLIE: Yeah, because you know it's gonna get worse.

TESTAMENT: 'cause it's inevitable and it's like, oh no. Or you've been framed or something.

HOLLIE: And that's dramatic irony isn't it. We've said that before, but, like, you know-, because of the prologue, you know what's going to happen the whole way through the play. If I was reading the prologue, if it was me, I would read it out loud.
There’s so much sitting down when you're doing your GCSEs, there's so much sitting, staring at pages of text. But this is a play, like it's-, it's meant to be heard; it's meant to be read. So, you know, make a thing of it. Like, I used to stand up, walk around my room and read it out loud. You get so tired just staring at a page; I used to fall asleep quite a lot.
I used to record myself reading quotes and then listen to the quote over and over again, 'cause that means you can go out-, you can go outside, you can get some fresh air, or you can lie on your bed, you don't need to just sit.

TESTAMENT: And you know what, I've got um a really good quote from Friar Laurence, Act 2, Scene 3. And it ties in with loads of the different themes. So, the full quote is, "For this alliance may so happy prove, to turn your households' rancour to pure love."
So he's saying this marriage may prove happy, and in so doing turn, you know, the Capulets, the Montagues, these two households' rancour, they're anger, their friction, their trouble into pure love. So, I'll say it again.
"For this alliance may so happy prove, to turn your households' rancour to pure love." If you can't remember the full thing, just the last bit. Why does Friar Laurence want these two individuals to get married? "To turn your households' rancour to pure love."

HOLLIE: I think you're just soppy because you've kept talking about that, you love the pure love idea.

TESTAMENT: It's pure love because you've got the love theme, you've got the pressure of the two households in family, you've got um society against the individual. The fact that these two-, marriage of just two wee, little, small individuals can affect the hatred between the enmity, their anger, the hatred between these two big houses, these two big families. Uh-.

HOLLIE: Conflict, family.

TESTAMENT: Conflict-.

HOLLIE: It's really good as well, if you've got a quote, like, write it down, stick it on your wall. [Testament: Yes.] And then if you find a quote that is against it, like a quote that contrasts it, it's a really good thing to do for your exam. Because if you find a quote that says one thing, and then you see a quote that says another thing, if you remember one of them, it's likely to trigger your memory of the other one.
So, if you've got things that say the opposite, then that's a great thing. So put them next to each other. Cover your walls. And, you know, have a look at the quotes. And if-, if you’re finding a quote really hard to remember, I would scrap it.
Like, I've done that in my exams, I've looked at a quote and I've been told, I've read in the notes or I’ve been told, this is the best quote, this is the best quote, but if you cannot remember that quote accurately-, it's gotta be accurate in the exam, if you can't remember it accurately, use another one.
This book is full of quotes, so I'd try to remember I think about five per book, three if I was struggling. Plus a few w-, like the word star, the repetition, the symbol of the word star, if you are somebody that can't remember quotes-.

TESTAMENT: You pull it back. So why remember the word star? Why are we remembering the word star?

HOLLIE: Remember the word star because the words-, like, there's like, "star-cross'd lovers", there's Romeo saying, "I defy you, stars", it's this idea of fate. If the-, which fate comes into everything whether the conflict is fated, whether their love is fated to fail, whether individual can ever have their own free will against society.
And the quote that just sticks out for me, of all the versions of this play that I’ve seen, is, "My only love sprung from my only hate!" And I've talked about it in another episode, [Testament: I love that.] but it's so simple. I find it easy to remember 'cause it's in the balcony scene, which is one of the most famous scenes and Juliet says it.
Basically, so soon after she realises, or she's been told, that Romeo is from the Montague family and she’s like aw what?! [chuckles] "My only love sprung from my only hate!" She might say it like that. In the versions I've heard she says, [softly spoken] "My only love sprung from my only hate!"But if I was saying it and I was recording it, I would not put it in that voice 'cause that sort of theatrical voice often sends me to sleep. So, I'd say, [exasperated] "My only love sprung from my only hate!" That’s so annoying. "My only love sprung from my only hate!" And then think about the language but record it and listen to it over and over again.
And think about how it makes you feel. Try and put yourself in the position of the characters that are saying these things or hearing these things. And actually the simplicity of this quote is part of the language. It's become so embedded in her that she calls it "my hate" like it's hers, it's part of her.

TESTAMENT: So it's her love and it's her hate.

HOLLIE: And then like it's my love, like Romeo is hers. She's so young and it's love, and she's-, you know, oh God. And the individual, her only love. So, for me, I could use this quote to answer, I think, any question I would get this quote in on 'Romeo and Juliet', and that could be used for anything.And it's not lazy to do that, it's just, for me, it's sensible because I know I find it hard to remember things.

TESTAMENT: Yeah, I mean, the main thing is we try, you know, whether you're like sticking the words on your fridge, or getting your mum to test you or your mate to test you.

HOLLIE: And of course, if you're writing down quotes and you get into the exam and you panic, don't not talk about that scene just 'cause you can't remember the quote. So I remember once I got into my exam, where I was like, what's the next bit? What's the next bit? I can't remember.
You know, clock's ticking, you're worried, you can still talk about it. If you can remember one word, put that word in, obviously try to do what you can to learn it, but don't think, I can't remember it, therefore you know, everything's ruined, I can't talk about this. Just try to remember a word, if you've got a word, quote it, it's a quote. And remember to talk about the author's intent.

[music]

HOLLIE: That is us… done.TESTAMENT: Oh no.

HOLLIE: [chuckling] Oh-.

TESTAMENT: "Parting is such sweet sorrow"!

HOLLIE: Oh, that's so nice.

TESTAMENT: Well, that's, you know, that’s Shakespeare. That's from 'Romeo and Juliet'. "Parting is such sweet sorrow". It's beautiful innit.

HOLLIE: I know, I know. It's so lovely, it's so beautiful. So, thank you so much, Testament, it's been a pleasure to chat about this play. I hope it's been interesting. Really good luck with your GCSE exams. I know it's not easy. You know, listen to this podcast, check out BBC Bitesize. Check out the other episodes on BBC Sounds; check out the other podcasts of other books on BBC Sounds.
Listen to us again, go for a walk, lie down. Right now, to take us out, Testament, you've been talking a lot about this prologue. So, in whatever way makes you feel good, or whatever way makes you remember it more, has most effect on you, could you uh read us the start of the prologue.

TESTAMENT: Well, you know the beautiful thing about the prologue, it's done by a chorus, um which is like a bunch of people, or it can be one person sometimes, but chorus implies music doesn't it. And the prologue is written in iambic pentameter, so in a rhythmical speech. Da-dun, da-dun, da-dun-, it's wicked. Um so you can actually rap it quite well.

HOLLIE: Lovely.

TESTAMENT: But I’ve never done it before, Hollie. But I've never rapped it before!

HOLLIE: Oh no, well I'm not a rapper, so I'm not gonna do it.

TESTAMENT: Don't judge me!

HOLLIE: [chuckling] Okay, I won't judge you, I won't judge you.

TESTAMENT: Um yeah, so I’m gonna try and rap the prologue. Check it."Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean." - That's a big quote there."From forth the fatal loins of these two flows a pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; where misadventures piteous overthrows doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, and the continuance of their parents' rage, which, but their children's end, nought could remove is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; the which if you with patient ears attend, what here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.”

HOLLIE: Oh! Very, very nice.

TESTAMENT: Yeah, but like, there's bars in there, there's lyrics in there that you can take out, get it in your brain.

HOLLIE: Rap it.

TESTAMENT: Get it locked.

HOLLIE: Sing it. Read it.

TESTAMENT: Get it in your body, get it in your mind.

HOLLIE: Shout it.

TESTAMENT: Yeah. Post it!

HOLLIE: [laughs] Get it in your body, get it in your mind. I think that is a good note to finish on. Get it in your body, get it in your mind. And good luck.

TESTAMENT: You've got this.