Hi there, Mr. Barnsley are here.

Thanks for joining me today.

I'm really excited as we look the fantastic tragedy that is William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." Now, before you start today's lesson, you're gonna want to make sure that you have got a really good understanding of the plot, you understand the story and the main characters, 'cause we're gonna be really looking at this in some detail today.

And we're gonna be focusing on the characterization of Juliet and thinking about the agency that she has in the play.

Right, it's time for us to get started.

So if you're ready, I'm ready.

Let's go.

Okay, today's outcome, then.

By the end of today's lesson, you are gonna be able to explain how Juliet's characterization in "Romeo and Juliet" relates to ideas of the patriarchy and female agency.

Now, our first two key words are words that were in the outcome.

So if you didn't understand them, you thought, "What are you talking about, Mr. Barnsley?" Now you know.

The patriarchal is an adjective.

It comes from the noun patriarchy.

And that is relating to a system of society or a system of government that has been controlled by men, designed by men for the benefit of men.

So when we think of patriarchal societies in the past, and today, we're looking at societies which really benefit men, benefit the patriarchy.

The other word in that outcome that you might be a little bit unsure about was agency.

Now, agency is the capability of an individual to act independently from others, to be able to make their own free choices.

And of course, in our outcome, we talked about the agency of women, the agency of girls.

So we're gonna be also really thinking about what we learn through the character of Juliet about women's or girls' ability to make their own free choices.

Two other words I want you to keep your eyes out for are precedence and subservient.

Precedence is the condition of being considered more important than someone or something else.

And if you're subservient, you're less important.

You're a subordinate.

So there are two other words to keep your eye out for.

We're gonna try and use all four of these words in our discussions and our work today.

So in today's lesson, we of course are exploring the character of Juliet, and we're gonna do that through three learning cycles.

In our first learning cycle, we're gonna explore the context of the patriarchy from that similar to our keyword patriarchal there.

In our second learning cycle, we're gonna really delve a little deeper into Juliet's characterization.

And in that third learning cycle, we're gonna conceptualise, understand this concept of agency.

So let's start by exploring the context of the patriarchy.

So "Romeo and Juliet" was first published in 1597, quite a while ago now.

And at the time, England was a patriarchal society, a society that was designed by, run by, for the benefit of men.

But what did this mean for women? Well, it meant that their options in life were very restricted.

They couldn't attend school or university.

And most guilds, which is where trained workers or skilled workers were trained, they didn't officially admit women.

So women couldn't get skilled work.

They couldn't vote.

They didn't have control over their government of their society.

Although they could inherit property, so they could inherit property from family, they couldn't purchase, they couldn't buy property themselves.

They were bound by very strict social expectations.

The expectations of society were very strict for them.

I wonder why a society that's patriarchal, designed by men, is very strict towards women.

And actually this started from a young age because their fathers exerted great influence over their marriages.

Very few women were choosing who they married.

It was their fathers who would have the influence over that.

So let's think about a woman's role in marriage in Elizabethan England.

What might that look like? Well, the primary purpose of marriage, especially among the upper classes, was actually about transferring property between kind of rich families, forging alliances between extended family networks, kind of keeping that power and kind of together united in the upper classes.

So under the English system of coverture, a woman's identity was covered by her husband when she married.

What do we mean by this? Well, a married couple was regarded by law as a single entity.

So not two different people, but a single identity.

And that entity followed the will of the husband.

It was his decisions, he was in control.

Now, women, I think we'll probably expect this, were expected to bear children.

They're expected to have heirs for their husband, but they actually had no legal rights over the guardianship of the children.

So, yes, they were expected to raise the children, but they had no legal rights over the children, over the decisions made.

All right, let's pause for a minute and check to see how closely we've been listening.

Which of the following statements about Elizabethan women in a patriarchal society are true? Is it A, women had legal guardianship over their children and were expected to raise them? Is it B, a married couple was regarded by law as a single entity that followed the will of the husband? Or is it C, men and women were seen as legal equals? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you think you've got the right answer.

Right.

Welcome back.

I expect lots of you kind of cast C aside pretty early on because I don't think anything that we've discussed so far suggests that men and women were legal equals.

A and B might've been a little bit trickier to decide between, but well done if you said B, that a married couple were regarded by law as a single entity.

So not two separate people, a single entity.

And that entity followed the will of the husband.

The man was in control.

Now, the first one, yes, women were expected to have children and were expected to do the raising, but they had no legal guardianship.

They had no guardianship, under the eyes of the law, it was the children were the husband's, were the father's.

So, well done if you got B.

All right, let's quickly remind ourselves about Juliet's character arc, her story in "Romeo and Juliet." So at the beginning of the play, Juliet's parents hope that she will marry Count Paris.

However, Juliet falls in love with Romeo and they marry in secret.

Now, we know that Romeo and Juliet's families were two families at war.

And Romeo kills Tybalt, one of Juliet's cousins, and he's banished from Verona.

Juliet's father informs her that she must marry Paris.

"You must marry Count Paris." And to escape this, because we know she's already married to Romeo and she certainly doesn't want to marry Paris, to escape this, Juliet fakes her own death.

Now Romeo hearing this, obviously he's been banished, he hears of Juliet's fake death, but he believes it's real and he kills himself.

And Juliet then, on discovering Romeo's death, she kills herself also.

So that's Juliet's story arc, that's her narrative arc.

I want us to think about then, can you see the influence of the patriarchy in this summary of Juliet's story.

So if you've got a partner, you can discuss this question with them.

But don't worry if you're working by yourself, you can just think through this independently.

All right, pause the video then, and think about where can you see the influence of the patriarchy in this summary of Juliet's character.

All right, over to you.

Press play when you've got some ideas.

Welcome back.

I'm sure you had many ideas there when you were thinking about Juliet's character and how it linked to the patriarchy.

I'm sure most of you will have been kind of zooming in on these bullet points, the impact Juliet's father have.

She informs, sorry, he informs her, "You must marry Count Paris." She has no say or she appears to have no say.

And we see the result of this, the patriarchal influence, in the fact that Juliet fakes her own death as a way of escaping, okay? You might have said other things as well, of course you might.

But well done if you said anything similar to what we've just said then.

All right, let's do another check then before we move on.

Juliet's life is affected by the contemporary patriarchal society.

Is that true or false? And remember to justify your thoughts.

All right, over to you.

Pause the video and press play when you're ready to move on.

Yeah, great job if you said true there.

And how did you justify that? Well, you might have said something along the lines of: when Juliet's father tries to force her to marry Count Paris, she is forced to fake her own death to escape it.

That's pretty extreme lengths she's going to there to escape the impact of the patriarchy.

All right, over to you then for our first task in today's lesson.

And this is a discussion activity, so brilliant.

If you've got a partner or a small group to work with, you can discuss this together.

But don't worry if you're working independently, if you're working by yourself, you can just think through how you would respond to this question.

Maybe make a few notes or just think through in your head.

So the question we are gonna be thinking about is this: to what extent do you think "Romeo and Juliet" would be a different play if it weren't set in a patriarchal society? So how different would it be if it wasn't set in a patriarchal society? Some things you're gonna want to consider as you discuss: how much do you think the patriarchy affects Juliet's life and whether you think the outcome of the play would be different if Juliet was not living in a patriarchal society.

So pause the video and in pairs, small groups, or independently, have a go at this question.

All right, over to you.

Press play when you are done.

Welcome back.

I'm sure there were many, many great ideas there.

Perhaps some of you were arguing and agreeing and disagreeing, and really well done to those of you who might be using specific evidence from the play to justify your ideas.

All right, one of our Oak pupils, Laura, gave this a go and we're gonna use this response and take a moment to reflect and compare what we were saying to what Laura said.

So let's have a look at what Laura said first.

She said, "I think the play would be very different.

We see Juliet's life being dictated by not only the men in her life, but also how the choices they make affect her.

After her father tries to force her to marry Count Paris, Juliet has to go to the extreme measure of faking her death because there were no other options available to her in a patriarchal society." All right, before we move on, pause the video and take a moment to reflect.

Did your ideas mirror those of Laura's or did you have any different ideas? All right, take a moment, reflect, and press play when you're ready to continue.

Welcome back.

It's time for us to move on to our second learning cycle when we're gonna look at the character, the characterization, how Juliet has been created in more detail.

So we're gonna consider then the way that Shakespeare has structured the play, okay? Remember, structure is how things have been put together, how things have been created.

And, of course, any character in a play has been deliberately constructed in a certain way.

So let's think about the first time we meet Juliet.

That's in act one, scene three.

However, by this point, we've met Romeo, Juliet's future husband.

We've met Lord Capulet, Juliet's father.

We've also met Paris, Juliet's proposed husband.

We meet all three of these men before we meet Juliet.

What might this suggest about Juliet's character and her role in the patriarchy? All right, so when we're trying to talk about structure, when we're thinking about structure, we're always trying to think about why has the author, the playwright, made the choices that they've made.

So in this case, what do you think Shakespeare might, may, be trying to tell us about Juliet's character or the patriarchy through these decisions that he's made? Pause the video, have a think about this question in pairs or by yourself, and press play when you think you've got some ideas.

Well done.

I'm sure you had some really interesting ideas there.

You might have talked about here how men appear to be being prioritised and maybe that's what we should expect in a patriarchal society, that men are seen as being more important.

You might have also talked about how Juliet as a woman, as a girl, is being defined, her life is being defined by her relationship to the men in it, by her husband and her proposed husband and her father.

We're always looking at Juliet through her relationship to them perhaps more than looking at her as an individual independent character.

And we can take this further and maybe suggest this is what, you know, society was like.

This is how women were viewed at the time.

All right, true or false then.

Shakespeare's structuring of the play implies that men were prioritised in a patriarchal society.

Do you think that's true or false? And don't forget to justify your answer.

All right, pause the video, give this a go, and press play when you've got an idea.

Yeah, welcome back.

And I'm sure you said true here.

But think about why you might've justified this.

Did you say something similar to this? In "Romeo and Juliet," we meet Romeo, Lord Capulet, and Count Paris before we meet Juliet.

And this implies they have precedence, they have more importance over her.

Well done if you said that and particularly well done if you used the key word when you were justifying your answer there.

Now I want us to think about Juliet and her surroundings in the play.

Because let's remember, a play is being constructed, you know, we get the stage directions, we get to see where the play is set.

These are all choices that William Shakespeare has made.

And he chooses, throughout the play, he chooses to always place Juliet as being inside a structure.

So she's either in her house, she's in the church, she's in the Capulet tomb, but we never see her outside.

This is in contrast to kind of some of the men, like Romeo, Tybalt, Benvolio, Mercutio, all of these characters we see outside in the street.

We only see Juliet inside.

What do you think the significance of this decision might be? Pause the video.

If you've got a partner, discuss with them.

Otherwise just think by yourself.

What do you think the significance of this might be? Over to you.

Press play when you're done.

Welcome back.

I wonder if you said something similar to Izzy, one of our Oak pupils who said, "Perhaps this represents how restricted Juliet's life is." Some of you might, you know, you might've been saying brilliant things about symbolism, you know, outside being freedom and inside being kind of restriction or control.

So the fact that we only see Julia existing within controlled spaces rather than being free to interact with who she wants to, it shows us she can't do as she pleases like the men in society do.

I heard some of you extrapolating this and saying this might be more than just about Juliet and about wider society as well.

Some really interesting ideas there.

Well done.

All right, let's have a quick check before we move on.

Which of these two interpretations of how Juliet interacts with her surroundings do you think is the most relevant? Is it A, by showing Juliet as existing inside controlled spaces, Shakespeare implies that Juliet fears the outside world? Or is it B, by only showing Juliet as existing inside controlled spaces, Shakespeare may be revealing how restricted Juliet's life was? Is it A or B? And don't forget to justify.

Over to you.

Pause the video, give it a go, and press play when you're done.

Welcome back.

Well done if you said B.

Let's have a think then why we might've said B.

Why is the B most relevant? Well, actually, we don't ever really hear mention of fear in Juliet's language.

However, we do know that a patriarchal society was very restrictive for women.

They would've felt very restricted, very controlled within a patriarchal society.

All right then, when we are introduced to Juliet for the first time, we hear about her proposed marriage to Count Paris.

So kinda the first thing we're hearing is that she's due to marry Paris.

And at the end of the play, her marriage to Romeo is revealed and she's praised as being true and faithful to her husband.

Therefore, both the first and the last references that we get to Juliet are all about or in relation to the concept of marriage.

Why might that be? What's the significance there? Again, this is a specific decision that Shakespeare's made.

Why might he have made this decision? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you've got some ideas.

Welcome back.

I'm sure you had some great ideas there.

I wonder if you said anything about women being defined by marriage.

We spoke earlier in the lesson about in the eyes of the law, a man and a woman who were married were not individuals, they were one entity, but actually, it was the man who controlled that entity.

And so women were often defined by their marriage because it was also an expectation of them.

They were expected to get married, society expected them to play that role.

And therefore, when we first meet and we last meet Juliet, we are always thinking about her in her relationship to the men that she should've married, she should've got married to, and the man that she ended up getting married to.

All right, well done if you said something similar.

That's really interesting discussions you were having there.

It's true or false then.

Shakespeare's characterization of Juliet implies that she is defined by marriage.

Is that true or is that false? Pause the video and don't forget to justify.

Welcome back.

Well done if you said true.

Why might we have said true? Well, we might've said that the first and the last thing we hear in relation to Juliet is about her potential husband, Count Paris, and then her actual husband, Romeo, which suggests that marriage is integral, incredibly important, to her identity.

All right, onto our second task in today's lesson.

And this is gonna be a quick planning task here.

We're gonna be creating a single paragraph outline to answer the question: how can we see the influence of a patriarchal society on Shakespeare's construction of Juliet's character? So as Shakespeare, and think about all those choices he made when he created Juliet, how can we see the influence of a patriarchal society? Now, we're not writing this out in full, we are doing a quick plan and we're gonna use, or you may choose to use, a single paragraph outline to plan this.

Just a quick reminder, if you've not seen a single paragraph outline before, they look like this.

You can see on the screen it's a really effective way of planning our paragraphs.

We start with a topic sentence, a full sentence.

We write this in full, which explains the specific focus of our paragraph.

It should include many of the keywords from the question.

Then in the supporting details, this is where we're gonna think about, well, what is it, kind of what evidence are we gonna use to prove our topic sentence, to support our topic sentence.

And this is what we're gonna do in note form.

Okay? This can be note form.

We don't want to be writing in loads and loads of details here 'cause this is supposed to be a quick plan.

And finally, we're gonna finish with a concluding sentence.

Again, this we will write as a full sentence and this summarises the paragraph with a very, very clear focus on the writer's intentions.

In this case, what might Shakespeare be trying to tell us? All right, over to you.

You've got some great ideas from this lesson so far.

I'm feeling really confident you can do a great job of this.

Pause the video, give it a go, and press play when you're ready to continue.

Welcome back.

Really great at work there.

It's fantastic to see you planning so quickly, so effectively, because you've done some really excellent work so far in your critical thinking.

So really well done.

All right.

What you can see on the screen here is a model example.

We're gonna look at this together and then we'll take some time if you want to to pause and compare it to your own.

Of course what you can see on the screen is not the only possible answer, but hopefully you will have said some similar things, 'cause I think this does a great summary of what we've been talking about so far.

So let's look at the topic sentence.

Arguably, Shakespeare's construction of Juliet's character reveals the great influence that patriarchal society had over women's lives.

Really clear.

You know, really clear what I'm gonna be talking out.

I'm gonna be talking about how Shakespeare's construction of Juliet reveals what life was like in a patriarchal society.

And I've got lots of keywords there.

Shakespeare, construction, Juliet, patriarchy, women's lives, you know, some really kind of key buzzwords in there that are gonna help make sure I've got a really focused paragraph.

Now let's look at my supporting details.

Here they don't have to be full sentences.

Just a reminder of what I might want to write about.

Well, I might want to write about how Juliet is introduced after some of the key men in the play.

It suggests that men take precedent over women.

I want to talk about Juliet only ever being inside controlled spaces, could reveal how restricted women's lives were.

And I want to talk about how marriage is in both our introduction and our last impression of Juliet, which could represent how women were defined by marriage and the men who they were married to.

So really good points that support my argument.

Of course you might have some other ideas that you remembered from the play as well.

Now, my concluding sentence, let's read this together.

Potentially, we might say that Shakespeare's construction of Juliet's character demonstrates that women's identities were shaped and defined by the men in their life within a patriarchal society.

Great, summarises what we've been talking about, but with a clear focus on what Shakespeare may be trying to say.

Look, well, you're gonna use tentative language here, potentially, might.

We don't want to say that we are definite about this because we can't be sure.

So we're gonna be tentative in our concluding sentence.

All right, why don't you pause the video, compare your single paragraph outline to mine, and if you want to, take some ideas and add them to yours.

All right, remember to press play when you're ready to move on.

Okay, finally we are going to look at conceptualising agency.

And so just a reminder, agency is our key word.

To have agency means having the ability to act independently from others and to make your own free choices.

Now, in literature, this is interesting, in literature, a character's agency often refers to the character's ability to take action to affect the events of the story.

So when we think about who does and doesn't have agency, we're thinking about whose actions have impact in the story and change the story.

So why do you think it's important that we consider character's agency, what it might reveal about certain characters? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you've got some ideas.

I wonder if you said something similar to Andeep here who said, actually, he thinks that thinking about agency might reveal who has power and who has control within society.

It shows us who does have free will and at the same time it shows us who doesn't.

I think that's a great idea.

Well done if you said something similar.

True or false then.

Considering a character's agency is irrelevant to the ideas of society.

Is that true or false? Pause the video, have a think, and don't forget to justify your answer.

Press play when you think you've done.

Yeah, well done if you said that was false.

How might we have justified that? Well, we could've said, when we consider which characters have agency, it might be that the writer is revealing the nature of power dynamics in society, who does have power and who does not.

So it's really interesting for us to think about which characters do and don't have agency in a text.

Now, specifically when we talk about female agency, the agency that's had by women and girls, what we're thinking about is the ability of women and girl characters to take action and make their own decisions that affect their lives and the outcomes in a text.

So why do you think when people study literature that they study and they specifically look at female agency, the agency of women and girls in texts.

Why might they look at that? What might it reveal? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you've got some ideas.

Yeah, some really interesting ideas floating around there.

I wonder if you said something similar to Sam, and she said, "I think it might reveal how women were treated in society at the time.

Were they seen as powerful or were they seen as subservient?" One of our key words there.

Well done if you remembered that to mean kind of less important or a subordinate.

And I think that's really interesting.

So when we look at the agency of the women characters in a text, it often tells us about how women are being treated in society at the time.

Really interesting point there, Sam.

And I hope some of you said something similar.

Okay, true or false then.

Considering the nature of female agency in a text is important.

Is it true or is it false? Pause the video, think about what your answer is, and don't forget to justify.

Press play when you're done.

Yeah, well done if you said true.

And how might we justify that? Well, we can think about whether female characters have agency, actually allows us to think about how women were being treated in society at the time.

Well done if you said something similar.

Right, onto our final task then of today's lesson.

And we are gonna be thinking about this question.

Do you think Juliet has agency in "Romeo and Juliet?" Why or why not? So it's up to you now, over to you, your interpretation of the play.

Does the character of Juliet have agency in this play? Why or why not? I want you to write a very short answer here to explain your ideas.

And on the screen you can see a summary of Juliet's character in "Romeo and Juliet" to help you.

So think about some of those key points and use them to justify your responses.

All right, I know you can do this.

You've done lots of great thinking in today's lesson.

Now it's all about putting these ideas together.

All right, pause the video, give this a go, and press play when you are ready to move on.

Welcome back, fantastic work.

It was great to see you writing with such confidence there.

That shows me just how hard you've been working in today's lesson.

Well done.

All right, before we finish, we're gonna take a moment to read back and reflect on the work that we've just done.

So you're gonna read through your answer and reflect on the following ideas.

Did you consider that whilst Juliet's parents tried to choose her husband, she makes the decision to marry Romeo? Did you consider that we might see Juliet's fake death as either a way of taking control or an admission that actually she has no control? Likewise, did you consider that we might see Juliet's real death as her taking back control or her realising that she had no control in this society? Pause video, take a moment to reflect, and see how well you've done.

Okay, that's it.

We've reached the end of the lesson and you have been brilliant today, really thinking about the character of Juliet and this idea about agency.

Let's have a quick look at the summary of everything we've learned today.

Remember, if you feel really confident about these things, this is a great sign and you can move on to the next lesson.

But if there's anything you were a little bit unsure of, don't worry about going back, looking over that section again, and being really confident before you move on.

So we've learned in a patriarchal society, women's choices were restricted and they were expected to marry and bear children.

We also learned that arguably Shakespeare's structuring of "Romeo and Juliet" conforms to this notion that men had precedence, importance, over women.

We've also learned that furthermore, Juliet's interactions with her surroundings could represent the restricted nature of women's lives.

We spoke about our first and our last impression of Juliet is around her marriage, which could imply that women were defined by marriage.

And we ended the lesson by considering how important agency is because it allows us to consider the power dynamics in society.

All right, great job today.

I really hope I see you in one of our lessons again in the future.

Take care and see you all soon.

Bye-bye.