*************************************************************************** * * * * * * * * * * * ROMEO AND JULIET * * * * * * * * * * * *************************************************************************** Activities and Notes for Students Programme and Notes by Steve Herbert (p1) Table of Contents ================= Introduction to Romeo & Juliet.............................3 Introduction to the Programme..............................3 System Requirements........................................4 Installation...............................................4 How to get Started.........................................5 Using the Menus............................................5 The Main Menu..............................................6 Quizzes Menu...............................................6 Notes Menu.................................................7 Instructions...............................................7 Customising the Programme..................................8 About the Programme........................................9 (p2) INTRODUCTION TO ROMEO & JULIET ============================== 'Romeo & Juliet' is one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, and the only one that deals directly with the theme of young love. Written in about 1597, it is one of his earliest tragedies, and different from the others in that the final tragedy cannot be traced directly to some fault of character in either Romeo or Juliet. As usual, Shakespeare did not create an original story. His characters are taken from the history books, and the works of other authors. In this case his basic story was a traditional Italian one, possibly based on true events. Shakespeare seems to have acquired most of his material from one of the first English versions of the story, a long poem written by Arthur Brooke. He introduced new characters (noticeably Mercutio) and shortened the time-span of the original plot to its final breathless length. INTRODUCTION TO THE PROGRAMME ============================= The programme consists of a series of activities to assist high school students learning Shakespeare's play 'Romeo & Juliet'. The student can select the activity of his choice from a series of menus. Activities include several quizzes or games, notes on a wide variety of topics and graphics of the Globe Theatre. The games are designed to be fun and at the same time to provide a fairly painless way to memorise quotations, learn important speeches, and in general, to become familiar with the characters and themes of the play. (p3) SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS =================== The programme will run on Premium Microbee computers with 64Kb of memory or more. The programme is normally supplied on one 5.25" floppy disk and is ready to run. USING THE MENUS =============== You find your way around the different parts of the programme by using a very simple system of menus. The choices offered at each level are shown on the screen, with the first one high-lighted. Use the arrow keys to move the high-light to the selection you want. Then press the key to go to that selection. To Find A Menu If a menu is not currently showing on the screen, you can almost always get to one by pressing the <> key. This will halt the current activity,and display the active menu. (p5) THE MAIN MENU ============= The Main Menu Options are described briefly below. Introduction This is a welcome to the programme and a brief description of its features. Quizzes Choose one of the quizzes available from a further menu. Notes This also leads to another menu, listing the different topics for which notes are available. The Globe This segment reveals interior and exterior views of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, with associated notes. Quit Return to CP/M QUIZZES AND GAMES MENU ====================== These are the options available on this menu. Quotation Quiz Tests your detailed knowledge of the book by asking you to choose the correct speaker of each quotation. Over 90 quotations to really test you.A good score here earns you a clue to the competition code. Missing Words Vital passages from the text can be learnt by heart, as you guess the words missing from the screen. Great revision value! (p6) NOTES MENU ========== Major topics are: Plot Summaries This leads to another menu allowing you to select summaries of individual Acts or key scenes. Character Studies Another menu to select notes on any of the major characters Exam Questions A selection of notes on how to handle different exam questions. Themes Discusses the major ideas of the play Setting/Background Brief notes on relevant points. Language/Imagery A discussion of Shakespeare's language, including his verse. The Author Notes about Shakespeare's life and a portrait. INSTRUCTIONS ============ The programme has been designed to be as user-friendly as possible. Most of the activities have on-screen help. Where more detailed instructions are necessary, this option has been included in the menu for that particular activity. Activities which include their own instructions are: Quotation Quiz Missing Words The Globe (Main Menu) (p7) CUSTOMIZING THE PROGRAMME ========================= With a modicum of knowledge and the ability to use a text processor, you should be able to customise some of the data used in the programme, if you so desire. The most obvious areas where this can be accomplished are as follows: QUOTATION QUIZ - The data for this quiz is contained in the text file RJQUOTES.QQZ . The first item in the file is the number of quotes currently in the file. Don't forget to update this if you add or delete quotes. Each question must contain the following items: The quotation itself, the correct answer, 3 incorrect answers, a sentence explaining the context of the quotation, the Act number, the scene number. Use ordinary Arabic numerals for Act and scene numbers, not Roman numerals. When typing in quotations, use a * to indicate line breaks. A quick look at the file should make it clear what to do if you are still confused. NOTES - I don't recommend that you alter the notes, as my system for printing them to the screen is a little peculiar to say the least, but if you must experiment, then go ahead. Plot summaries can be identified by the file suffix .PLT , Character studies have .CHR , while other notes have the suffix .NTS The first item in each file is the number of screens or pages of data, then each 'page' has the number of data items on that page. Beginning an item with a * indicates that the item is to be high-lighted in the text. To print a blank line, include an item consisting of 4 or more spaces enclosed in quotation marks. You may need to experiment a little to find out just how much will fit on each page. MISSING WORDS - If you have a lot of time on your hands, and are by nature a patient and tolerant person like me, then you can try writing different speeches for the Missing Words game. I'll leave you to figure out how it's done! Unfortunately, you won't be able to change the reference to the speech in the GAMES Menu. I guess that's about all, unless you are one of those people who can't resist seeing what Shakespeare looks like wearing spectacles and a false nose. The pictures are all in Premium GRLOAD format. (p9) ABOUT THE PROGRAMME =================== This programme began its life as a set of quizzes I programmed for my own Literature students at a High School here in Singapore. Over the last two years, the programme has grown and developed and gone through a variety of versions, to become what it is today. It has been quite well-received by students here who face a compulsory Shakespeare component in their Cambridge GCE O Level examinations. Originally, as the new owner of an Apple II clone, I programmed in Applesoft Basic. The programme fitted easily onto one 5.25" floppy disk,and consisted mainly of three games and the segment on the Globe Theatre. I believed then as I believe now, that people do not really want to sit and read pages of notes from a computer monitor. However, feedback from users indicated a desire for more notes, so the programme quickly grew. It also changed direction to become IBM-compatible to run on the computer of choice of 80% of the student population here in Singapore. So I put my prejudices aside and picked up a smattering of GWBasic. As the programme grew and became more sophisticated, I felt the need for something a little more powerful and faster than interpreted Basic, so Microsoft QuickBasic made its appearance. I still see room for improvements and additions to the programme, and each new version on each different text is a little more sophisticated than its predecessor. Who knows what the future will bring? Currently, available titles are: MACBETH ROMEO AND JULIET ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding WALKABOUT THE GHOST OF THOMAS KEMPE and next on my hit-list TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee To Steve Herbert 154 Sixth Ave. Avenue Park Singapore 1027 The IBM version was converted to run under Microbee Microworld Basic. The original BLOAD graphics were converted to BeeArtistic format, edited and finally converted to GRLOAD format. Alan Laughton Sept 1992  1027 A. PERSONAL USE =============== Please enroll me as a registered user of your programme 'ROMEO & JULIE