‘Act I Prologue’ which appears in Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is read before the first actors enter the stage. These lines are spoken by the “Chorus” or a narrator or group of narrators who are there to introduce scenes, characters, or give necessary background detail. They are not seen or heard by the actors on the stage.
Summary of the Act I Prologue
In the ‘Act I Prologue’ by William Shakespeare the chorus provides the reader with information about the setting, the “Two households” that the play hinges around and the “new mutiny” that stimulates the action.
The prologue alludes to the end of the play in which both Romeo and Juliet lost their lives. It is only due to that loss that their “parents’ rage” ends. The lines also specifically address the audience asking them to list with “patient ears” and find out how the events are going to play out.
Structure of Romeo and Juliet Act I Prologue
These fourteen lines of the ‘Act I Prologue’ take the form of a traditional Shakespearean sonnet. This form, which became known due to Shakespeare’s mastery of it and fondness for it, is made up of three quatrains, or sets of four lines, and one concluding couplet, or set of two rhyming lines. The poem follows a consistent rhyme scheme that conforms to the pattern of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and it is written in iambic pentameter. This means that each line contains five sets of two beats, known as metrical feet. The first is unstressed and the second stressed. It sounds something like da-DUM, da-DUM.
As is common in Shakespeare’s poems, the last two lines are a rhyming pair, known as a couplet. They often bring with them a turn or volta in the poem. They’re sometimes used to answer a question posed in the previous twelve lines, shift the perspective, or even change speakers. The Shakespearean sonnet is now considered to be one of the major sonnet forms, alongside the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet.
Literary Devices in Act I Prologue
Shakespeare makes use of several literary devices in ‘Act I Prologue’. These include but are not limited to allusion, alliteration, and enjambment. The first of these, allusion, is the most prominent. This entire fourteen-line sonnet is one extended example of allusion. The lines all suggest what’s going to happen next, tap into themes that are elucidated throughout the next scenes and acts, and suggest what the audience’s reaction is going to be.
Alliteration occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and begin with the same sound. For example, “break” and “blood” in lines three and four and “lovers” and “life” in line six. Another important technique commonly used in poetry is enjambment. It occurs when a line is cut off before its natural stopping point. Enjambment forces a reader down to the next line, and the next, quickly. One has to move forward in order to comfortably resolve a phrase or sentence. For instance, the transition between lines five and six.
Analysis of the Act I Prologue
Lines 1-4
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.
In the first lines of the prologue to the famous play Romeo and Juliet the speaker, who is the “Chorus” addresses the audience. This person is all-knowing and has a full understanding of what is about to happen on stage.
In the first line, the chorus tells the audience that it is in “Verona” a beautiful of “fair” city that the play is taking place. There are two major households in the city that have a long grudge between them. It has been at a standstill for a period of time but something new is going to happen.
Lines 5-8
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
These families each have a child who is going to be involved in bloodshed and death. It is from the “fatal loins” of the families that a “pair of star-cross’d lovers” emerge. This line is a great example of syncope. Additionally, the reader should take note of the phrase “star-crossed lovers”. Shakespeare coined this term in the ‘Act I Prologue’ which is now used frequently in everyday speech, novels, and movies.
Lines 9-14
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.
In the third quatrain of the ‘Act I Prologue’, the speaker adds that these two children become lovers and commit suicide. It is their deaths that bring an end to the strife. It was only that which could possibly bring these families around and force them to realize what their feuding could result in.
In the next lines, the chorus tells the audience to watch for the next “two hours” on the stage as the story of their lives, loves, and deaths play out. The audience should listen patiently and they will learn all the details that the chorus has missed in their introduction.
In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation.
This page discusses the Romeo and Juliet themes that are evident in the play.
Whilst the play features the meeting and falling in love of the two main protagonists, to say that love is a theme of Romeo and Juliet is an oversimplification. Rather, Shakespeare structures Romeo and Juliet around several contrasting ideas, with a number of themes expressed as opposites. To say that the tension between love and hate is a major theme in Romeo and Juliet gets us closer to what the play is about. These – and other – opposing ideas reverberate with each other and are intertwined through the text.
7 Key Themes In Romeo and Juliet:
Historical Time vs The Present
The first thing that strikes one is the feud, mentioned in the Prologue as ‘ancient grudge.’ Here we have a story about happy carefree young people, living in the modern world and enjoying it. The action moves very fast. All that is set against something that happened in the far distant past – an ancient grudge – and, on that level, time is moving very slowly. There is constant mention of time in the text. The nurse recalls Juliet’s early childhood, contrasting it with her young adulthood, using a crude reference to her current sexual maturity. Romeo imagines his life as a long sea voyage that ends in a shipwreck, in contrast to the pace of the life he is living in the present. So the fast-moving, optimistic life of the moment against the power of a toxic history and how it affects the present is a major theme.
Light and Dark
The interplay of images of light and darkness, often placed together, bring the text to life with illumination and shadows. Flashing and sparkling eyes, jewels fire, lightning, stars, exploding gunpowder, torches, the sun and the moon, are set against images of night, smoke, clouds, and a pitch-black tomb. The images, many of them of celestial bodies, connect with the prologue’s assertion that these are star-crossed lovers. The struggle of bright young hopes against the inevitability of the dark tomb is an important theme. In the midst of the brightness of youth, we are constantly reminded, in the way that Shakespeare juxtaposes those images with images of darkness, of the closeness death.
Fate and Free Will
The Prologue refers to the protagonists as ‘star-crossed lovers.’ The belief that Fate determines human life reverberates through the play. Fate versus free will is the theme here. Romeo and Juliet struggle to break free of the threats that Fate represents, expressed in their dreams and premonitions, and the imagery, throughout the text. Romeo is frustrated by the intervention of Fate at every move he makes to assert his will. ‘O I am fortune’s fool,’ he cries when he realises that he has killed Tybalt. When he hears of the death of Juliet, he shouts up to the heavens, ‘Then I defy you, stars!’
Love and Hate
The intensity of the love between Romeo and Juliet is pitched against the hate-ridden society in which they live. In the balcony scene, Juliet tells Romeo that if her kinsmen find him in the orchard they will murder him. It is that hatred that is going to destroy them. Not only them but Mercutio, Tybalt and Paris as well. The hatred generated by the ancient feud is just as intense, as we see from the emotional behaviour of Tybalt, as the intensity of the love between Romeo and Juliet.
Death and Hate
Death is ever-present in Verona. The old folk mutter about it all the time: ‘we were born to die,’ ‘death’s the end of all,’ and young lives are abruptly cut short – so abruptly that the speed of it is a shock in itself. The word ‘death’ pervades the text. Death is even personified: we see him shutting up the doors of life, eating the living, fighting on the battlefield. Most horrifying is that he is Juliet’s bridegroom. ‘Death is my son-in-law/Death is my heir/My daughter he hath wedded,’ wails Capulet as he weeps over Juliet’s body. Against all that are the hopes of the lovers for a life together doomed by the stars.
Youth Against Age
The youthful impetuous emotion of the lovers bumps up against the cautious, mature wisdom of the older people. Friar Lawrence cautions Romeo ‘love moderately, long love doth so.’ Tybalt’s rage at finding Romeo at the Capulet party and wanting to fight him there and then is put down by the older Capulet. This contrast is far more complex, however, when one thinks about the folly of Friar Lawrence in his support for the young lovers’ marriage, and also Capulet’s mood swings and outbursts of violence in his efforts to deal with his daughter. Such things throw doubt on the wisdom they proclaim, against the go-for-it approach of the younger generation. This is a major exploration of the relationships between the generations and feeds strongly into the time theme.
Language vs Reality
This is one of Shakespeare’s main thematic interests in all of his plays. He was intensely interested in the uneasy relationships between the words we use to describe things and what those things actually are in reality. In Romeo and Juliet Romeo is described as ‘Montague.’ The word creates prejudice and hatred, the impetus for revenge and violence. Tybald is blinded by malice at the very sound of Romeo’s voice. The word ‘Montague’ has nothing to do with what Romeo is in actuality: if he had been described as ‘Capulet’ the tragedy would not have happened. The text is full of sentiments that express this theme. ‘What’s in a name?’ Juliet says. ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ That completely encapsulates this theme. This play emphasises the tension between words and action, language and life, that we find in all Shakespeare’s plays.