ROMEO AND JULIET
ACT I PROLOGUE
THE ITALIAN SONNET (aka The Petrarchan Sonnet)
THE ENGLISH SONNET (aka The Shakespearean Sonnet)
-Giacomo da Lentini
-Italian poet of the 13th century
-a love poem from a man to a woman
-14 lines
-first 8 lines (octet) pose a problem
-last 6 lines (sestet) solve the problem
-line 9 (volta) is a sharp turn which brings
about the move to the resolution
-for the octet -- abba abba rhyme scheme
-for the sestet – 2 possibilities
-- cde cde OR cdc cdc
-written in iambic pentameter
-the Italian sonnet was made famous by
Petrarch – 14th century Italian poet
-wrote 366 sonnets to Laura (the woman with
whom he was completely, utterly, deeply in love)
-this was an unrequited love
-William Shakespeare
-English poet and playwright of the 16th century
-subjects: love, time, death, sight
-14 lines
-3 quatrains (quatrain = 4 lines)
and a rhyming couplet (couplet = 2 lines)
-rhyme scheme – abab cdcd efef gg
-volta comes in the couplet (summarizes the theme
of the poem or introduces a fresh new look at the theme)
-written in iambic pentameter
PROLOGUE
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
a
b
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
a
b
2nd quatrain
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.
c
d
c
d
3rd quatrain
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
e
f
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
e
f
The which if you with patient ears attend,
g
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
g
1st quatrain
rhyming couplet
The Chorus, often played by a single narrator, opens Romeo and Juliet with a brief summary of what's to come on stage.
Shakespeare's Chorus sets the scene for tragedy by presenting his two young protagonists as the victims of fate whose lives
are marred from the outset by the feud between their families.
The prologue is a sonnet, a popular form of 16th-century love poem that often explored such themes as love in conflict.
Shakespeare chooses this poetic form to outline the play's main issues of love and feuding and to present another major
theme: how true love ultimately triumphs because the deaths of Romeo and Juliet end the feud between their families.
The story of these two lovers, and of the terrible strife between their families, will be the topic of this play. The Prologue
does not merely set the scene of Romeo and Juliet, “fair Verona”, it tells the audience exactly what is going to happen in
the play. The Prologue refers to an ill-fated couple with its use of the word “star-crossed,” which means, literally, against
the stars. Stars were thought to control people’s destinies. But the Prologue itself creates this sense of fate by providing
the audience with the knowledge that Romeo and Juliet will die even before the play has begun. The audience therefore
watches the play with the expectation that it must fulfill the terms set in the Prologue. The structure of the play itself is the
fate from which Romeo and Juliet cannot escape. Any lack of suspense as to the outcome of the play serves to emphasize
the major theme of fate — an omnipresent force looming over Romeo and Juliet's "death-marked" love.
This play starts with a lovely sonnet, an unusual beginning given that sonnets were meant to be from a lover to his beloved.
The sonnet is also a very structured form of prose, lending itself to order. Shakespeare cleverly contrasts this orderly sonnet
with the immediate disorder of the first scene. The sonnet degenerates into a bunch of quarreling servants who soon
provoke a fight between the houses of Montague and Capulet.
The overt use of violent imagery is juxtaposed with the adoption of the sonnet form to highlight one of Shakespeare’s many
themes in Romeo and Juliet. The language of hate and the form of love suggest that the two go hand in hand: true love
cannot exist without the acknowledgement of hate. Shakespeare points out the reality of love: it is never easy.