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‘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.
‘Two households, both alike in dignity’: so begins the Prologue to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. What is less well-known is the very specific poetic form Shakespeare chooses for the Prologue: a form he goes on to use later in Romeo and Juliet. (We have analysed the play as a whole here.)
Let’s take a closer look at the famous ‘Two households’ speech, offering a summary and analysis of its meaning as we go – and, of course, let’s take a look at that distinctive form Shakespeare chooses to employ.
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.
The Prologue tells us the setting of the play: we are to be transported to the beautiful (‘fair’) Italian city of Verona, where the ensuing action takes place. There, a long-standing feud between two well-respected households or families, a grudge which goes way back, will violently break out again.
The line ‘Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean’ takes a bit more unpicking: ‘civil’ here refers to ordinary citizens (as opposed to soldiers: hence the word ‘civilians’ or ‘civvy’ used for non-combatants in a war situation). The word also
But ‘civil’ also means ‘courteous’ or ‘polite’, which clearly cannot be possible in the face of such ‘mutiny’ or violence between the ‘two households’. So ‘civil hands’ cleverly conveys both meanings, and the line means both ‘where violence between families makes ordinary citizens’ hands dirty with blood’ and ‘where violence between families makes otherwise friendly and non-violent hands violent’.
However, there’s yet another sense to the line, too, which relates to the double meaning of ‘blood’: both violence (as in the phrase ‘bad blood’ between two people) and kinship or family. So, ‘civil blood’ can also mean ‘the blood, or family loyalty, tying citizens together’.
In other words, it is ‘blood’, or family, that is the problem: the Montagues and the Capulets cannot really pick a side based on political allegiance, but are bound to continue their feud (indeed, their blood feud) by virtue of which family they belong to. As Juliet will later famously ask Romeo, ‘wherefore art thou Romeo?’ If only he had been born of different blood, there wouldn’t have been a problem.
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.
Two doomed children from these feuding families fall in love with each other and take their own lives. They are ‘star-cross’d’ because it is destined by the stars that their love for each other will be thwarted. There are many astrological references in Romeo and Juliet to the idea that the stars govern human fate: Romeo will later defy the stars, and elsewhere he will observe that ‘my mind misgives / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars’.
However, the Prologue goes on to reveal (giving a fair few spoilers as to the details of the play that hasn’t been staged yet) that the two lovers’ ‘misadventured piteous overthrows’ will, through their two deaths, succeed finally in convincing their parents to put the feud behind them and live in peace with each other.
The word ‘overthrows’, as a noun, means a successful coup, such as overthrowing a corrupt military leader or politician; ‘misadventured’ relates to the idea of an unfortunate accident (Romeo and Juliet cannot help falling in love with each other, if it’s written in the stars!); and ‘piteous’ obviously means ‘deserving of pity’.
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 doomed love between Romeo and Juliet and how it came about, and the way their parents persisted in their anger towards each other (which nothing except the deaths of their own children could put to an end), will now constitute the business of the play that follows for the next couple of hours. (As a point of interest, love and remove may have been more than eye-rhymes in the time of Shakespeare.)
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
In other words, ‘If you listen to the following play patiently, whatever shortcomings you as an audience may feel the following play has (i.e., whatever you feel it is missing or lacking), our actors will attempt to fix through their performances.’
And so concludes the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet; the play itself, thumb-biting and all, then gets underway.
But we mentioned something notable about the form Shakespeare uses for the ‘Two households’ speech. What is it? You may have noticed that we divided the Prologue’s fourteen lines up, in the analysis above, into four sections: three four-line sections (or quatrains) and a concluding two-line section (or couplet).
In other words, Shakespeare writes the ‘Two households …’ prologue in the form of a sonnet: specifically, an English or Shakespearean sonnet, rhymed abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnets have long been associated with the courtly love tradition: male admirers gazing longingly upon a beautiful but unattainable woman and waxing lyrical about her beauty. Romeo is such a figure, desperate to fall in love (first with Rosaline, and then, truly, with Juliet); when he and Juliet first meet and converse at the ball, their exchange takes the form of another sonnet, while there is also a second ‘Chorus’ in sonnet form between the first and second acts of the play.
So, Shakespeare’s decision to use the sonnet form at several points in a play in which unattainable love will, against the odds, be attained – albeit only for a short while – is entirely in keeping with the mood and themes of Romeo and Juliet as a whole.