The Prologue: the ending, given away in fourteen lines

Fourteen lines into the play, you already know that the two lovers die, that their deaths end their parents' feud, and how long the show will take. Shakespeare gives the ending away before anyone in Verona has said a word. That looks like a writer spoiling his own play, on purpose, in the first minute.

The Prologue gets a close look of its own in this collection, and the story it gives away is told in full in the Overview.

The Prologue is a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem with a fixed rhyme pattern, ending on a couplet, two rhyming lines. A speaker called the Chorus delivers it. It begins: 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. Which house does that opening side with: Montague, Capulet, or neither? Neither. The two houses are made equal in rank, so before anyone speaks there are no goodies and baddies on offer. Mutiny here means fresh violence. And civil comes twice: civil blood is citizens' blood, and civil hands should be polite hands, so the feud is the city's own manners turned inside out. Then the lovers arrive: 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. Loins are where children come from, so fatal loins are deadly parents. Star-cross'd means the stars are against them. Misadventured means unlucky, and strife is conflict. Take their life can mean two things here. What are they? To be born, taking life from their parents, and to kill themselves. Shakespeare puts the birth and the death in one phrase. And line eight hands over the ending: their deaths will bury their parents' strife. By now the audience knows who dies, and what their dying will stop.

Then the sonnet turns from the story to the show itself. 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. Death-mark'd means marked out for death. Nought could remove means nothing could end the rage except their children's end. And traffic is business, so two hours' traffic is two hours of playing. Who is the Chorus talking to: the two families, the lovers, or you? You, the audience in the theatre. The Chorus speaks for the company of actors, about the play as a play. That makes the Chorus a framing device: a voice outside the story that introduces it, the way a frame sits around a picture. The Chorus never meets anyone in Verona. One examiner's report puts it like this: Some responses were confused by the way the Chorus speaks directly to the audience at the end of the Prologue, asking them to pay careful attention to the events that the play will unfold. The fix is to name the Chorus for what it is: Shakespeare's framing voice, talking to the audience about the play, and never a person inside the story.

That makes the Prologue a contract with the audience. Because you know the ending, you spend two hours watching people choose it, and every near miss feels like a decision instead of bad luck.

A Prologue line earns its place in an essay when it backs up a point, rather than sitting at the top like a quotation on a poster. Here are two sentences. First: Shakespeare begins the play with a Prologue, Two households, both alike in dignity. Second: Shakespeare refuses to blame one family alone, since the Prologue calls the two houses both alike in dignity. Which of those two uses the Prologue as evidence for a point? The latter. It makes a claim, that neither house is guilty on its own, and the quotation proves it. The other only shows you know how things begin. The same works for what the feud costs. One line tells you the parents will keep going until the price is paid: Which, but their children's end, nought could remove. Why is that line about the parents, rather than about fate? Because it names what ends their rage, and that is losing their own children. No star appears in it. And for a point about tension, use death-mark'd love. The audience watches every happy moment knowing it is marked for death, while the characters do not. That gap is dramatic irony: the audience knows something a character does not. Whether the stars really decide anything is a separate argument, and the video on fate, star-crossed or just fast, takes it on.

The Prologue's own words come back now, with one piece missing each time. The two households are both alike in what? Dignity. Two households, both alike in dignity, equal in rank. Next: a pair of what kind of lovers take their life? Star-cross'd. A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life. Now the play's length: the two hours' what of our stage? Traffic. Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage. Here's a different one: Mercutio dies cursing both houses. Which Prologue line fits? Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. Mercutio is a citizen from neither house, and the feud spills his blood.

When a Prologue line proves a point for you, and you can say why giving the ending away helps the play, tick this one off with your thumb. Not there yet, then save it and learn the fourteen lines by heart, because they are short and the rest of the play leans on them.

Next in the chapter: Verona: honour, the Church, and what a daughter is worth.

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