Download THE PROLOGUE

William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet
Prologue Assignment
Your assignment:
Read the prologue to Romeo and Juliet (below)
1. Write your own translation of the prologue using contemporary language. You
may use a dictionary to help you translate, but do not use any other sources
(books or internet) to assist you.
Make sure you look up EVERY word that you do not understand, but pay close
attention to the CONTEXTUAL meaning of the following words as you write
your translation: dignity, mutiny, civil, fatal, star-crossed, strife, traffic, toil.
Consider possible double meanings of words as well.
2. Research and Define: Shakespearean Sonnet (form and traits)
Iambic Pentameter
In addition to your translation, answer the following questions:
3. What do you already know about the plot of Romeo and Juliet? How do you
know this information?
4. What is a possible reason that the Prologue reveals to the audience the outcome of
the plot of the play before the play even begins?
5. What is the point of the last two lines of the Prologue? (i.e. What are these lines
indicating to the audience?)
THE PROLOGUE
Enter Chorus.
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.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, naught 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.
[Chorus exits.]