Romeo and Juliet

The classic fatal romance of Romeo and Juliet has been repeated innumerable times throughout literature and cinema. Almost everyone knows the story of the two young lovers from warring families who would rather brave the abandonment of life and family than lose their love. As they pursue their forbidden attraction, they find their way grow steadily more difficult. Friends and family inadvertently get caught in the cross-fire. Yet their love still burns true, eventually consuming both of them. Only after their deaths do their families realize what kind of price their hatred has cost.

This tragic tale opens with a word from the Chorus, a non-participatory character.

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. (Prologue 1-8)

In these few lines, the entire history and plot of Romeo and Juliet is given. It states the setting (Verona) with its two families warring over some grudge, much like the family feud in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. From these two families come two lovers who eventually die for their love, thus ending their familial strife. It would seem plausible that without reading any further in the play the reader would know the entire story, of course in its simplest form.

Yet one must wonder why Shakespeare would begin his play in such a strange fashion. It’s like giving away the punch line in a joke without having even given the joke yet. Normally, a story’s plot, and especially ending, is allowed to play out along their course without any foretelling. One idea is that, though the reader may know the eventual outcome of everything, he does not know the details and that is why he would keep reading. However, this seems a bit silly. Shakespeare is a lot smarter than that. As much as I think about it, I can’t really come up with a good explanation. Perhaps I just need more time to think and process but I do know that it is not an accident or whim that the Chorus gives such a speech as a prologue to the play.