Scarica Analisi del prologue di Romeo and Juliet (Romeo e Giulietta), Shakespeare e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Romeo and Juliet: the prologue Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare about two young “star- cross’d lovers” ,as Shakespeare writes in the tragedy’s prologue, whose deaths end the feud between their families. The prologue summarizes the plot of the story. It consists of 3 quatrains and a final couplet, it is divided in 3 four-line stanzas and a final couplet, it is a sonnet with 14 lines in an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme, typical of the Shakespearean sonnet The first stanza describes the setting and the pre-existing conflict between the two families It begins with the chorus saying that the story revolves around two noble households (the Capulets and the Montagues) and it takes place in the beautiful and pleasant Italian city of Verona. They will soon start fighting again due to the resentment they have towards each other and this fight will lead to a lot of shed blood that will stain their hands although they should try to avoid this kind of low-class (as suggested by the adjective civil) quarrel. The second stanza describes the young lovers and their tragic story Two children are born from these families, we can already tell by the adjective “fatal” that someone (Romeo and Juliet in this case) will die. Two lovers are born from the families, Shakespeare spoils the end of the story just by using the word star-cross’d or, in modern English, star-crossed that literally means against the stars so against the fate. The fate is against the lovers’ love from the start, from the moment they are born. Take their life in this case has a double meaning: they take their lives, so their mothers give them life, and they take their own lives, so they kill themselves. The prologue goes on saying that Romeo and Juliet’s misadventures are really sad and piteous and they should inspire pity in us towards them. With their deaths the feud between the families ends. The third stanza tells how the family feud will end in a tragedy and explains that this is what they’ll see in the play The fear-full story of their love that will cause their deaths. The anger that continues between the lovers' parents was so strong that nothing but the death of their children could make them stop hating each other. This is the two-hour play you’ll see. This final couplet tells the audience that: If you listen carefully to the performance and be patient the details missed in the prologue will be revealed in the performance. The prologue is filled with antithetical images such as love and death, violence and rage against pity and compassion and the two rival family.
