One Love versus Two Households

Consider what we can learn by simply comparing two ‘prologues’ to Romeo and Juliet: Shakespeare’s prologue to his play, and Arthur Brooke’s Argument for his poem (The Tragedie of Romeus and Juliet):

 

Arthur Brooke:

Love hath inflaméd twain by sudden sight,

And both do grant the thing that both desire

They wed in shrift by counsel of a friar.

Young Romeus climbs fair Juliet's bower by night.

Three months he doth enjoy his chief delight.

By Tybalt's rage provokéd unto ire,

He payeth death to Tybalt for his hire.

A banished man he 'scapes by secret flight.

New marriage is offered to his wife.

She drinks a drink that seems to reave her breath:

They bury her that sleeping yet hath life.

Her husband hears the tidings of her death.

He drinks his bane. And she with Romeus' knife,

When she awakes, herself, alas! she slay'th.

 

William Shakespeare:

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-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
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.


1.  Note how Brooke’s poem is a list, while Shakespeare’s offers a structured idea.

 

2.  Note how Brooke’s begins with the emphasis on 'Love', whereas Shakespeare very firmly places the emphasis on ‘Two households’ (something to remember as we read the play in its entirety).

 

3.  Note how Brooke’s lines are largely end-stopped with a full stop, where Shakespeare’s thoughts flow not only through the ends of lines but across whole ‘paragraphs'.

4.  Note that where Brooke’s mind sees simple physical steps in the plot, Shakespeare sees concepts unravelling and forces colliding in ways that are both complex and, in all senses of the word, dramatic.

 

5.  Note how much more dynamic, imaginative and - yes! - personal are Shakespeare's words.

 

Put it all together and it would be hard to dispute that in this one - comparatively youthful - prologue, we have more than enough evidence of Shakespeare's genius.