How Does Shakespeare’s Use of Language in the Prologue to Act 1 Scene 5 Create a Sense of Fatalism and Serve to Augment the Dramatic Events in Act 1 Scene 5? Essay Example
In “Romeo and Juliet” Shakespeare’s his most famous play he shows the tension of two lovers trying to come together but with the burden of two rival families tearing them apart. Love is the overriding theme of the play, but a reader/ audience should always know that Shakespeare is not trying portraying a prettied-up, dainty version of the emotion, that writers of that era .This romantic drama was written in London in the 1590’s and was finally published in 1597 by a man called Thomas Creede. The passionate tension shows the emotion and pressure put on them both as the Montague’s and Capulet’s foreshadow the two “star crossed lovers” in disagreement. It was set on the fair streets of Verona in Italy, one of the most famous countries of love, which sets a tone that there is going to be extremes of emotions from the beginning. Although being an old style play it still resonates with modern audiences, themes of young love fated by disapproval and fate still occurs today.
In the prologue, the Chorus comes forward to command the audience’s attention saying: "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" this immediately gives the audience a theme that something bad was going to happen, Citizens of a town ought to be civil and therefore ought to show respect for one another and get along. But a lot of the time they don't. They engage in civil wars and shed the blood of one another which is known in the prologue as “civil blood”. Elizabethan audiences would have found this normal that families were disputing.
In the next few lines of the prologue it goes on to tell the audience how the problem of the two lovers and families is solved: "From forth the fatal loins of these two foes. A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; whose misadventure piteous overthrows do with their death bury their parents' strife. “Star crossed lovers” shows that they