Name______Class Period______

Read your assigned line, look up any words that you don’t understand, and then paraphrase the line.

1 Two households, both alike in dignity,

______
2 In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

______3 From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

______4 Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

______5 From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

______6 A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;

______
7 Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

______8 Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

______9 The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,

______10 And the continuance of their parents' rage,

______11 Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,

______12 Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;

______13 The which if you with patient ears attend,

______14 What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

______

Mark the words that have to do with “love” with a circle and words that have to do with “fighting” or “death” with a square. What do you notice? ______
______

Underline every example of the word “two” in the prologue. What do you notice? ______

The Shakespearan sonnet is 14 lines in length and employs the following rhyme scheme:

abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

The sonnet consists of three quatrains and a couplet. A quatrain is a stanza within a poem that consists of four lines with a specific rhyming scheme. (ex.: abab, cdcd).

The third quatrain generally introduces an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic “turn” or shift.

The last two rhyming lines of the sonnet are called a couplet, and they usually summarize the theme of the poem or introduce a fresh new look at the theme.

Each line contains ten syllables, written in iambic pentameter (five “feet” of alternating unstressed, stressed syllables).

A sonnet is rhythmically homogeneous (uniform), without sounding mechanical or sing-songy.

Usually the poem develops one extended metaphor, and this comparison,

  1. is not picked up briefly and dropped; it is sustained and explored at length and forms the basis of the poem.
  2. is fresh and surprising, not trite and obvious.
  3. has a point to it – a point that is subtle enough to require an extended metaphor.
  1. Mark the rhyme scheme for the prologue.
  2. Identify the three quatrains and couplet. Count the meter of each line. What do you notice? ______

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.