Prologue Act 1 Scene 1 Romeo and Juliet

In the Prologue of Act 1 Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare uses poetic devices to successfully outline the setting, and main plotline of the play. The prologue is delivered to the audience in the form of a sonnet. As the sonnet is a form of traditional love poem, the use of this style of poetry gives the reader/listener a basic understanding of the narrative’s themes prior to the extraction of meaning from the written/spoken words. Through this choice of poetic form, Shakespeare sets the framework for his ideas about love during the prologue and therefore during the play.

Through the conventions of the sonnet, Shakespeare illustrates the plotline and setting of the play in greater detail, placing particular significance on the last word of each line, through rhyming techniques. Shakespeare’s emphasis on the last words of each line indicates to the reader the particular importance of these words and their relation to the plotline. In the first line and third line of the first quatrain, (something) rhyme is used to express how the two families (the Montagues and Capulets) are both seen with “dignity” but then its rhyming counterpart in the third line describes how this grudge between families turns to new “mutiny”. Through the rhyming of the two words ‘dignity’ and ‘mutiny’ Shakespeare links these ideas together and so describes how both families are dignified at the beginning of the story only to fall to ‘new’ or young mutiny. This rhyming convention is used throughout the entire poem, and therefore serves to give the reader insight as to the plotline of the