Shakespeare’s

“ROMEO AND
JULIET”
ACT 2
PROLOGUE
Laura Nederveen
10th
 Chorus:
 Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie, A Quatrain I
And young affection gapes to be his heir.
B
That fair for which love groaned for and would die,
A
With tender Juliet matched, is now not fair.
B
Now Romeo is beloved and loves again,
C Quatrain II
Alike bewitched by the charm of looks,
D
But to his foe supposed he must complain,
C
And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks.
D
Being held a foe, he may not have access
E Quatrain III


To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear,

And she as much in love, her means much less

F
To meet her new-beloved anywhere.
E
But passion lends them power, time means, to meet,
F
Tempering extremities with extreme sweet.
G
Heroic Couplet
G
Structure:
 As we can see this is a
Shakespearean Sonnet, composed
of 14 lines. All of them divided
into 3 quatrains and an heroic
couplet at the end.
 As other Shakespearean sonnets,
this is written in Iambic
pentameter(line with 5 accents,
each followed by an unaccented
and an accented syllable)
Meaning:
 Basically what this Sonnet is trying to show us
are the emotions that Romeo and Juliet
have after they met towards each other and
their conflict because they belong to
enemies households.
 It also foreshadows the difficulties or
obstacles that they’ll both have because of
their forbidden love.
 In the first quatrain:

Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie,
And young affection gapes to be his heir.

That fair for which love groaned for and would die,

With tender Juliet matched, is now not fair.

With first line saying “old desire in his death-bed lie”

we can assimilate that this is related to Romeo and
says that his love for Rosaline has died.
“That fair” referred as Rosaline and as beauty, says
also how Romeo had suffer and would’ve died for her
but now not anymore because Juliet is prettier and
there's a higher level of attraction, so Rosaline is no
fair(pretty) to Romeo anymore because that “old
desire” faded because of Juliet.
 In the second quatrain:

Now Romeo is beloved and loves again,
Alike bewitched by the charm of looks,

But to his foe supposed he must complain,

And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks.

This quatrain explains how Romeo found what he was

looking for, which is love, and in this case with Juliet.
Says also that they are both very attracted to each
other, but that he will have to take responsibility,
there will be consequences, for his “mistake” because
he has fallen for his foe(enemy), a Capulet.
We can see that they both have the same problem and
there are going to be obstacles.
 In the third quatrain:

Being held a foe, he may not have access
To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear,

And she as much in love, her means much less

To meet her new-beloved anywhere.

Here it says that because of loving its

enemy, its hard for Romeo to really get to
her and to express his feelings
(represented by the word “vows”) as
normal people should do. And in Juliet’s
case it says that even if she is crazy in love
she can’t just go and be with Romeo.
This quatrain is expressing the first
obstacle that’s appearing towards their
love.
 In the heroic couplet:

But passion lends them power, time
means, to meet,

Tempering extremities with extreme
sweet.


This last two lines explain that their

desire will lead them to take risks(to
meet) to be together. Desire is giving
them the motivation to take the risks
so they can enjoy the
“sweets”(referring to love and its
rewards). So here we can see that they
will not care about anything besides
each other and they are not taking
into account the consequences of this
risky decisions.
Bibliography:
 http://www.my-silvermac.com/wordpress/wp-content/image
 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Sonn
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rosaline.JPG
 http://10.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kosor4pq1q1qzlezto1_40
 http://th00.deviantart.net/fs29/300W/f/2008/159/6/9/Rom
 http://lisawallerrogers.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/romeo-

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