Which line from the prologue of Romeo and Juliet reveals the ending of the play

Take a look at Juliet’s reactions and behaviour in Act 3, Scene 2. What different emotions does she experience in this one scene? Can you find any directions in her lines that might help an actor playing the role, or show them how to respond?

Take note of Lord Capulet’s plan to marry Juliet to Paris. Why do you think he has changed his mind and now wants the couple to marry that same week, when he wanted to wait two years in Act 1? What does this change of pace do to the plot? This is the first time we see Juliet disobey her father and mother. Does this change how you view her character?

Act 3 is important because Romeo and Juliet are separated – with Romeo being banished and Juliet’s proposed marriage to Paris being brought forward. Why do you think Shakespeare does these at the same point in the play?

If Shakespeare had depended on surprise for his plays to be enjoyable, you would never have heard of him. People would see the play once, get the full effect, and then there would be no point in going again.

Roger Ebert said, "It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it." The same goes for plays. Shakespeare tells you the ending up front because he wants you to not just wait for the surprise, but to watch how it happens to them. There are many different causes: their parents, their friends, their youth, even something as simple as a message that went astray.

It's much like your own life. Spoiler alert: you're going to die. What matters is how you live between now and then. As actors, we strive for authenticity at each moment. The question we constantly ask, "What is it that the character wants most in the entire world? What is preventing them from getting it?" That's how enjoyable performances are constructed: the intensity of each instant, regardless of the outcome.

There's a wonderful moment in the film Shakespeare in Love, where Juliet rises and asks, "Where is my love?". The audience is in tears, and one answers her: "Dead!" The audience member knows what's going on, but Juliet doesn't. The moment is powerful because we know what she's about to learn. She's being carried by forces more powerful than herself, and the tragedy is in how she reacts to them, instant by instant.

Shakespeare's audiences knew the ending of Romeo and Juliet before he even set pen to paper. Shakespeare rarely constructed novel stories. He repeated well-known tropes. The audience didn't sit through it in order to get a surprise ending; if anything, that would have annoyed them.

And that's true of modern audiences as well. When you go catch a James Bond movie, you don't need a spoiler alert that Bond wins and the villain loses. In a rom-com, it doesn't matter whether boy-gets-girl-back really follows boy-meets-girl and boy-loses-girl: they have different effects, but what's important is how he goes about getting her rather than his success.

To repeat myself for one final redundancy: the benefit of "spoiling" the ending is that the audience is relieved of the pressure of guessing how it turns out, and get to focus instead on the individual moments. If you just wanted to know the end of the play, Shakespeare would tell you, "Save your penny: they die."1 The reason you sit through the two hours traffic on that stage is to see how they get to die.

Language and Plot: Spoiler Alerts

Context and Language Videos

Act 1,

Scene Prologue

Lines 5-8

A discussion of the spoilers in the prologue of myShakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. 

myShakespeare | Romeo and Juliet Prologue Language and Plot: Spoiler Alerts?

Video of myShakespeare | Romeo and Juliet Prologue Language and Plot: Spoiler Alerts?

Chorus

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Doth, with their death, bury their parents' strife.

Video Transcript: 

SARAH:  Ralph, let’s take a closer look at the play’s introduction of its two title characters: Romeo and Juliet. 

RALPH: Sure, Sarah.  “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”

SARAH:  The pair of star-crossed lovers are, of course, Romeo and Juliet – coming forth from their parents’ “loins.”

RALPH: The "loins” are the lower part of an animal’s abdomen, like… well, like the loin chops we might buy from a butcher.

SARAH:  Here, Shakespeare is referring to loins as the place of human reproduction. 

RALPH: Then, when he refers to the births of Romeo and Juliet as "fatal", he’s using that word in two senses. 

SARAH:  A common idea in Shakespeare’s day was that the alignment of the planets and the stars at the time of your birth could tell you what fate had in store for you. Having an unfavorable alignment—being star-crossed—meant that things weren’t going to go well for you. 

RALPH: But “fatal” here can also mean “deadly.” 

SARAH:  As in, the violent family feud into which Romeo and Juliet are born will lead to their untimely deaths. 

RALPH: Sarah!

SARAH: What?

RALPH: You’re giving it away!  The end, you’re spoiling it!

SARAH: Oh please, Ralph!  They know that Romeo and Juliet die at the end, everyone knows that!  And Shakespeare is telling us the end right here, right at the beginning of his play!

RALPH: Well, ok, fine.  I guess you’re right.  So yes, these lines hint at the conclusion of the play, when Romeo and Juliet take their lives as a result of their families’ fighting. 

SARAH:  And they also reveal the fact that Romeo’s and Juliet’s deaths will end the feud between the families: “with their death, bury their parents’ strife.” 

RALPH: Note that Shakespeare has included even more clever wordplay here. In dying, Romeo and Juliet bring about a different kind of death: they “bury their parents’ strife.” The fighting between the families will die here as the two young lovers die.

What is the ending line of Romeo and Juliet?

What does the Prologue reveal in Romeo and Juliet?

Why does Shakespeare reveal the ending of the play in the Prologue?

What are the last two lines of the Prologue called?