|
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-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, naught 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.
|
This is the prologue's view of William Shakespeare's play
about the Montagues' brave son, Romeo, and the Capulets' fair
daughter (for which I'm short a letter to do her name), who are
in love, if to the consternation of their families.
With two clans, which have hate for each other running for
years, it won't work out. I'm sure you'd have predicted it; the
horrific final scene, wherein the hurt couple kill themselves,
is hard stuff.
West Side Story (music by Leonard Bernstein), based on that
old tale, involves two awful street gangs, which war for divided
turf, the Sharks and another ruffian horde (I'd need that fucking
letter here, too).
|
