With this night’s revels and expire the term Some consequence yet hanging in the stars In Act 1 Scene 4, for example, Romeo refers to the stars and relates them to his current situation: This was a common belief in the Elizabethan era, and Shakespeare is drawing on this belief. There are many astrological references in Romeo and Juliet: references to the idea that the stars govern human fate. Indeed, the word ‘disaster’ is from the prefix dis- and the Greek word for ‘star’, aster: a ‘disaster’ was originally the unfortunate alignment of certain stars (or planets). A good deal of people view this as a bit of harmless fun, but Elizabethans tended to take it very seriously, as did the ancient Romans and ancient Greeks before them. Indeed, the word ‘astrology’ is from the ancient Greek for star, aster.Īstrology is discredited as a science – it was largely superseded by astronomy, involving the empirical observation of the stars and planets, but without linking this to human affairs – but many people still check their horoscopes every day or take an interest in what star sign somebody is. The phrase ‘star-cross’d’ is a reference to astrology: a belief system in which the movements and relative positions of stars and planets are viewed as having an influence on human affairs. In short, it is because it is written in the stars that Romeo and Juliet’s love for each other will be thwarted. So the families appear to have actually existed in medieval Italy.īut why are Romeo and Juliet ‘star-cross’d’ and why does ‘star-cross’d’ mean ‘doomed’?
This is in Canto VI of Purgatorio, the middle of the three ‘books’ of Dante’s poem. In other words, two doomed children from these feuding families, the Montagues and Capulets, fall in love with each other and take their own lives (spoiler alert).īy the way, the first reference to Montagues and Capulets is in the poetry of Dante, not Shakespeare: in his early fourteenth-century masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) makes reference to two warring Italian families, the Montagues and Capulets.
Let’s take a closer look at the words to the Prologue:įrom forth the fatal loins of these two foesĪ pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life ĭo with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The Prologue’s description of Romeo and Juliet as ‘star-cross’d lovers’ has become one of the most emblematic phrases from the whole play, neatly encapsulating the doomed nature of their love affair from the outset.īut what exactly does the Prologue mean when he describes the two title characters as ‘star-cross’d lovers’? ‘A pair of star-cross’d lovers’ is a well-known phrase from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
0 kommentar(er)
