Overview
The Act II Prologue of Romeo and Juliet is a fourteen-line sonnet spoken by the Chorus, serving as a bridge between the first and second acts of the play. In it, the Chorus announces that Romeo's infatuation with Rosaline—his "old desire"—has died, replaced by a powerful new love for Juliet. Unlike the Act I Prologue, which foretold the lovers' doom, this prologue recaps what has already happened and redirects the audience's attention to the central conflict: Romeo and Juliet love each other, but their families' enmity makes it nearly impossible for them to meet. The Chorus concludes on a cautiously hopeful note, declaring that "passion lends them power" to overcome these obstacles.
Structure and Form
Like the Act I Prologue and the lovers' first conversation at the Capulet ball, this prologue takes the form of a Shakespearean sonnet—fourteen lines of iambic pentameter with an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme. The three quatrains develop the argument in stages: the first establishes that Romeo's old love has been replaced, the second introduces the complication of the family feud, and the third describes the lovers' limited ability to meet. The closing couplet resolves the tension with the assertion that passion and time will find a way. Shakespeare's decision to use the sonnet form—the quintessential love poem structure of the Renaissance—for a speech about love's obstacles is both fitting and deliberately ironic.
Themes and Motifs
The prologue reinforces several of the play's major themes. The transformative power of love is central: Romeo's feelings for Rosaline are personified as an old man on his deathbed, while his love for Juliet is a young heir eager to claim its inheritance. The motif of love versus enmity appears in the language of foes, complaint, and fearful hooks—Romeo must court a woman whose family considers him an enemy. The theme of fate versus free will also surfaces: while the lovers are constrained by circumstances beyond their control, the final couplet insists that their passion grants them agency. Finally, the recurring motif of extremes and contrasts runs throughout—old desire versus young affection, fair versus not fair, extremities tempered by extreme sweetness.
Literary Devices
Personification drives the opening image: old desire "doth in his deathbed lie" while young affection "gapes to be his heir," turning abstract emotions into living characters in a drama of succession. Antithesis structures nearly every line, pairing opposites—old and young, beloved and foe, fair and not fair, power and extremity—to mirror the play's central tensions. Enjambment carries meaning across line breaks, creating momentum that mirrors the lovers' urgency. Shakespeare also employs allusion to the conventions of Petrarchan love poetry: the language of groaning, dying, and complaining evokes the courtly love tradition that Romeo embodied in Act I but is now moving beyond. The final line’s paradox—"Temp’ring extremities with extreme sweet"—encapsulates the play's philosophy that love and danger are inseparable.