Prologue

Two households both alike in dignity,
 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-cross'd lovers, take their life:
 Whose misadventur'd pitious overthrows,
 Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
 The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
 And the continuance of their parents' rage:
 Which but their children's end nought 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.