Question

Read the play’s Prologue at the beginning of Act I, Scene 1. How can you tell that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy based on the plot and character information the Prologue contains? In the space below, write a 150-word essay analyzing the plot elements that are indicative of a tragedy. Include at least four specific references to the text.

Answer 1

i'm not going to write an essay but here are some reasons.

Two households, both alike in dignity,  = these houses, montague and capulet, are more alike then they seem

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny = From the two family's fighting, two people started to get along

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.  = Their argument (which they hardly even remember why they were fighting) has caused harm between the two families.

A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life  = Two people, wronged for being in love, committed suicide to be together.

Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.  The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love, And the continuance of their parents’ rage, = Even though they are dead, their parents continue to be mad because of their love.

I hope this helps

Answer 2

Answer:

William Shakespeare's famous "Romeo and Juliet" is and will always be one of the greatest works of romance tragedy. It shows the fatal love of two people from warring families that will, obviously, and can only lead to a tragedy.

Explanation:

In the prologue, Shakespeare talks of "two households, both alike in dignity" and very much similar but had been at loggerheads, though the reason for the enmity between them is no longer known by them.

"From forth the fatal loins of these two foes" suggests that even though these families may be at war, it will bring forth two people who will fall in love but die too.

In the hope that the families' problems might be resolved, their self inflicted deaths only makes things worse.

"Doth with their death bury their parents' strife. the fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, and the continuance of their parent's rage, which, but their children's end, nought could remove". This tragic story of the two lovers was already predicted in the beginning- "civil blood makes civil hands unclean". Thus, it is a tragedy in that the two protagonists died but also showed that man's spirit and will triumphs over the cruelty of life.