1. Activator: What’s the Question?  Answer: A combination of words, or parts of words, that contradict each other.  Question:  Answer: A statement that seems contradictory but actually may be true.  Question:

2. Shakespeare’s Sonnets  A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem, traditionally written in iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter: lines ten syllables long, with stress falling on every second syllable  The Shakespearean sonnet is divided into four parts. The first three parts are each four lines long, and are known as quatrains. ○ Rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF The fourth part is called the couplet. ○ Rhyme scheme: GG Each quatrain develops a sequence of metaphors or ideas, while the couplet offers either a summary or a new take on the preceding images or ideas.  In Elizabethan England, the sonnet was the form of choice for lyric poets seeking to engage with traditional motifs of love and romance.

3. Romeo and Juliet Prologue  Open your textbook to page 807.  The Prologue of Romeo and Juliet is in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, spoken by the Chorus.  The Chorus introduces the play’s main characters, plot, and setting.

4. Romeo and Juliet Prologue 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 Do 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, 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.