O Punctuation, Punctuation. Wherefore art thou Punctuation? Romeo and Juliet

During the writing of my book, I came across an interesting find and it was all to do with punctuation. I came across differences in how the prologue is punctuated in ‘Romeo and Juliet’. When writing the book, I wanted the extracts to be easily accessible for teachers to quickly Google and find. There was an issue with one extract on Project Gutenberg. We couldn’t secure copyright for the material because Shakespeare’s words may not be copyrighted, but the editing is. And it was in this area that I found interesting. There are several differences in how the prologue has been edited in terms in punctuation.



Source:http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/romeo_juliet.1.0.html

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-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do 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.

Source: William J. Rolfe (1879)

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-cross'd lovers take their life,

Whose misadventur'd piteous 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.

Line 6 – semi colon is now a comma

Source: Wordsworth Classics (1992)

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-cross'd lovers take their life:
Whose misadventured piteous 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.

Line 2 – additional use of brackets

Line 5 – introduction of a comma

Line 6 – use of a colon rather than comma or semi colon

Line 13 – an insertion of a comma

Now, I don’t have some magical answers for the differences, but I have some possible ideas.

The introduction of brackets makes the parenthesis stronger, given it is an authorial interruption and clarification– ‘we lay our scene’. It also separates the narrative from the performance. The Volta marks the shift between narrative and performance.

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-cross'd lovers take their life:
Whose misadventured piteous 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.

When looking at the structure like this, it does make me wonder if ‘(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene)’ was just Shakespeare struggling with a line and a rhyme.



Then, there is line 6. The use of comma at the end allows for a sense of flow and continuation and consequences of events. Things are listed.  However, when you use a semi colon, there seems to be clear sense of connection. Semi colons link clauses together, so here we have a connection between the end of their life and their parents’ strife. For me, and that’s just me, I view the change to a colon to be an accusation. The colon isn’t just linking or showing the consequence, but instead show us the cause. Colons can be used to introduce an idea and here I view the colon’s usage as introducing the cause. They died; this is the reason why.  



We often use Shakespeare in lessons, but I’d say we rarely look at how the version differs in terms of editing. It is only when we have different page numbers in the book do we explore the different versions of a text. The simple use of a comma or colon can change the meaning of line. These subtle differences add additional layers to the text. It would be ludicrous to explore how every line and page is different, but occasionally it might be nice to see how they are edited differently. The Arden version uses brackets on line 2, but uses a comma at the end of line 6.

Thanks for reading,

Xris