A Pair of Star-Cross'd Lovers

The play that really created a sensation in the world of London theatre in 1597 was William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. What made the play so unusual was not only that the protagonists were only in their teens, or that the play ended with their deaths, but that the playwright told the audience how the play would end, he gave away the ending, in the first ten lines!

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;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

Yet every audience that has ever seen the play, sits riveted to their seats while they watch a tragedy unfold, one that consumes the lives of the two very young lovers in the bloom of their idealism. In this play, Shakespeare creates dialogue that is both beautiful and inspiring. Its lines are quoted again and again as the standard for love.

Tonight, I would like to present you with one particular piece of dialogue; for, as a teacher of adolescents for over forty years, it has continually fascinated me with the cleverness of Romeo in releasing his hormones to rule over his head, and the coyness of Juliet, who forces him to work for the kiss he is trying to steal. While other parts of the play are more clever or more profound, this particular piece of the play is, to me, the essence of the adolescence of Romeo and Juliet.

ROMEO
[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
JULIET
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO
Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

As Folger Shakespeare Library has always said, let the lines speak for themselves. And oh how eloquently they speak!