The opening prologue of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a sonnet.
The Chorus delivers the prologue in 14 lines, using a compact poetic structure to summarize the feud, introduce the lovers, and reveal that their relationship will end in death. Its final couplet says that their love, together with the families’ anger, is the only way to end the conflict.
The prologue follows the rhyme pattern associated with an English, or Shakespearean, sonnet: three quatrains followed by a concluding couplet. It is written in iambic pentameter, the meter used extensively throughout the play.
Calling it a sonnet does not mean the entire drama is a sonnet; Romeo and Juliet is a play containing many different verse forms and prose passages. The opening sonnet functions like a formal preview, giving the audience the outcome before the action begins and emphasizing fate, secrecy, and inherited conflict.