RALPH:  In Shakespeare’s day, love poetry played a prominent role in literature, and had done so for several centuries. In this scene, Shakespeare uses the Sonnet form, but he does something really great with it. 

SARAH:   This sonnet consists of three quatrains, a group of 4 rhyming lines, followed by a rhyming couplet, then another quatrain.

RALPH:  Romeo opens the conversation with this quatrain as he takes Juliet’s hand  

If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this.

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

SARAH:   Then Juliet responds with a quatrain of her own: much, this, touch, kiss. 

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.

RALPH:  Now here’s the cool part – they start alternating Romeo:

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

SARAH:

Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

RALPH:

O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;

They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

SARAH:

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

RALPH:

Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

SARAH:

Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

RALPH:

Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!

Give me my sin again.

SARAH:

You kiss by the book.

SARAH:  We’ve seen the sonnet before—in the prologue at the beginning of the play. Here, it reminds us that the sonnet is the ultimate form of love poetry, so it’s fitting that our central lovers’ first flirtation would take this form.