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All Site ContentRomeo and JulietAct 1Scene Prologue
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"mark", "passage", "traffic"
Double Meaning
Act 1,
Scene Prologue
Lines 1-12

Discussion of the double meaning of the words mark, passage, and traffic used to describe the ill-fated love of Romeo and Juliet in myShakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Prologue.

[Before the real action of the play begins, a single actor (referred to as a chorus) comes to the front of the stage to deliver this introductory prologue to the play]

Chorus

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
Doth, 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;

Romeo and Juliet's love is "death-marked"; fate has singled them out, marking them to die. But there is another sense of the word "mark" suggested by the words "passage" and "traffic," which were commonly used in reference to sea voyages. A "mark" is the point toward which a sailing ship steers. These words describe Romeo and Juliet’s relationship as a ship on a collision course with death.  The word "passage" also brings to mind another kind of journey: the passage to the afterlife. So "fearful passage" could refer not only to the disastrous course of Romeo and Juliet’s doomed love, but also to the uncertain fate that awaits them after they die.