Prodigious Birth

special birth
Juliet:
Go ask his name.â€"If he be married,
My scrape up is like to be my wedding-bed.
Nurse:
His name is Romeo, and a Montague,
The yet son of your great enemy.
Juliet:
My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me
That I must love a loathèd enemy.
Romeo And Juliet Act 1, scene 5, 134141
At her fathers draped ball, Juliet falls in a big way for the conceal Romeo, a Montague and thus an enemy of her family [see A PAIR OF STAR-CROSSED LOVERS and jump DAYS]. Even though she has nonhing personal against the Montagues, Romeo in particular, she cant ladder being a Capulet, or escape her familys hate.
Today prediction usually refers to a precocious youngster. But the word had much different connotations in Shakespeares time: a prodigy was psyche or something abnormal, a monstrosity. Prodigies were taken to be omens of a familys unstable fortune; this mood was thus naturally linked to the idea of birth, an event surrounded with a vast structure of superstition.



part the word transcendentâ€"of sixteenth century originâ€"was practically applied to newborns or children, prodigious birth seems to be Shakespeares coinage. When Juliet refers to the prodigious birth of her love, her imagination runs through the horrors such(prenominal) an omen portends; with vitriolic dramatic irony, she foresees that her grave will in fact farm her marriage bed.
In a play contemporaneous with Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare has a fairy-king bless the marriage beds of three newly-wed couples. He commands that the blots of Natures hand/ Shall not in their issue stand;/ Never mole, hair-lip, nor scar,/ Nor mark prodigious, such as are/ Despisèd in nativity,/ Shall upon their children be (A summer solstice Nights Dream, Act 5, scene 1, 409414). This passage is an excellent rendering of Elizabethans misgiving of prodigious births.If you want to get a full essay, coif it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com



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