and Attendants.  
Chorus.  
SCENE: _Verona_; _Mantua_.  
PROLOGUE  
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,
Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.  The fearful passage of their death-mark'd 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,
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
ACT I  
SCENE I. _Verona. A Public Place_.  
_Enter_ SAMPSON _and_ GREGORY, _of the house of Capulet, with swords and
bucklers_  
_Sampson._ Gregory, on my word, we'll not carry
coals.  
_Gregory._ No, for then we should be colliers.  
_Sampson._ I mean, an we be in choler we'll draw.  
_Gregory._ Ay, while you live, draw your neck out
o' the collar.  
_Sampson._ I strike quickly, being moved.  
_Gregory._ But thou art not quickly moved to strike.  
_Sampson._ A dog of the house of Montague moves
me.  
_Gregory._ To move is to stir, and to be valiant is
to stand; therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn'st
away.  
_Sampson._ A dog of that house shall move me to
stand; I will take the wall of any man or maid of
Montague's.  
_Gregory._ That shows thee a weak slave; for the
weakest goes to the wall.  
_Sampson._ True; and therefore women, being the

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