ABSTRACT
The sonnet is the channel through which the play flows. Acts i and n are preceded by a choric sonnet; Romeo and Juliet at their first en counter compose a sonnet, chimingly, together. Several quatrains and sestets are scattered throughout the play, which closes with the Prince’s sestet. Other passages hint broadly at parallels with the Sonnets: Montague’s ‘Many a morning hath he there been seen, / With tears augmenting the fresh morning’s dew’, for instance (i, 1, 129-30), and Romeo’s ‘O she is rich in beauty; only poor, / That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store’ (i, 1, 213-14). The sonnet material helps to establish Verona as a country of the mind, a locale whose inhabitants place themselves through their mode of discourse. In the Veronese language, the most obvious adjunct to the sonnet is the rhymed couplet.
