Enter Chorus. As Malone suggests, this probably meant only that the prologue was to be spoken by the same actor that personated the chorus at the end of act i. The prologue is omitted in the folio, but we cannot doubt that it was written by S. It is in form a sonnet, of the pattern adopted in his Sonnets. See comments upon it, p. 22 above.

2. Fair Verona. The city is thus described in the opening lines of Brooke's poem:[4]—

6. Star-cross'd. For the astrological allusion, cf. i. 4. 104, v. 1. 24, and v. 3. 111 below. The title of one of Richard Braithwaite's works, published in 1615, is "Love's Labyrinth: or the True Lover's Knot, including the disastrous falls of two Star-crost lovers Pyramus and Thisbe."

8. Doth. The reading of the quartos, changed by most of the modern editors to "Do." Ulrici considers it the old third person plural in -th. He adds that S. mostly uses it only where it has the force of the singular, namely, where the sense is collective, as in overthrows here. Cf. v. 1. 70 below.

12. Two hours. Cf. Hen. VIII. prol. 13: "may see away their shilling Richly in two short hours."