Quote:
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I suppose on these grounds we should chastise Shakespeare for using giveaway titles like "The Tragedy of King Lear."
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One thing I found interesting about
Romeo And Juliet is that the entire story and ending is basically summed up in the opening paragraph:
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;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do 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.
Essentially that's the whole story - if we just wanted to know the story we would only have to read the first paragraph and no more. What's the point of reading on? The last three lines tell us that what the play will show is not the story itself - that's been done already in this prologue - but *how* it happens: here we 'shall miss' the specific details of the plot and that is what the play will show us. It's not the 'what' that's interesting; it's the 'how'.
This is the same with Tolkien. When reading
The Children Of Hurin, we have two consecutive chapters - 'The Death Of Glaurung' and 'The Death Of Turin'. So we know that both these characters will die, one after the other; the ultimate in spoilers. But why? Why would Turin die shortly after the destruction of his enemy, and not during it or long after? It's a mystery that keeps us guessing until we actually read it.