The opening
scene of _Romeo and Juliet_ is simply a brawl, bringing home to us
vividly the family feud which is the root of the tragedy, but informing
us of nothing beyond the fact that such a feud exists. This is, indeed,
absolutely all that we require to know. There is not a single
preliminary circumstance, outside the limits of the play, that has to be
explained to us. The whole tragedy germinates and culminates within what
the prologue calls "the two hours' traffick of the stage." The opening
colloquy of the Witches in _Macbeth_, strikes the eerie keynote, but
does nothing more. Then, in the second scene, we learn that there has
been a great battle and that a nobleman named Macbeth has won a victory
which covers him with laurels. This can in no sense be called an
exposition. It is the account of a single event, not of a sequence; and
that event is contemporary, not antecedent. In the third scene, the
meeting of Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches, we have what may be
called an exposition reversed; not a narrative of the past, but a
foreshadowing of the future.
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