Prologue

One of the things that always amazed me most about Shakespeare, is that the opening prologue to many of his plays, is typically a synopsis OF the entire play.

Prologue to Romeo and Juliet

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
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’ traffick of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Prologue to King Henry VIII

I come no more to make you laugh: things now,
That bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,
Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,
We now present. Those that can pity, here
May, if they think it well, let fall a tear;
The subject will deserve it. Such as give
Their money out of hope they may believe,
May here find truth too. Those that come to see
Only a show or two, and so agree
The play may pass, if they be still and willing,
I'll undertake may see away their shilling
Richly in two short hours. Only they
That come to hear a merry bawdy play,
A noise of targets, or to see a fellow
In a long motley coat guarded with yellow,
Will be deceived; for, gentle hearers, know,
To rank our chosen truth with such a show
As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting
Our own brains, and the opinion that we bring,
To make that only true we now intend,
Will leave us never an understanding friend.
Therefore, for goodness' sake, and as you are known
The first and happiest hearers of the town,
Be sad, as we would make ye: think ye see
The very persons of our noble story
As they were living; think you see them great,
And follow'd with the general throng and sweat
Of thousand friends; then in a moment, see
How soon this mightiness meets misery:
And, if you can be merry then, I'll say
A man may weep upon his wedding-day.

...and yet, people become so enraptured with the Story that the ending and the outcome of that story still hits them like a ton of bricks. I've always looked at these people with incredulity, because "he told you what was going to happen in the first five minutes", and in return they look at me with an incredulity, and often sadness, that I've always assumed was saying "it is you that doesn't understand".

This has always been one of my fundamental disconnects with Other...

I've always embraced a similar style to Shakespeare, in that typically I am forthright about laying out what I'm about to do, yet when I do it, people are likewise blind sided by the results, and I'm always stuck with the same incredulity around the whole "but I told you what I was going to do".

When I've talked to people about this I'm always surprised that there is a nearly Universal misunderstanding around what I told them was going to happen, and what they understood me to be saying.

This has always left me wondering where the disconnect lies. Is it in the complexity and or style of the "prologue", or is it some fundamental weakness that lies between the "facts" of something, and the "telling of the Story to arrive at the results".

Certainly the Story contains a richness of experience that is wonderful to experience, but to me, that experience doesn't change my perception of the facts.

What am I missing?