Rom. A right good mark-man! And she's fair I love.
Ben. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
Rom. Well, in that hit, you miss: she'll not be hit
she hath Dian's wit;

With Cupid's arrow,

And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd,

From Love's weak childish bow she lives encharm'd.20

She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold:
O, she is rich in beauty; only poor,

That, when she dies, with her dies beauty's store.2 21

Ben. Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste? Rom. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste; For beauty, starv'd with her severity,

Cuts beauty off from all posterity.

She is too fair, too wise; wisely too fair,
To merit bliss by making me despair:
She hath forsworn to love; and in that vow
Do I live dead that live to tell it now.

Ben. Be rul'd by me, forget to think of her.
Rom. O, teach me how I should forget to think.
Ben. By giving liberty unto thine eyes:
Examine other beauties.

22

Rom.
'Tis the way
To call hers, exquisite, in question more.
These happy masks that kiss fair ladies' brows, 23
Being black, put us in mind they hide the fair:
He that is strucken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.
Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
What doth her beauty serve, but as a note
Where I may read who pass'd that passing fair?
Farewell: thou canst not teach me to forget.24
Ben. I'll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.

[Exeunt.

20 The first quarto has unharm'd; the other old copies, uncharm'd, which gives a sense just the opposite of that required. Encharm'd is from Collier's second folio, and gives the sense of being shielded from Cupid by a charm. So in Cymbeline, v. 3: "I, in mine own woe charm'd, could not find Death where I did hear him groan, nor feel him where he struck." And in Macbeth, v. 7: "Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; I bear a charmed life." 21 Poor only in that, when she dies, her great estate of beauty must die with her, as she will have none to inherit it.

22 To call her exquisite beauty more into my mind, and make it more the subject of conversation. Question was often used in this sense.

23 This is probably an allusion to the masks worn by the female spectators of a play; unless these be merely equivalent to the. So in Measure for Measure, ii. 4: "As these black masks proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder than beauty could display'd."

24 It would have displeased us if Juliet had been represented as already in love, or as fancying herself so: but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the

SCENE II. The Same. A Street.

Enter CAPULET, PARIS, and a Servant.

Cap. But Montague is bound as well as I,
In penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, I think,
For men so old as we to keep the peace.

Par. Of honourable reckoning are you both;
And pity 'tis you liv'd at odds so long.
But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?

Cap. But saying o'er what I have said before:
My child is yet a stranger in the world,
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;
Let two more Summers wither in their pride
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.

Par. Younger than she are happy mothers made.
Cap. And too soon marr'd are those so early made.
The earth hath swallow'd all my hopes but she;
She is the hopeful lady of my earth:1
But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart,
My will to her consent is but a part;
An she agree, within her scope of choice
Lies my consent and fair-according voice.
This night I hold an old-accustom'd feast,
Whereto I have invited many a guest,
Such as I love; and you, among the store,
One more most welcome, makes my number more.
At my poor house look to behold this night
Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light:
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel,

When well-apparell'd April on the heel

2

Of limping Winter treads, even such delight
Among fresh female buds shall
this night
Inherit at my house: hear all, all see,

you

And like her most, whose merit most shall be ;
Whilst on more view of many, mine being one,

yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really near the heart. -COLERIDGE.

1 Fille de terre is the old French phrase for an heiress. Earth is put for lands, or landed estate, in other old plays.

2 The Poet's 98th Sonnet yields a good comment on the text:

"From you have I been absent in the Spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,

That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him."

8 To inherit, in the language of Shakespeare, is to possess.

May stand in number, though in reckoning none.*

Come, go with me.-[To the Servant.] Go, sirrah, trudge

about

Through fair Verona; find those

persons out

Whose names are written there, [Gives a Paper] and to

them say,

It is

My house and welcome on their pleasure stay. [Exeunt CAPULET and PARIS. Serv. Find them out whose names are written here! written, that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard, and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his pencil, and the I painter with his nets; but I am sent to find those persons whose names are here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. I must to the learned: in good time.

Enter BENVOLIO and ROMEO.

Ben. Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning,5 One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish ;

6

Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;

One desperate grief cures with another's languish :
Take thou some new infection to thy eye,

And the rank poison of the old will die.

Rom. Your plantain-leaf is excellent for that."
Ben. For what, I pray thee?

Rom.

For your broken shin.
Ben. Why, Romeo, art thou mad?

Rom. Not mad, but bound more than a madman is;
Shut up in prison, kept without my food,

Whipp'd and tormented, and God-den, good fellow.
Serv. God gi' good-den." I pray, sir, can you read?
Rom. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.

Serv. Perhaps you have learn'd it without book: but, I pray, can you read any thing you see?

4 The allusion is to the old proverbial expression, "One is no number." Thus in Shakespeare's 136th Sonnet:

Among a number one is reckon❜d none;

Then, in the number let me pass untold."

5 Alluding, probably, to the old remedy for a burn, by holding the burnt place up to the fire. So in Julius Cæsar, iii. 1: "As fire drives out fire, so pity, pity."

6 Holp or holpen is the old preterit of help. That form of the word occurs repeatedly in the English Psalter, which is an older version than the Psalms in the Bible.

7 The plantain-leaf is a blood-stancher, and was formerly applied to green wounds.

8 Such, it seems, were the most approved modes of curing mad people in the Poet's time. See vol. i. page 221, note 10.

9 An old colloquialism for "God give you good even."

Rom. Ay, if I know the letters, and the language.
Serv. Ye say honestly: rest you merry!
Rom. Stay, fellow; I can read.

[Takes the Paper.

[Reads.] Signior Martino and his wife and daughters; County Anselmo and his beauteous sisters; The lady widow of Vitruvio; Signior Placentio and his lovely nieces; Mercutio and his brother Valentine; Mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters; My fair niece Rosaline; Livia; Signior Valentio and his cousin Tybalt; Lucio and the lively Helena. [Returns the Paper.] A fair assembly: whither should they come?

Serv. Up.

Rom. Whither?

Serv. To supper to our house.

Rom. Whose house?

Serv. My master's.

Rom. Indeed, I should have ask'd you that before.

Serv. Now I'll tell you without asking. My master is the great rich Capulet; and if you be not of the House of Montagues, I pray, come and crush a cup of wine.10 Rest you merry!

Ben. At this same ancient feast of Capulet's
Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lov'st,
With all th' admired beauties of Verona:
Go thither; and, with unattainted eye,1
Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

11

Rom. When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;
And these, who, often drown'd,12 could never die, -
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!

One fairer than my love! th' all-seeing Sun
Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.

Ben. Tut, tut, you saw her fair, none else being by,

Herself pois'd with herself in either eye:

But in that crystal scales 18 let there be weigh'd
Your lady-love1 against some other maid
That I will show you shining at this feast,

And she shall scant show well that now shows best.

[Exit.

10 This expression often occurs in old plays. We have one still in use of similar import: "To crack a bottle."

11 Unattainted is uncorrupted or undisabled; an eye that sees things as they are.

12 And these eyes of mine, which, though often drown'd with tears, could never, &c.

18 So in all the old copies. Scales is here used in the singular number. 14 Your lady's love is the old reading; corrected by Theobald.

Seauty

252

ROMEO AND JULIET.

Rom. I'll go along, no such sight to be shown,
But to rejoice in splendour of mine own.

ACT I.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III. The Same. A Room in CAPULET'S House.

Enter Lady CAPULET and the Nurse.

Lady C. Nurse, where's my daughter? call her forth to me.
Nurse. Now, by my maidenhood at twelve year old,1

I bade her come. What, lamb! what, lady-bird!

God forbid!

·where's this girl? — what, Juliet !

Enter JULIET.

Jul. How now! who calls?

Nurse. Your mother.

Jul. Madam, I'm here: What is your will?

Lady C. This is the matter, Nurse, give leave awhile; We must talk in secret:. Nurse, come back again;

I have remember'd me, thou'se hear our counsel.2

Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.

Nurse. 'Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
Lady C. She's not fourteen.
Nurse.

I'll lay fourteen of my teeth,

And yet, to my teen be't spoken,3 I have but four,
She is not fourteen.
To Lammas-tide? 4

Lady C.

How long is it now

A fortnight and odd days.
Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she- - God rest all Christian souls!
Were of an age: well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me: - but, as I said,
On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen ;
That shall she, marry; I remember 't well.
'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;

1 In words denoting time and space, the singular form was often used with the plural sense. In The Tempest, i. 2, Prospero says, "Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since, thy father was the Duke of Milan."

2 The use of thou'se for thou shalt was common. It is generally changed to thou shalt here; which is an unwarrantable modernizing of the Poet's language.

Teen is an old word for sorrow, and is here used as a sort of play upon four and fourteen.

4 Lammas-day or -tide falls on the first of August; and of course Lammaseve is the day before. It is an ancient festival of the Catholic Church. The most probable derivation of the name is from a Saxon word meaning loafmass, because on that day the Saxons used to offer loaves made of new wheat, as an oblation of first-fruits. Some, however, hold the festival to have been instituted in commemoration of St. Peter in the fetters, and derive the name from our Lord's injunction to that Apostle, "Feed my lambs."