Mer.

Nay, I'll conjure too. Romeo! humours ! madman! passion! lover! Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh, Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied; Cry but-Ah me! pronounce? but—love and dove; Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, One nickname for her purblind son and heir, Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim”, When king Cophetua lov'd the beggar-maid. He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not; The ape * is dead, and I must conjure him.I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes, By her high forehead, and her scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, That in thy likeness thou appear to us.

Ben. An if he hear ee, thou wilt anger him.

Mer. This cannot anger him : 'twould anger him To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle

? This is the reading of the quarto of 1597. Those of 1599 and 1609 and the folio read provaunt, an evident corruption. The folio of 1632 has couply, meaning couple, which has been the reading of many modern editions. Steevens endeavours to persuade himself and his readers that provant may be right, and mean provide, furnish.

3 All the old copies read, Abraham Cupid. The alteration was proposed by Mr. Upton. It evidently alludes to the famous archer Adam Bell. So in Decker's Satiromastix:-'He sboots his bolt but seldom; but when Adam lets go, he hits.”. He shoots at thee too, Adam Bell; and his arrows stick here.' The ballad alluded to is King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid, or, as it is called in some copies, 'The Song of a Beggar and a King.' It may be seen in the first volume of Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The following stanza Shakspeare bad particularly in view:

• The blinded boy that shoots so trim,

From heaven down did hie;
He drew a dart and shot at him,

In place where he did lie.' * This phrase in Shakspeare's time was used as an expression of tenderness, like poor fool, &c.

Of some strange nature, letting it there stand
Till she had laid it, and conjur'd it down;
That were some spite : my invocation
Is fair and honest, and, in his mistress' name,
I conjure only but to raise up him.

Ben. Come, he hath hid himself among those trees,
To be consorted with the humorous 5 night:
Blind is his love, and best befits the dark.

Mer. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will he sit under a medlar tree, And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit, As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone 6.Romeo, good night;—I'll to my truckle-bed; This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep: Come, shall we go? Ben.

Go, then; for 'tis in vain To seek him here, that means not to be found.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II. Capulet's Garden.

Enter ROMEO. Rom. He jests at scars, that never felt a wound.

[JULIET appears above, at a Window. But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks!

5 i. e. the humid, the moist dewy night. Chapman uses the word in this sense in his translation of Homer, b. ii. edit. 1598: . The other gods and knights at arms slept all the

humorous night. And Drayton, in the thirteenth Song of his Polyolbion :

which late the humorous night

Bespangled had with pearl.' And in The Baron's Wars, canto i.:

• The humorous fogs deprive us of his light.' Shakspeare uses the epithet, vaporous night,' in Measure for Measure.

6 After this line in the old copies are two lines of ribaldry, which have justly been degraded to the margin :

• O Romeo, that she were, ah that she were
An open et cetera, thou a poprin pear.'

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun !
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she :
Be not her maid", since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
It is my lady; 0, it is my love :
0, that she knew she were ! -
She speaks, yet she says nothing; What of that?
Her eye

discourses, I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright,
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
0, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
Jul.

Ah me!
Rom.

She speaks
0, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this sight?, being o'er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wond'ring eyes
Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him,
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds,
And sails upon the bosom of the air.

1 i. e. be pot a votary to the moon, to Diana.

? The old copies read, “to this night.' Theobald made the emendation, which appears to be warranted by the context.

other part

Jul. O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou

Romeo ? Deny thy father, and refuse thy name: Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I'll no longer be a Capulet. Rom. Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

[Aside. Jul. 'Tis but thy name, that is my enemy; Thou art thyself though, not a Montague. What’s Montague ? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any Belonging to a man. 0, be some other name ! What's in a name? that which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo callid, Retain that dear perfection which he owes, Without that title:—Romeo, doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself. Rom.

I take thee at thy word : Call me but love, and I'll be new baptiz’d; Henceforth I never will be Romeo. Jul. What man art thou, that, thus bescreen'd in

night,
So stumblest on my counsel ?
Rom.

By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am:
My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
Because it is an enemy to thee;
Had I it written, I would tear the word.

Jul. My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words Of that tongue's utterance}, yet I know the sound; Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?

3 We meet with almost the same words as those here attributed to Romeo in King Edward III, a tragedy, 1596 :

• I might perceive his eye in ber eye lost,
His eye to drink her sweet tongue's utterance.'

Rom. Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike4.' Jul. How cam’st thou hither, tell me ? and where

fore?
The orchard walls are high, and hard to climb;
And the place death, considering who thou art,
If any of my kinsmen find thee here.
Rom. With love's light wings did I o’er-perch

these walls;
For stony limits cannot hold love out:
And what love can do, that dares love attempt,
Therefore thy kinsmen are no lets to me.

Jul. If they do see thee, they will murder thee.

Rom. Alack! there lies more peril in thine eye, Than twenty of their swords 6; look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.

Jul. I would not for the world they saw thee here.
Rom. I have night's cloak to hide me from their

sight;
And, but thou love me, let them find me here:
My life were better ended by their hate,
Than death prorogued 8, wanting of thy love.

4 i.e. if either thee displease. This was the usual phraseology of Shakspeare's time. So it likes me well; for it pleases me well.

5 i.e. no stop, no hinderance. Thus the quarto of 1597. The subsequent copies read, ‘no stop to me.'

6 Beaumont and Fletcher bave copied this thought in The Maid in the Mill:

• The lady may command, sir;

She bears an eye more dreadful than your weapon.' ? But is here again used in its exceptive sense, without or unless. See vol. i. p. 17, note 12; and vol. viii. p. 493, note 3.

8 i.e. postponed, delayed or deferred to a more distant period. So in Act iv. Sc. 1:

· I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it,

On Thursday next be married to the county.' The whole passage above, according to my view of it, has the following construction :- I have night to screen me ;-yet unless thou love me, let them find me here. It were better that they ended my life at once, than to have death delayed, and to want thy love.'