8 O, now I would they had chang'd voices too! our woes. Nurse. Madam! Jul. Nurse? Enter Nurse. Nurse. Your lady mother's coming to your cham ber: The day is broke; be wary, look about. [Exit Nurse. Jul. Then, window, let day in, and let life out. Rom. Farewell, farewell! one kiss, and I'll de scend. [ROMEO descends. lord! my Jul. Art thou gone so? my love! my friend! was the occasion of a common saying that the toad and the lark had changed eyes. This tradition was expressed in a rustic rhyme : To heav'n I'd fly, But that the toad beguil'd me of mine eye.' The sense of the passage is, the lark, they say, has changed eyes with the toad, and now I would they had changed voices too, since the lark's song serves but to separate us. The croak of the toad would have been no indication of the appearance of day, and consequently no signal for her lover's departure. 8 The hunt's up was originally a tune played to wake sportsmen, and call them together. It was a common burthen of hunting ballads. Puttenham says that one Gray grew into good estimation with the Duke of Somerset for making certain merry ballads, whereof one chiefly was the hunte is up, the hunte is up. One of these ballads is given by Mr. Douce in his Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 192. According to Cotgrave the Reveille, or morning song to a new married woman, was called the hunt's up. So Drayton, in his Polyolbion : But hunt's up to the morn, the feather'd sylvans sing.' And in his third Eclogue Time plays the hunt's up to thy sleepy head.' I must hear from thee every day i'the hour, Rom. Farewell! I will omit no opportunity Jul. O, think'st thou, we shall ever meet again? Rom. I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve For sweet discourses in our time to come. Jul. O God! I have an ill-divining soul 10: Methinks, I see thee, now thou art below, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb: Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale. Rom. And trust me, love, in my eye so do you: Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu! adieu! [Exit ROMEO. Jul. O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle : If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him That is renown'd for faith? Be fickle, fortune; For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long, But send him back. La. Cap. [Within.] Ho, daughter! are you up? Jul. Who is't that calls? is it my lady mother? Is she not down so late, or up so early? What unaccustom'd cause procures 11 her hither? 9 'Illa ego, quæ fueram te decedente puella, Protinus ut redeas, facta videbor anus.' Ovid. Epist. 1. 10 This miserable prescience of futurity I have always regarded as a circumstance peculiarly beautiful. The same kind of warning from the mind, Romeo seems to have been conscious of on his going to the entertainment at the house of Capulet:My mind misgives me, Some consequence yet hanging in the stars, Shall bitterly begin his fearful date From this night's revels.' 11 Procures for brings. Steevens. Enter LADY CAPULET. La. Cap. Why, how now, Juliet? Jul. Madam, I am not well. La. Cap. Evermore weeping for your cousin's death? What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears? But much of grief shows still some want of wit. Which you weep for. Jul. Feeling so the loss, I cannot choose but ever weep the friend. La. Cap. Well, girl, thou weep'st not so much for his death, As that the villain lives which slaughter'd him. Jul. What villain, madam? La. Cap. That same villain, Romeo. Jul. Villain and he are many miles asunder. God pardon him! I do with all my heart; And yet no man, like he, doth grieve my heart. La. Cap.That is, because the traitor murderer lives. Jul. Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands. 12 'Would, none but I might venge my cousin's death! La. Cap. We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not: Then weep no more. I'll send to one in Mantua,Where that same banish'd runagate doth live, 12 Juliet's equivocations are rather too artful for a mind disturbed by the loss of a new lover.'-Johnson. VOL. X. L That shall bestow on him so sure a draught 13, Jul. Indeed, I never shall be satisfied With Romeo, till I behold him-deadheart so for a kinsman vex'd: Is my poor La. Cap. Find thou the means, and I'll find such a man. But now I'll tell thee joyful tidings, girl. Jul. And joy comes well in such a needful time: What are they, I beseech your ladyship? La. Cap. Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child; One, who, to put thee from thy heaviness, That thou expect'st not, nor I look'd not for. 14 Jul. Madam, in happy time 14, what day is that? La. Cap. Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn, The gallant, young, and noble gentleman, 13 Thus the first quarto. The subsequent quartos and the folio less intelligibly read : 'Shall give him such an unaccustom'd dram.' 14 A la bonne heure. This phrase was interjected when the hearer was not so well pleased as the speaker.-Johnson. Bishop Lowth uses it in his Letter to Warburton, p. 101:-' And may I not hope then for the honour of your lordship's animadversions? In good time: when the candid examiner understands Latin a little better; and when your lordship has a competent knowledge of Hebrew.' The county 15 Paris, at Saint Peter's church, And see how he will take it at your hands. Enter CAPULET and Nurse. Cap. When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew 16; But for the sunset of my brother's son, It rains downright. ་ 15 County, or countie, was the usual term for an earl in Shakspeare's time. Paris is in this play first styled a young earle. So Baret, a countie or an earle, comes un comte,' and a countie or earldome, comitatus.' Fairfax very frequently uses the word. See vol. i. p. 319, note 25; vol. iii. p. 291, note 3. 16 Thus the quarto 1597. The quarto 1599, and the folio, read the earth doth drizzle dew,' which is philosophically true; and so perhaps the poet wrote, for in The Rape of Lucrece he says: 'But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set.' Malone. Steevens adds:- When our author, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, says, "And when she [i. e. the moon] weeps, weeps every little flower," he only means that every little flower is moistened with dew, as if with tears; and not that the flower itself drizzles dew. This passage sufficiently explains how the earth, in the quotation from The Rape of Lucrece, may be said to weep.' That Shakspeare thought it was the air, and not the earth, that drizzled dew, is evident from many passages in his works. So in King John: 'Before the dew of evening fall.' |