SCENE III. A Church Yard: in it a Monument belonging to the Capulets. Enter PARIS, and his Page, bearing Flowers and a Torch. Par. Give me thy torch, boy: Hence, and stand Yet put it out, for I would not be seen. [Retires. Par. Sweet flower, with flowers I strew thy bridal bed: Sweet tomb, that in thy circuit dost contain Fair Juliet, that with angels dost remain1, That living honour'd thee, and, being dead, With funeral praises do adorn thy tomb! 1 The folio has these lines: [The Boy whistles. 'Sweet flow'r, with flow'rs thy bridal bed I strew; Or, wanting that, with tears distill'd by moans: Nightly shall be, to strew thy grave and weep.' In the text the seven lines are printed as they appear in the quarto of 1597. The boy gives warning, something doth approach. [Retires. Enter ROMEO and BALTHASAR, with a Torch, Mattock, &c. Rom. Give me that mattock, and the wrenching iron. Hold, take this letter; early in the morning But, chiefly, to take thence from her dead finger In dear3 employment: therefore hence, be gone:- And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs : More fierce, and more inexorable far, Than empty tigers, or the roaring sea. 2 Thus in Drayton's Polyolbion: 'But suddenly the clouds which on the winds do fly The word was not deemed unpoetical by Milton; the Elder Unmuffle, ye faint stars,' &c. A muffler was a part of female dress, described in vol. i. p. 261. 3 That is, in action of importance. The sense of the word dear has been explained in vol. i. p. 382. So Ben Jonson, in Catiline, Act i.:- 'Put your known talents on so dear a business.' Bal. I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you. Rom. So shalt thou show me friendship.—Take thou that: Live, and be prosperous; and farewell, good fellow. [Breaking open the Door of the Monument. And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food! Par. This is that banish'd haughty Montague, That murder'd my love's cousin;-with which grief, It is supposed the fair creature died,— And here is come to do some villanous shame Stop thy unhallow'd toil, vile Montague; Rom. I must, indeed; and therefore came I hither. Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man; 4 Detestable was formerly accented on the first syllable, as in the present instance. So Spenser, Faerie Queene, b. i. can. i. st. 26: 'That détestable sight him much amaz'd.' Par. I do defy thy conjurations 5, And do attach thee as a felon here. Rom. Wilt thou provoke me? then have at thee, boy. [They fight. Page. Olord! they fight: I will go call the watch. [Exit Page. Par. O, I am slain! [Falls.]-If thou be merciful, Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. [Dies. Rom. In faith, I will:-Let me peruse this face; Mercutio's kinsman, noble county Paris: What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode? I think, He told me, Paris should have married Juliet: Said he not so? or did I dream it so? Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, To think it was so?-O, give me thy hand, One writ with me in sour misfortune's book! I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave, A grave? O, no; a lantern", slaughter'd youth, 5 I refuse to do as thou conjurest me to do, i. e. depart. So Constance, in King John, says : 'No, I defy all counsel, all redress.' 6 A lantern may not, in this instance, signify an enclosure for a lighted candle, but a louvre, or what in ancient records is styled lanternium, i. e. a spacious round or octagonal turret full of windows, by means of which cathedrals and sometimes halls are illuminated. See the beautiful lantern at Ely Minster. The same word, with the same sense, occurs in Churchyard's Siege of Edinbrough Castle:— This lofty seat and lantern of that land Like lodestarre stode, and lokte o'er ev'ry streete.' And in Holland's translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. b. xxxv. :— Hence came the louvers and lanternes reared over the roofes of temples.' A presence is a public room, which is at times the presencechamber of a sovereign. This thought, extravagant as it is, is borrowed by Middleton in his Blurt Master Constable : 'The darkest dungeon which spite can devise For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes [Laying PARIS in the Monument. How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry? which their keepers call A lightning before death: O, how may Ì7 Call this a lightning?-O, my love! my wife! Death that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty3: Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there.— Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favour can I do to thee, Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain, To sunder his that was thine enemy ? Forgive me, cousin!-Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe 7 The first quarto reads, ' But how,' &c. This idea very frequently occurs in our old dramas. So in the Second Part of The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601: 'I thought it was a lightning before death, Too sudden to be certain.' 8 So in Sidney's Arcadia, b. iii. :—' Death being able to divide the soule, but not the beauty from her body.' And in Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond, 1594 : Decayed roses of discoloured cheeks Do yet retain some notes of former grace, 'Death's pale flag,' in the subsequent line, has also its prototype in Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond, 1594 :— 'And nought respecting death (the last of paines) Plac'd his pale colours (th' ensign of his might) A passage in Marini's Rime Lugubri, 1604, p. 149, bears a very strong resemblance to this; but Daniel could not have borrowed it, as Malone suggests: VOL. X. 'Morte la'nsegna sua, pallida e bianca, |