Page images
PDF
EPUB

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh.--Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!8-
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
Here's to my love!-[drinks] O, true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick.--Thus with a kiss I die. [Dies.
Enter, at the other End of the Churchyard, Friar Lau-
RENCE, with a Lantern, Crow, and Spade.

Fri. Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night Have my old feet stumbled at graves?1-Who's there?

"That he were lost, or taken prisoner,

"I could hold truce with sorrow."

To set up one's rest, is to be determined to any certain purpose, to rest in perfect confidence and resolution, to make up one's mind. Again, in the same play:

8

"Set up thy rest; her marriest thou, or none." Steevens. Eyes, look your last!

Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss

A dateless bargain to engrossing death!] So, in Daniel's Com plaint of Rosamond, 1594:

"Pitiful mouth, said he, that living gavest

"The sweetest comfort that my soul could wish,
"O, be it lawful now, that dead, thou havest
"The sorrowing farewell of a dying kiss!
"And you, fair eyes, containers of my bliss,
"Motives of love, born to be matched never,

"Entomb'd in your sweet circles, sleep for ever!"

I think there can be little doubt, from the foregoing lines and the other passages already quoted from this poem, that our author had read it recently before he wrote the last Act of the present tragedy.

A dateless bargain to engrossing death!] Engrossing seems to be used here in its clerical sense. Malone.

9 Come bitter conduct,] Marston also in his Satires, 1599, uses conduct for conductor:

"Be thou my conduct and my genius."

So, in a former scene in this play:

"And fire-ey'd fury be my conduct now." Malone.

1 how oft to-night

Have my old feet stumbled at graves?] This accident was reckoned ominous. So, in King Henry VI, P. III:

Who is it that consorts, so late, the dead?2

Bal. Here's one, a friend, and one that knows you well. Fri. Bliss be upon you! Tell me, good my friend, What torch is yond', that vainly lends his light

To grubs and eyeless sculls? as I discern,

It burneth in the Capels' monument.

Bal. It doth so, holy sir; and there's my master, One that you love.

Fri.

Bal.

Who is it?

Fri. How long hath he been there?

Bal.

Fri. Go with me to the vault.
Bal.

Romeo.

Full half an hour.

I dare not, sir:

My master knows not, but I am gone hence;

And fearfully did menace me with death,

If I did stay to look on his intents.

Fri. Stay then, I'll go alone :-Fear comes upon me; O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing.

Bal. As I did sleep under this yew-tree here,

I dreamt my master and another fought,3

"For many men that stumble at the threshold,
"Are well foretold, that danger lurks within."

Again, in King Richard III, Hastings, going to execution, says: "Three times to-day my foot-cloth horse did stumble.”

Steevens.

2 Who is it &c.] This very appropriate question I have restored from the quarto 1597. To consort, is to keep company with. So, in Chapman's version of the 23d Iliad:

66

'Tis the last of all care I shall take, "While I consort the careful." Steevens.

3 I dreamt my master and another fought,] This is one of the touches of nature that would have escaped the hand of any painter less attentive to it than Shakspeare. What happens to a person while he is under the manifest influence of fear, will seem to him, when he is recovered from it, like a dream. Homer, Book 8th, represents Rhesus dying fast asleep, and as it were beholding his enemy in a dream plunging a sword into his bosom. Eustathius and Dacier both applaud this image as very natural; for a man in such a condition, says Mr. Pope, awakes no further than to see confusedly what environs him, and to think it not a reality, but a vision.

Let me add, that this passage appears to have been imitated By Quintus Calaber, XIII, 125:

[ocr errors]

σε Πότμον όμως ορόωντες ὄνειρασιν.” Stevens.

Romeo? [Advances.

And that my master slew him.

Fri.
Alack, alack, what blood is this, which stains
The stony entrance of this sepulchre ?—
What mean these masterless and gory swords
To lie discolour'd by this place of peace?

[Enters the Monument.
Romeo! O, pale!-Who else? what, Paris too?
And steep'd in blood?-Ah, what an unkind hour
Is guilty of this lamentable chance!-
The lady stirs.4

[JUL. wakes and stirs. Jul. O, comfortable friar! where is my lord? I do remember well where I should be,

And there I am:-Where is my Romeo? [Noise within. Fri. I hear some noise.-Lady, come from that nest Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep;5

A greater Power than we can contradict

Hath thwarted our intents; come, come away:
Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead ;

4 The lady stirs.] In the alteration of this play now exhibited on the stage, Mr. Garrick appears to have been indebted to Otway, who, perhaps without any knowledge of the story as told by Da Porto and Bandello, does not permit his hero to die before his wife awakes:

"Mar. Fun. She breathes, and stirs.

"Lav. [in the tomb] Where am I? bless me! Heaven!

"Tis very cold, and yet here 's something warm. "Mar. Fun. She lives, and we shall both be made immortal.. "Speak, my Lavinia, speak some heavenly news, "And tell me how the gods design to treat us.

"Lav. O, I have slept a long ten thousand years.

[ocr errors]

"What have they done with me? I'll not be us'd thus :
"I'll not wed Sylla; Marius is my husband." Malone.

5 and unnatural sleep;] Shakspeare alludes to the sleep of Juliet, which was unnatural, being brought on by drugs. Steevens.

6 Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead;] Shakspeare has been arraigned for departing from the Italian novel, in making Romeo die before Juliet awakes from her trance; and thus losing a happy opportunity of introducing an affecting scene between these unfortunate lovers. But he undoubtedly had never read the Ita lian novel, or any literal translation of it, and was misled by the poem of Romeus and Juliet, the author of which departed from the Italian story, making the poison take effect on Romeo before Juliet awakes. See a translation of the original pathetick narrative at the conclusion of the play, in a note on the poem near the end. Malone.

And Paris too; come, I 'll dispose of thee
Among a sisterhood of holy nuns:

Stay not to question, for the watch is coming;7

Come, go, good Juliet,-[Noise again] I dare stay no longer.

[Exit. Jul. Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.What's here? a cup, clos'd in my true love's hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end :—

O churl! drink all; and leave no friendly drop,
To help me after?—I will kiss thy lips;
Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make me die with a restorative.
Thy lips are warm!

[Kisses him.

I Watch. [within] Lead, boy:-Which way? Jul. Yea, noise?-then I'll be brief.-O happy dag[Snatching ROMEO's dagger.

ger!

7 Stay not to question, for the watch is coming;] It has been ob jected that there is no such establishment in any of the cities of Italy. Shakspeare seldom scrupled to give the manners and usages of his own country to others. In this particular instance the old poem was his guide:

Again:

"The weary watch discharg'd did hie them home to sleep."

"The watchmen of the town the whilst are passed by,
"And through the gates the candlelight within the tomb
they spy." Malone.

In Much Ado about Nothing, where the scene lies at Messina, our author has also introduced Watchmen; though without suggéstion from any dull poem like that referred to on the present occasion.

See, however, Othello, Act I, sc. i, Vol. XVI, in which Mr. Malone appears to contradict, on the strongest evidence, the present assertion relating to there being no watch in Italy. Steevens.

O churl! drink all; and leave no friendly drop,] The text is here made out from the quarto of 1597 and that of 1599. The first has

Ah churl! drink all, and leave no drop for me!
The other:

O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop,
To help me after? Malone.

9 Snatching Romeo's dagger.] So, in Painter's translation of Pierre Boisteau, Tom. II, p. 244: " Drawing out the dagger which Romeo ware by his side, she pricked herself with many blowes against the heart." Steevens.

It is clear that in this and most other places Shakspeare followed the poem, and not Painter, for Painter describes Romeo's

This is thy sheath; [stabs herself] there rust, and let me die.1 [Falls on ROMEO's Body, and dies.

Enter Watch, with the Page of PARIS.

Page. This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn.

1 Watch. The ground is bloody; Search about the

churchyard:

Go, some of you, who e'er you find, attach. [Exeunt some.
Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain;—
And Juliet bleeding; warm, and newly dead,
Who here hath lain these two days buried.-
Go, tell the prince-run to the Capulets,-
Raise up the Montagues,-some others search;2-

[Exeunt other Watchmen.
We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;
But the true ground of all these piteous woes,
We cannot without circumstance descry.

Enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR.

2 Watch. Here 's Romeo's man, we found him in the churchyard.

dagger as hanging at his side; whereas the poem is silent as to the place where it hung, and our author, governed by the fashion of his own time, supposes it to have hung at Romeo's back:

1

"And then past deadly fear (for life ne had she care,)

"With hasty hand she did draw out the dagger that he ware." Malone.

there rust, and let me die.] is the reading of the quarto 1599. That of 1597 gives the passage thus:

"I, noise? then must I be resolute.

"Oh, happy dagger! thou shalt end my fear;

"Rest in my boson: thus I come to thee."

The alteration was probably made by the poet, when he introduced the words,

"This is thy sheath." Steevens.

2 Raise up the Montagues, some others search;-] Here seems to be a rhyme intended, which may be easily restored:

"Raise up the Montagues. Some others, go.

"We see the ground whereon these woes do lie,
"But the true ground of all this piteous woe

"We cannot without circumstance descry." Johnson. It was often thought sufficient, in the time of Shakspeare, for the second and fourth lines in a stanza, to rhyme with each other. It were to be wished that an apology as sufficient could be offered for this Watchman's quibble between ground, the earth, and ground, the fundamental cause. Steevens.

« PreviousContinue »