For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes Bal. It doth so, holy sir; and there's my master One that you love. have escaped the hand of any painter less attentive to it not be frightened out of the melancholy, to than Shakspeare. What happens to a person while he willingly resign ourselves, by too painful discords. Why I Watch. [Within.] Lead, boy:-Which way? | La. Cap. O, me! this sight of death is as a bell, Jul. Yea, noise ?-then I'll be brief.---O, happy That warns my old age to a sepulchre. dagger! [Snatching RoMEO's Dagger, This is thy sheath [Stabs herself :] there rust, and let me die. [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. Enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR. 2 Watch. Here's Romeo's man, we found him in the churchyard. 1 Watch. Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither. Enter another Watchman, with FRIAR LAURENCE. We took this mattock and this spade from him, abroad? Enter MONTAGUE and others. Mon. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night;3 Prince. Look, and thou shalt see. Mon. O, thou untaught! what manners is in this, To press before thy father to a grave ?4 Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, 'Till we can clear these ambiguities, And know their spring, their head, their true descent; And lead you even to death: Mean time forbear, Fri. I am the greatest, able to do least, Prince. Then say at once what thou dost know in this. Fri. I will be brief," for my short date of breath La. Cap. The people in the street cry-Romeo, ears? 1 Watch. Sovereign, here lies the county Paris slain; And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before, Prince. Search, seek, and know how this murder comes. 1 Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter'd meo's man; With instruments upon them, fit to open foul Cap. O, Heavens !-O, wife! look how our This dagger hath mista'en,-for lo! his house should we heap still more upon accident, that is already "Shake the yoke of inauspicious stars He holds his beloved in his arms, and, dying, cheers 1 Thus the quarto of 1599. That of 1597 reads: Oh, happy dagger! thou shalt end my fear, 2 The words, 'for lo! his house is empty on the back of Montague,' are to be considered parenthetical. It appears that the dagger was anciently worn behind the back. So in Humor's Ordinarie : See you yon huge bum dagger at his back? But, when I came (some minute ere the time Thou must wear thy sword by thy side, 'And young Benvolio is deceased too." 4 So in the Tragedy of Darius, 1603: Ah me! malicious fates have done me wrong. Who came first to the world, should first depart. It not becomes the old t' o'er-live the young; This dealing is preposterous and over-thwart.' 5 It is to be lamented that the poet did not conclude the dialogue with the action, and avoid a narrative o. events which the audience already knew.'-Johnson. Shakspeare was led into this uninteresting narrative by following too closely The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet. In this poem, (which is printed in the Variorum Editions of Shakspeare) the bodies of the dead are removed to a public scaffold; and from that elevation is the Friar's narrative delivered. The same circumstance is introduced in Hamet near the con clusion. |