OBSERVATIONS. THIS play is one of the most pleasing of our author's performances. The scenes are busy and various, the incidents numerous and important, the catastrophe irresistibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires. Here is one of the few attempts of Shakspeare to exhibit the conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of juvenile elegance. Mr. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakspeare, that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him. Yet he thinks him no such formidable person, but that he might have lived through the play, and died in his bed, without danger to the poet. Dryden well knew, had he been in quest of truth, in a pointed sentence, that more regard is commonly had to the words than the thought, and that it is very seldom to be rigorously understood. Mercutio's wit, gaiety, and courage, will always procure him friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated, he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the plays nor do I doubt the ability of Shakspeare to have continued his existence, though some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime. The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author delighted; he has, with great subtilty of distinction, drawn her at once loquacious and secret, obsequious and insolent, trusty and dishonest. His comic scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetic strains are always polluted with some unexpected depravation. His persons, however distressed, have a conceit left them in their misery, a miserable conceit. JOHNSON. PROLOGUE. TWO households, both alike in dignity, Do, with their death, bury their parents' strife. The story on which this play is founded, is related as a true one in Gitolamo de la Corte's History of Verona. It was originally published by an anonymous Italian novelist in 1549 at Venice; and again in 1553, at the same place. The first edition of Bandello's work appeared a year later than the last of these already mentioned. Pierre Boisteau copied it with alterations and additions. Belleforest adopted it in the first volume of his collection 1596: but very probably some edition of it yet more ancient had found its way abroad; as, in this improved state it was translated into En glish, by Arthur Brooke, and published in an octavo volume, 1562, but without a name. On this occasion it appears in the form of a poem entitled, The tragicall Historie of Romeus and Juliet: It was republished in 1587, un der the same title: "Contayning in it a rare Example of true Constancia: with the subtill Counsels and Practises of an old Fryer, and their Event.' Captain Breval in his Travels tells us, that he saw at Verona the tomb of these unhappy lovers. STEEVENS. ESCALUS, prince of Verona. PARIS, a young nobleman, kinsman to the prince. An old Man, uncle to Capulet. MERCUTIO, kinsman to the prince, and friend to BENVOLIO, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo. Friar LAURENCE, a Franciscan. Chorus. Boy; Page to Paris; PETER; an Officer. Lady MONTAGUE, wife to Montague. Lady CAPULET, wife to Capulet. JULIET, daughter to Capulet. Nurse to Juliet. Citizens of Verona; several Men and Women, Relations to both houses; Maskers, Guards, Watchmen, and Attendants. SCENE during the greater part of the play, in Verona: once in the fifth act at Mantua. |