But, as it seems, did violence on herself.
All this I know; and to the marriage
Her nurse is privy: and, if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrificed some hour before his time
Unto the rigour of severest law.

265

Prince. We still have known thee for a holy man.

Where's Romeo's man? what can he say in this?

270

Bal. I brought my master news of Juliet's death,

And then in post he came from Mantua
To this same place, to this same monument.
This letter he early bid me give his father,
And threaten'd me with death, going in the vault,

275

If I departed not and left him there.

Prince. Give me the letter; I will look on it.—

Where is the County's page, that raised the watch?—•
Sirrah, what made your master in this place?

Page. He came with flowers to strew his lady's grave; And bid me stand aloof, and so I did:

280

Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb;

And by and by my master drew on him;

And then I ran away to call the watch.

Prince. This letter doth make good the friar's words,

264-267. All this...time] Arranged

as by Pope. Three lines, ending privie: ...fault,...time, in QqFf.

265. Her nurse] the nurse Q.

and] om. Rowe. but Pope, &c. 267. his] Q. the The rest, Rowe, Theob. Warb. Johns. Knt. its Pope, Han.

269. a] an F, Rowe, &c.

270.

285

in this] (Q) Capell. to this

QqFf, Rowe, &c. Knt. Sta.

271. Bal.] Boy. Ff. Peter. Rowe, Pope.

273. place, to....monument.] place. To...monument Q2Q3Y

275. in] to Pope, &c.

272. in post] ULR. Sh. uses this phrase frequently and in different connections, in order to express the utmost haste, probably because in his time whatever of postal arrangements existed were used only in the weightiest and speediest affairs.

274. This letter, &c.] S. WALKER ('Vers.,' p. 67) cites this line as an instance of the frequent contraction into one syllable of certain classes of words, the greater part of them composed of two short syllables. This takes place chiefly when they are followed by a vowel, or when placed in monosyllabic places in the line.

275. letter he] ABBOTT (Sh.'n Grammar (ed. 3), 1870, p. 346). Er, el, and le final are dropped or softened, especially before vowels or silent h. The syllable er, as in letter, is easily interchangeable with re, as lettre. In Old English, 'bettre' is found for better.' Thus words frequently drop or soften er; and in like manner el and le, especially before a vowel or h in the next word.

Their course of love, the tidings of her death :
And here he writes that he did buy a poison

Of a poor 'pothecary, and therewithal

Came to this vault to die and lie with Juliet.—
Where be these enemies ?-Capulet!-Montague!

290

See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!
And I, for winking at your discords too,

Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.

Cap. O brother Montague, give me thy hand:
This is my daughter's jointure, for no more
Can I demand.

Mon.

But I can give thee more: For I will raise her statue in pure gold; That while Verona by that name is known There shall no figure at such rate be set As that of true and faithful Juliet.

297. [They shake hands.] Coll. (ed.

Knt. Sta. Cambr.

295

300

300. such] Q, that The rest, Rowe, &c. Knt.

301. true] fair Coll. (MS.) Ulr.

294. brace of kinsmen] MAL. Mercutio and Paris: Mercutio is expressly called the prince's kinsman in III, i, 105, and that Paris also was the prince's kinsman may be inferred from III, iv, 180, 'a gentleman of princely parentage,' and V, iii, 75. [Sing. Huds. Hal.

STEEV. The Sportsman's term-brace, which on the present occasion is seriously employed, is in general applied to men in contempt. Thus Prospero in The Tempest, addressing himself to Sebastian and Antonio, says: But, you, my brace of lords, were I so minded,' &c. [Hal.

294. all are punished] MOMMSEN. This contains the moral of the whole tragedy.

297. Can I demand] COLL. (ed. 2). We might infer that they shook hands, or embraced, but the (MS.) tells it to us in so many words, in order to make sure that this part of the business of the scene was not neglected by the actors.

295. O brother Montague] COLERIDGE (Lit. Rem., vol. ii, p. 158). How beautiful is the close! The spring and the winter meet;-winter assumes the character of spring, and spring the sadness of winter.

301. true and faithful] COLL. (Notes and Emend.'). The words 'true and faithful' are indisputably tautologous, and it is not unlikely that Sh. left the line as we read it with the change introduced by the (MS.). We can suppose 'true and faithful' a corruption introduced on the frequent repetition of this popular performance, although the alliteration of fair and faithful' may seem more impressive upon the memory.

COLL. (ed. 2). We do not run the risk of altering the words which the poet may

Cap. As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie;

Poor sacrifices of our enmity!

Prince. A glooming peace this morning with it brings;

The sun for sorrow will not show his head;

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd and some punished:

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

305

[Exeunt.

(ed. 2). gloaming Taylor conj. MS.*
307. parden'd] pardoned Qq.
309. [Exeunt.] Exeunt omnes. Ff.
om. Qq.

have used; at the same time the tautology of true and faithful' is evident, and the emendation of the (MS.) plausible. Even the alliteration in this line may possibly have recommended the words to Sh.

304. glooming] STEEV. To gloom is an ancient verb used by Spenser, and likewise in Tom Tyler and his Wife, 1661: If either he gaspeth or gloometh?' [Sing. Huds.

WHITE. 'Gloomie' of (Q,) should perhaps be followed, 'glooming' being possibly a misprint induced by morning' in the same line.

307. Some shall, &c.] STEEV. This line has reference to the novel from which the fable is taken. Here we read that Juliet's female attendant was banished for concealing the marriage; Romeo's servant set at liberty because he had only acted in obedience to his master's orders; the Apothecary taken, tortured, condemned, and hanged; while Friar Laurence was permitted to retire to a hermitage in the neighborhood of Verona, where he ended his life in penitence and tranquillity. [Sing. Huds. Sta. Clarke.

KNT. The government of the Scaligers, or Scalas, commenced in 1259, when Mastino de la Scala was elected Podestà of Verona; and it lasted 113 years in the legitimate descendants of the first Podestà. [Here follows a representation of the tomb of this illustrious family at Verona, from an original sketch.]

309. Than this, &c.] STEEV. Sh. has not effected the alteration of this play by introducing any new incidents, but merely by adding to the length of the scenes. The piece appears to have been always a very popular one. Marston, in his Satires, 1598, says:

MAL. These lines seem to have been formed on the concluding couplet of the poem of Romeus and Juliet:

*— among the monumentes that in Verona been,

There is no movement wore worthy of the sight,

Then is the tomde of Jv’et and Romens her knight' [Sing.

DR. JOHNSON. 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 Sh. to exhibit the conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of juvenile elegance. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Sh., 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 play; nor do I doubt the ability of Sh. 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 subtility 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 depravations. His persons, however distressed, have a conceit left them in their misery—a miserable conceit.

STEEVENS. This last quotation of Dr. Johnson's is also found in the Preface to Dryden's Fables: Just John Littlewit in Bartholomew Fair, who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a miserable conceit.'

SINGER. This last remark of Dr. Johnson's has been answered at length, and, as I think, satisfactorily, by A. W. Schlegel in a detailed criticism of this tragedy, published in the Horen, a journal conducted by Schiller in 1794-1795, and made accessible to the English reader in Ollier's Literary Miscellany, Part I. In his Lectures on Dramatic Literature (vol. ii, p. 135, Eng. trans.) will be found some further sensible remarks upon the 'conceits' here stigmatized. It should be remembered that playing on words was a very favorite species of wit combat with our ancestors. With children, as well as nations of the most simple manners, a great inclination to playing on words is often displayed [they cannot therefore be both puerile and unnatural. If the first charge is founded the second cannot be so]. In Homer we find several examples: the Books of Moses, the oldest written memorial of the primitive world, are, it is well known, full of them. On the other hand, poets of a very cultivated taste, or orators like Cicero, have delighted in them. Whoever in Richard the Second is disgusted with the affecting play of words of the dying John of Gaunt on his own name, let him remember that the same thing occurs in the Ajax of Sophocles.

COLERIDGE (Lit. Rem.' vol. ii, p. 77). The stage in Sh.'s time was a naked room with a blanket for a curtain; but he made it a field for monarchs. That law of unity which has its foundations, not in the factitious necessity of custom, but in nature itself, the unity of feeling, is everywhere and at all times observed by Sh. in his plays. Read Romeo and Juliet; all is youth and spring; youth with its follies, its virtues, its precipitancies; spring with its odours, its flowers, and its transiency; it is one and the same feeling that commences, goes through, and ends the play.

The old men, the Capulets and the Montagues, are not common old men; they have an eagerness, a heartiness, a vehemence, the effect of spring; with Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden marriage, and his rash death are all the effects of youth; whilst in Juliet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the nightingale, all that is voluptuous in the rose, with whatever is sweet in the freshness of spring; but it ends with a long, deep sigh like the last breeze of the Italian evening. This unity of feeling and character pervades every drama of Sh.

SCHLEGEL. Whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, is breathed into this poem. But even more rapidly than the earliest blossoms of youth and beauty decay, it hurries on from the first timidly-bold declaration of love and modest return to the most unlimited passion, to an irrevocable union: then, amidst alternating storms of rapture and despair, to the death of the two lovers, who still appear enviable as their love survives them, and as by their death they have obtained a triumph over every separating power. The sweetest and the bitterest, love and hatred, festivity and dark forebodings, tender embraces and sepulchres, the fulness of life and self-annihilation, are all here brought close to each other; and all these contrasts are so blended, in the harmonious and beautiful work, into a unity of impression that the echo which the whole leaves behind in the mind resembles a single but endless sigh.

HAZLITT. This description [of Schlegel's] is true, and yet it does not come up to our idea of the play. For if it has the sweetness of the rose, it has its freshness too; if it has the languor of the nightingale's song, it has also its giddy transport; if it has the softness of a southern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There is nothing of a sickly, sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in love but they are not love-sick. Everything speaks the very soul of pleasure, the high and healthy pulse of the passions: the heart beats and the blood circulates and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid interchange of sentiments lip-deep, learnt at second-hand from poems and plays-made up of beauties of the most shadowy kind, of fancies wan,' of evanescent smiles and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an artificial dearth of sense, spirit, truth, and nature! It is the reverse of all this. It is Sh. all over, and Sh. when he was young.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE. ('Essays,' &c., vol. ii, p. 198). There is something hasty and inconsiderate in these last scenes. Perhaps no human genius can grapple with such aggregated disaster. Words cannot express the horror of such judicial calamities which overswell the capacity of conscious grief, and must needs produce madness or stupefaction, or, likely enough, demoniac scorn and laughter. The reconciliation of the parents seems to me more moral than natural. I doubt if real hatred is ever cured. As for the golden statues, they are not so good a monument as the sweetoriars growing from the common grave of hapless lovers in so many old ballads. Garrick has certainly deepened and humanized the pathos by making Juliet awake before Romeo dies, which I believe is according to the original story.

CHAMBERS. Byron, in one of his letters to Moore, says: Of the truth of Juliet's story they (the Veronese) seem tenacious to a degree,—insisting on the fact, giving a date (1303), and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appro priate to the legend, being blighted as their love.