Serv. Up

Rom. Whither?

Serv. To our house: to supper.

Rom. Whose house?

Serv. My master's.

Rom. Indeed, I should have ask'd you that before. Serv. Now I'll tell you without asking: My master is the great rich Capulet; and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray, come and crush a cup of wine. Rest you merry. [Exit. Ben. At this same ancient feast of Capulet's Sups the fair Rosaline, whom thou so lov'st, With all the admired beauties of Verona: Go thither; and, with unattainted eye, Compare her face with some that I shall show, And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

Rom. When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires! And these, who, often drown'd, could never die,Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!

One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun
Ne'er saw her match, since first the world begun.
Ben. Tut! you saw her fair, none else being by,
Herself pois'd with herself in either eye:
But, in that crystal scales, let there be weigh'd
Your lady's love 10 against some other maid
That I will show you, shining at this feast,

And she shall scant show well, that now shows best.

8 This expression often eccurs in old plays. We have une still in use of similar import: "To crack a bottle."

So in all the old copies. Rowe changed that to those, and is followed in modern editions, except Knight's. Scales is here used in the singular number; that's all.

H.

10 Heath says, "Your lady's love is the love you bear to your lady, which, in our language, is commonly used for the lady herself." Perhaps we should read, "Your lady-love."

Rom. I'll go along, no such sight to be shown, But to rejoice in splendour of mine own. [Exeunt

SCENE III. A Room in CAPULET'S House

Enter Lady CAPULET and the Nurse.

Lady C. Nurse, where's my daughter? call her forth to me.

Nurse. Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year

old,

I bade her come.

- where's this girl ?— what, Juliet !

Enter JULIET.

Jul. How now! who calls?

Nurse. Your mother.

Jul. Madam, I am here: What is your will? Lady C. This is the matter.- Nurse, give leave

awhile;

We must talk in secret.

Nurse, come back again :

I have remember'd me, thou shalt hear our counsel. Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.

Nurse. 'Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour. Lady C. She's not fourteen.

Nurse.

I'll lay fourteen of my teeth, And yet, to my teen' be it spoken, I have but four,

1

Teen is an old word for sorrow, and is here used as a sort of play upon four and fourteen. In the old copies the speeches of the Nurse in this scene are printed as prose. Capell has the great merit of arranging them into verse.—“The character of the Nurse," says Coleridge, "is the nearest of any thing in Shakespeare to a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class, just as in describing one larch tree you generalise a grove of them, so it is nearly as much so in old age The generalisation is done to the Poet's hand. Here you have

She is not fourteen.

To Lammas-tide ?
Lady C.

How long is it now

A fortnight, and odd days. Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year, Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.

Susan and she

Were of an age.

God rest all Christian souls!

Well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me. But, as I said, On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen ; That shall she, marry: I remember it well. "Tis since the earthquake now eleven years; And she was wean'd, I never shall forget it, Of all the days of the year, upon that day; For I had then laid wormwood to my dug, Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall: My lord and you were then at Mantua. Nay, I do bear a brain: 2-but, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug! Shake, quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow To bid me trudge.

And since that time it is eleven years;

For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,
She could have run and waddled all about;
For, even the day before, she broke her brow:

the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's affections gives her privileges and rank in the household. And observe the mode of connection by accident of time and place, and the childlike fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy, humble ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her superiors."

H.

2 The nurse means to boast of her retentive faculty. To bear a brain was to possess much mental capacity. Thus in Marston's Dutch Courtezan: " My silly husband, alas knows nothing of it;

'tis I that must heare a braine for all."

And then my husband- God be with his soul!

'A was a merry man

-took up the child:

Yea," quoth he, "dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward, when thou hast more wit. Wilt thou not, Jule ?" and, by my holy-dam, The pretty wretch left crying, and said, “Ay.” To see, now, how a jest shall come about! I warrant, an I should live a thousand years, I never should forget it: "Wilt thou not, Jule?" quoth he;

And, pretty fool, it stinted,3 and said, “Ay.”

Lady C. Enough of this: I pray thee, hold thy

peace.

Nurse. Yes, madam: Yet I cannot choose but laugh,

To think it should leave crying, and say, "Ay:"
And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow

A bump as big as a young cockrel's stone,
A perilous knock; and it cried bitterly.

66

"Yea," quoth my husband, "fall'st upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward, when thou com'st to age; Wilt thou not, Jule?" it stinted, and said, Ay." Jul. And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say 1. Nurse. Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace!

Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nurs❜d:
An I might live to see thee married once,

I have my wish.

Lady C. Marry, that marry is the very theme I came to talk of.-Tell me, daughter Juliet, How stands your disposition to be married?

3 To stint is to stop. Baret translates " Lachrymas suppri mere, to stinte weeping;" and "to stinte talke," by "sermones restinguere." So Ben Jonson in Cynthia's Revels: "Stint thy babi-ling tongue, fond Echo."

Jul. It is an honour that I dream not of.

Nurse. An honour! were not I thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat. Lady C. Well, think of marriage now; younger than you,

Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,

Are made already mothers: by my count,
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid. Thus, then, in brief:
The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.

Nurse. A man, young lady! lady, such a man,
As all the world- Why, he's a man of wax.1
Lady C. Verona's summer hath not such a flower.
Nurse. Nay, he's a flower; in faith, a very flower.
Lady C. What say you? can you love the gen-
tleman ?

This night you shall behold him at our feast:
Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every married lineament,

5

And see how one another lends content;

And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies,
Find written in the margin of his eyes.

4 That is, as well made as if he had been modelled in wax. So in Wily Beguiled: "Why, he is a man as one should picture him in wax." So Horace uses Cerea brachia," waxen arms, for

arms wel. shaped.

5 Thus the quarto of 1599. The quarto of 1609 and the folio read, "every several lineament." We have, "The unity and married calm of states," in Troilus and Cressida. And in his eighth Sonnet:

"If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,

By unions married, do offend thine ear."

6 The comments on ancient books were generally printed in the margin. Horatio says, in Hamlet, "I knew you must be odified by the margent." So in the Rape of Lucrece:

"But she that never cop'd with stranger eyes
Could vick no meaning from their parling looks,