BY

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.

THE FIRST QUARTO,

1597,

A FACSIMILE

(FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM COPY, C 34, k 55)

BY

CHARLES PRAETORIUS.

WITH INTRODUCTION

BY

HERBERT A. EVANS, M.A.,

BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD.

LONDON:

PRODUCED BY C. PRAETORIUS, 14, CLAREVILLE GROVE,

HEREFORD SQUARE, S.W.

CONTENTS OF INTRODUCTION.

§ 3. QI an imperfect version of the Play as printed in Q2

§ 4. The 'copy' derived from the notes of a short-hand reporter

980901

INTRODUCTION.

§ 1. THERE is no record of ROMEO AND JULIET earlier than the edition of which the present volume is a facsimile. The Stationers' Registers, to which we are accustomed to turn for information, and in which "The Tragedye of Richard the Second" is entered under the year 1597, contain no notice of Romeo and Juliet earlier than 1607, and there is no mention of the play by contemporary writers earlier than 1598, the year succeeding that in which the present edition was printed. It is then mentioned by Francis Meres as one of the tragedies for which "Shakespeare among ye English is the most excellent," and is also alluded to by John Marston in his Scourge of Villanie as follows

"Lufcus, what's playd to day? faith now I know

I fet thy lips abroach, from whence doth flow
Naught but pure Iuliat and Romio.

Say, who acts beft? Drufus or Rofcio?
Now I have him, that nere of ought did fpeake

But when of playes or Plaiers he did treate.

H'ath made a common-place booke out of plaies,
And fpeakes in print: at least what ere he fayes
Is warranted by Curtaine plaudeties.

If ere you heard him courting Lesbias eyes;

Say (Curteous fir) fpeakes he not movingly,

From out some new pathetique Tragedy?"-Satyre 10."

Moreover, if, as is most likely, it was Romeo's passionate description of Juliet's eyes, Act II. sc. ii.,3 which furnished Luscus with his appeal to the eyes of his mistress, and if we may interpret the curtaine plaudeties' as glancing at the applause which greeted that and other striking passages in this 'new pathetique Tragedy' when first produced upon the stage, we learn from Marston that it was at the Curtain that Romeo and Juliet was, to quote our title-page,

The Epigram by John Weever (Ingleby and Smith, Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, p. 16), published 1599, cannot be proved to have been composed so early as 1595, to which year it has been commonly assigned. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, ed. 5, p. 514.

2 Centurie, p. 27.

3 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, p. 326.