It any of my kinsmen find thee here. ROM. With love's light wings did I o'er-perch For stony limits cannot hold love out : JUL. If they do see thee, they will murder thee. ROM. Alack! there lies more peril in thine eye, Than twenty of their swords; look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity. JUL. I would not for the world they saw thee here. ROM. I have night's cloak to hide me from their eyes, And, but thou love me, let them find me here: JUL. By whose direction found'st thou out this place? ROM. By love, that first did prompt me to inquire; He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes. As that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea, JUL. Thou know'st the mask of night is cn my face, Else would a maiden blush bepaint my check, light: But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops,— JUL. O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, ; ROM. If my heart's dear lovcJUL. Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract to-night: It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden, Too like the lightning, which doth case to be, Ere one can say it lightens. Sweet, good night! This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest Come to thy heart, as that within my breast! ROM. O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? JUL. What satisfaction canst thou have to-night? ROM. The exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine. JUL. I gave it: thee mine before thou didst request And yet I would it were to give again. ROM. Would'st thou withdraw it? for what purpose, love? JUL. But to be frank, and give it thee again. And yet I wish but for the thing I have: My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite. [Nurse calls within. I hear some noise within; dear love, adieu! Anon, good nurse.-Sweet Montague, be true. Stay but a little, I will come again. [Exit. Roм. O blessed, blessed night! I am afcard, Being in night, all this is but a dream, Too flattering-sweet to be substantial. Re-enter JULIET, above. JUL. Hist! Romeo, hist!-O, for a falconer's voice, To lure this tassel-gentle (3) back again! ROM. It is my soul, that calls upon my name: How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears! a So the undated quarto; the first folio reads strife. b My Romeo's name.] So the quarto, 1597; that of 1599, and first folio, read only, "of my Romeo." My dear!] The quarto, 1597, has madam; that of 1599, and folio, 1623, have My neece, which, in the second folio, was altered to My sweet. Our reading is that of the undated quarto. d Parting is such sweet sorrow,-] In the folio, 1623, and some of the quartos, this speech is allotted to Romeo, and the first line of the next to Juliet. e My ghostly father's cell;] My ghostly father is, my spiritual father. f And flecked darkness-] Flecked, or, as the folio, 1623, spells it, feckled, means spotted, dappled, flaked. We meet with the same image in "Much Ado About Nothing," Act V. Sc. 3: "and look, the gentle day, Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about, g From forth day's path, and Titan's fiery wheels:] This is the reading of the first quarto, 1597: in the other editions, these Forgetting any other home but this. And yet, no farther than a wanton's bird ; ROM. I would, I were thy bird. Sweet, so would I : SCENE III.-Friar Laurence's Cell. Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light; (*) Quarto, 1599, and first folio, his. (†) Quarto, 1599, and first folio, silken. (1) First folio, friar's close cell. (§) First folio, burning. four lines, slightly varied in the concluding couplet, which runs thus, And darknesse fleckeld like a drunkard reeles, are also printed in the middle of Romeo's speech above. The editor, or printer, of the folio, 532, thought he was correcting the blunder by crossing the lines out of the friar's speech, and assigning them to Romeo. h The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb;] So Lucretius: "Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum." And our author, in "Pericles," has a parallel idea: "Time's the king of men, For he's their parent, and he is their grave." For nought so vile that on the earth doth live, Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. a By action dignified.] After these words the ancient copies, except the first quarto, which has no direction, have,-" Enter Romeo;" but it very frequently happens in old plays that the Enter ROMEO. ROM. Good morrow, father! Therefore thy earliness doth me assure, entrance of a character is marked some time before he really takes part in the scene. Such direction probably meaning that the actor is to be at hand, ready to enter when the cue is given. Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night. ROM. That last is true, the sweeter rest was mine. ROM. I'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me agen. I bear no hatred, blessed man; for, lo, FRI. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift; Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift. ROM. Then plainly know, my heart's dear love On the fair daughter of rich Capulet: FRI. Holy saint Francis! what a change is here! Women may fall, when there's no strength in men. Not in a grave, To lay one in, another out to have. ROM. I pray thee, chide not: she whom I love now, Doth grace for grace, and love for love allow; FRI. SCENE IV.A Street. Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO. MER. Where the devil should this Romeo be?— Came he not home to night? BEN. Not to his father's; I spoke with his man. MER. Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, Torments him so, that he will sure run mad. BEN. Romeo will answer it. MER. Any man, that can write, may answer a letter. BEN. Nay, he will answer the letter's master, how he dares, being dared. MER. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! stabb'd with a white wench's black eye; shot through the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft; and is he a man to encounter Tybalt? BEN. Why, what is Tybalt? MER. d More than prince of cats,(5) I can tell you. O, he's the courageous captain of complements: he fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me his minim rest,§ one, two,-and the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house,of the first and second cause: Ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverso! the hay!—(6) BEN. The what? a She whom I love now,-] So the earliest quarto, 1597. The other old copies, including the folio, 1623, read "I pray thee, chide me not, her I love now." b I stand on sudden haste.] It imports me much to be speedy. So in "Richard II." Act II. Sc. 3: "It stands your grace upon, to do him right." Again, in "Richard III." Act IV. Sc. 2: "It stands me much upon, To stop all hopes whose growth may danger me." MER. The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes; these new tuners of accent!-By † Jesu, a very good blade!-a very tall man!-a very good whore!-Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grand sire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardonnez-moys, who stand so much on the new form, that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? O, their bons, their bons! Enter ROMEO. BEN. Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo. MER. Without his roe, like a dried herring : (*) All but the first copy read phantacies. a Your French slop;] The slop is said to have been a sort of loose kneed breeches or trousers. b The slip, sir, the slip;] The equivoque here is well explained in the following passage from Greene's "Thieves falling out, True Men come by their Goods:"-"And therefore he went and O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!- now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura, to his lady, was a kitchen-wench;marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her: Dido, a dowdy; Cleopatra, a gipsy; Helen and Hero, bildings and harlots; Thisbé, a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose.-Signior Romeo, bon jour! there's a French salutation to your French slop; you gave us the counterfeit fairly last night. ROM. Good morrow to you both; what counterfeit did I give you? b MER. The slip, sir, the slip; can you not conceive? got him certain slips, which are counterfeit pieces of money, being brasse, and covered over with silver, which the common people call slips." Again, in Ben Jonson's "Magnetick Lady," Act III. Sc. 6: "I had like t' have been Abus'd i' the business, had the slip slur'd on me, A counterfeit." |