Jesu Maria! what a deal of brine

Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
How much salt water thrown away in waste,
To season love, that of it doth not taste!
The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,
Thy old
groans ring yet in my ancient ears;
Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
Of an old tear that is not wash'd off yet:
If e'er thou wast thyself, and these woes thine,
Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline;
And art thou chang'd? pronounce this sentence
then-

Women may fall, when there's no strength in men.

ROM. Thou chidd'st me oft for loving Rosaline, FRI. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine. ROM. And bad'st me bury love.

FRI.

Not in a grave, To lay one in, another out to have.

ROM. I pray thee, chide not: she, whom I love

Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell.9
But come, young waverer, come go with me,
In one respect I'll thy assistant be;

For this alliance may so happy prove,

To turn your households' rancour to pure love.1

9

and could not spell.] Thus the quarto, 1597. The subsequent ancient copies all have

Thy love did read by rote that could not spell.

I mention these minute variations only to show, what I have so often urged, the very high value of first editions. MALONE.

The two following lines were added since the first

copy

of

this play. STEEVENS.

ROM. O, let us hence; I stand on sudden haste."
FRI. Wisely, and slow; They stumble, that run

fast.

[Exeunt.

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. Ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline,

Torments him so, that he will sure run mad.
BEN. Tybalt, the kinsman of old Capulet,
Hath sent a letter to his father's house.

MER. A challenge, on my life.

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! stabbed with a white wench's black eye; shot thorough the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his

2

I stand on sudden haste.] i, e. it is of the utmost consequence for me to be hasty. So, in King Richard III: 66 - it stands me much upon,

"To stop all hopes" &c.

STEEVens.

heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft; And is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

BEN. Why, what is Tybalt?

3

MER. More than prince of cats,* I can tell you.5 O, he is the courageous captain of compliments.

3

the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft;] So, in Love's Labour's Lost:

"Then she will get the upshot, by cleaving of the pin." See note on the word-pin, Vol. VII. p. 83. A butt-shaft was the kind of arrow used in shooting at butts. STEEVENS.

The allusion is to archery. The clout or white mark at which the arrows are directed, was fastened by a black pin placed in the center of it. To hit this was the highest ambition of every marksman. So, in No Wit like a Woman's, a comedy, by Middleton, 1657:

"They have shot two arrows without heads,

"They cannot stick i' the but yet: hold out, knight,
"And I'll cleave the black pin i' the midst of the white."

Again, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, 1590:

"For kings are clouts that every man shoots at,

"Our crown the pin that thousands seek to cleave."

MALONE.

"More than prince of cats,] Tybert, the name given to the cat, in the story-book of Reynard the Fox. WARburton. So, in Decker's Satiromastix, 1602:

66

66

tho' you were Tybert, the long-tail'd prince of

rats.'

Again, in Have with you to Saffron Walden, &c. 1598:
not Tibalt prince of cats," &c. STEEVENS.
It appears to me that these speeches are improperly divided,
and that they ought to run thus:

Ben. Why, what is Tybalt more than prince of cats?
Mer. O, he's the courageous captain of compliments, &c.
M. MASON,

I can tell you.] So the first quarto. omitted in all the subsequent ancient copies.

6

These words are MALONE.

courageous captain of compliments.] A complete

master of all the laws of ceremony, the principal man in the doctrine of punctilio:

"A man of compliments, whom right and wrong
"Have chose as umpire;"

8

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:1 Ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverso! the hay!2

says our author, of Don Armado, the Spaniard, in Love's Labour's Lost. JOHNSON.

"keeps time, distance, and proportion ;] So Ben Jonson's Bobadil:

8

"Note your distance, keep your due proportion of time." STEEVENS.

his minim rest,] A minim is a note of slow time in musick, equal to two crotchets. MALONE.

9

the very butcher of a silk button,] So, in The Return from Parnassus, 1606:

"Strikes his poinado at a button's breadth."

This phrase also occurs in the Fantaisies de Bruscambille, 1612, p. 181: 66 un coup de mousquet sans fourchette dans le sixiesme bouton-." STEEVENS.

'—a gentleman of the very first house,-of the first and second cause:] i. e. one who pretends to be at the head of his family, and quarrels by the book. See a note on As you like it, Act V. sc. vi. WARBURTON.

"A

" is

Tybalt cannot pretend to be at the head of his family, as both Capulet and Romeo barred his claim to that elevation. gentleman of the first house ;-of the first and second cause," a gentleman of the first rank, of the first eminence among these duellists; and one who understands the whole science of quarrelling, and will tell you of the first cause, and the second cause, for which a man is to fight.-The Clown, in As like it, you talks of the seventh cause in the same sense. STEEVENS.

We find the first of these expressions in Fletcher's Women Pleas'd:

66

a gentleman's gone then;

"A gentleman of the first house; there's the end of't."

MALONE.

the hay!] All the terms of the modern fencing-school were originally Italian; the rapier, or small thrusting sword, being first used in Italy. The hay is the word hai, you have it,

BEN. The what?

MER. The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes ;3 these new tuners of accents!-By Jesu, a very good blade!—a very tall man!—a very good whore! Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardonnez-moy's,5 who stand so much on the new

used when a thrust reaches the antagonist, from which our fencers, on the same occasion, without knowing, I suppose, any reason for it, cry out, ha! Joнnson.

affecting fantasticoes;] Thus the oldest copy, and rightly, Modern editors, with the folios, &c. read-phantasies. Nash, in his Have with you to Saffron Walden, 1596, says "Follow some of these new-fangled Galiardo's and Signor Fantastico's," &c. Again, in Decker's comedy of Old Fortunatus, 1600:-"I have danc'd with queens, dallied with ladies, worn strange attires, seen fantasticoes, convers'd with humorists," &c. STEEVENS.

Fantasticoes is the reading of the first quarto, 1597; all the subsequent ancient copies read arbitrarily and corruptly-phantacies. MALlone.

4

Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire,] Humorously apostrophising his ancestors, whose sober times were unacquainted with the fopperies here complained of.

WARBURTON.

5these pardonnez-moy's,] Pardonnez-moi became the language of doubt or hesitation among men of the sword, when the point of honour was grown so delicate, that no other mode of contradiction would be endured. JOHNSON.

The old copies have-these pardon-mees, not, these pardonnez-mois. Theobald first substituted the French word, without any necessity. MALONE.

If the French phrase be not substituted for the English one, where lies the ridicule designed by Mercutio?" Their bons, their bons," immediately following, shows that Gallick phraseology was in our poet's view. So, in King Richard II: "Speak it in French, king; say, pardonnez-moy."

STEEVENS,