Hood my unmann'd blood' bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown

bold,2

Think true love acted, simple modesty.

Come, night!-Come, Romeo! come, thou day in night!

For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.

1

unmann'd blood-] Blood yet unacquainted with man. JOHNSON.

Hood my unmann'd blood bating in my cheeks,] These are terms of falconry. An unmanned hawk is one that is not brought to endure company. Bating, (not baiting, as it has hitherto been printed,) is fluttering with the wings as striving to fly away. So, in Ben Jonson's Sad Shepherd:

"A hawk yet half so haggard and unmann'd.”

Again, in an old ballad intitled, Prettie Comparisons wittily Grounded, &c:

"Or like a hawk that's never man'd,

"Or like a hide before 'tis tan'd."

Again, in The Booke of Hawkyng, &c. bl. 1. no date: "It is called bating, for she bateth with herselfe most often causelesse." STEEVENS.

See Vol. IX. p. 135, n. 2. To hood a hawk, that is, to cover its head with a hood, was an usual practice, before the bird was suffered to fly at its quarry. MALONE.

If the hawk flew with the object of its pursuit? the bird was dismissed.

2

grown bold,] This is Mr. Rowe's emendation. The old copies for grown have grow. MALONE.

• Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.] The quarto, 1599, and the folio-upon. The line is not in the first quarto. The editor of the second folio, for the sake of the metre, reads —on a raven's back; and so, many of the modern editors.

MALONE.

I profess myself to be still one of this peccant fraternity.

STEEVENS.

Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-brow'd

night,+

Give me my Romeo: and, when he shall die,5
Take him and cut him out in little stars,6

And he will make the face of heaven so fine,
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.-
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,

4

5

66

8

black-brow'd night,] So, in King John:
Why, here walk I, in the black brow of night."

STEEVENS.

when he shall die,] This emendation is drawn from the undated quarto. The quartos of 1599, 1609, and the folio, read-when I shall die. MALONE.

The same

6 Take him and cut him out in little stars, &c.] childish thought occurs in The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, which was acted before the year 1596:

7

، The glorious parts of faire Lucilia,

"Take them and joine them in the heavenly spheres; "And fixe them there as an eternal light,

"For lovers to adore and wonder at.'

STEEVENS.

the garish sun.] Milton had this speech in his thoughts when he wrote Il Penseroso:

66

Civil night,

"Thou sober-suited matron."-Shakspeare.
"Till civil-suited morn appear."-Milton.
"Pay no worship to the garish sun.'
”—Shakspeare.
"Hide me from day's garish eye."-Milton.

Garish is gaudy, showy. So, in King Richard III: "A dream of what thou wast, a garish flag."

Again, in Marlowe's Edward II. 1598:

66 march'd like players

"With garish robes."

JOHNSON.

It sometimes signifies wild, flighty. So, in the following instance: "starting up and gairishly staring about, especially on the face of Eliosto." Hinde's Eliosto Libidinoso, 1606.

STEEVENS.

I have bought the mansion of a love,] So, in Antony .and Cleopatra :

But not possess'd it; and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: So tedious is this day,
As is the night before some festival

To an impatient child, that hath new robes,
And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,

Enter Nurse, with Cords.

And she brings news; and every tongue, that speaks But Romeo's name, speaks heavenly eloquence.Now, nurse, what news? What hast thou there, the cords,

That Romeo bade thee fetch?

NURSE.

Ay, ay, the cords.
Throws them down.

JUL. Ah me! what news? why dost thou wring thy hands?

NURSE. Ah well-a-day! he's dead, he's dead, he's dead!

We are undone, lady, we are undone !

Alack the day!-he's gone, he's kill'd, he's dead! JUL. Can heaven be so envious?

NURSE. Romeo can, Though heaven cannot :-O Romeo! Romeo!Who ever would have thought it?-Romeo!

JUL. What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus?

This torture should be roar'd in dismal hell.
Hath Romeo slain himself? say thou but I,9

66

the strong base and building of my love

"Is as the very center to the earth,

"Drawing all things to it." MALONE.

-say thou but I,] In Shakspeare's time (as Theobald

has observed) the affirmative particle ay was usually written I, and here it is necessary to retain the old spelling. MALONE,

And that bare vowel I shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice:1
I am not I, if there be such an I;

Or those eyes shut, that make thee answer, I.
If he be slain, say-I; or if not, no:

Brief sounds determine of my weal, or woe.

NURSE. I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes,

God save the mark !-here on his manly breast:
A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse;
Pale, pale as ashes, all bedawb'd in blood,
All in gore blood;-I swoonded at the sight.

*-death-darting eye of cockatrice:] See Vol. XIII. p. 281, n. 1, and p. 298, n. 2. MALONE.

The strange lines that follow here in the common books, are not in the old edition. POPE.

The strange lines are these:

"I am not I, if there be such an I,

"Or these eyes shot, that make thee answer I.
"If he be slain, say-I; or if not, no:

"Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe."

These lines hardly deserve emendation; yet it may be proper to observe, that their meanness has not placed them below the malice of fortune, the first two of them being evidently transposed; we should read:

66 that bare vowel I shall poison more,
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice,
"Or those eyes shot, that make thee answer, I.
"I am not I," &c. JOHNSON.

I think the transposition recommended may be spared. The second line is corrupted. Read shut instead of shot, and then the meaning will be sufficiently intelligible.

Shot, however, may be the same as shut. So, in Chaucer's Miller's Tale, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. ver. 3358:

"And dressed him up by a shot window." STEEVens. "God save the mark!] This proverbial exclamation occurs again, with equal obscurity, in Othello, Act I. sc. i. See note on that passage. STEEVENS.

JUL. O break, my heart!-poor bankrupt, break at once!

To prison, eyes! ne'er look on liberty!

Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here;
And thou, and Romeo, press one heavy bier!
NURSE. O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had!
O courteous Tybalt! honest gentleman!
That ever I should live to see thee dead!

JUL. What storm is this, that blows so contrary?
Is Romeo slaughter'd; and is Tybalt dead?
My dear-lov'd cousin, and my dearer lord?—
Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom!
For who is living, if those two are gone?

NURSE. Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished; Romeo, that kill'd him, he is banished.

3

JUL. O God!—did Romeo's hand shed Tybalt's blood?

NURSE. It did, it did; alas the day! it did.

JUL. O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face!

• My dear-lov'd cousin, and my dearer lord?] The quarto, 1599, and the folio, read

My dearest cousin, and my dearer lord?

Mr. Pope introduced the present reading from the original copy of 1597. MALONE.

O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face!] The same images occur in Macbeth:

66 look like the innocent flower,

"But be the serpent under it." HENLEY.

O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face!

Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?] So, in King John: "Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries,

"With ladies' faces and fierce dragons' spleens."

Again, in King Henry VIII:

"You have angels' faces, but heaven knows your hearts." The line, Did ever dragon, &c. and the following eight lines, are not in the quarto, 1597. MALONE.