With twenty hundred thousand times more joy NURSE. O Lord, I could have staid here all the night, To hear good counsel: O, what learning is!- ROM. Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide. sir: Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late. [Exit Nurse. ROM. How well my comfort is reviv'd by this! FRI. Go hence: Good night; and here stands all your state; 5— Either be gone before the watch be set, [Exeunt. Romeo is coming.] Much of this speech has likewise been added since the first edition. STEEVENS. Go hence: Good night; &c.] These three lines are omitted in all the modern editions. JOHNSON. 5 They were first omitted, with many others, by Mr. Pope. here stands all your state;] The whole of tune depends on this. JOHNSON. MALONE. your for SCENE IV. A Room in Capulet's House. Enter CAPULET, Lady CAPULET, and PARIS. CAP. Things have fallen out, sir, so unluckily, That we have had no time to move our daughter: Look you, she lov'd her kinsman Tybalt dearly, And so did I;-Well, we were born to die.'Tis very late, she'll not come down to-night: I promise you, but for your company, I would have been a-bed an hour ago. PAR. These times of woe afford no time to woo: Madam, good night: commend me to your daugh ter. LA. CAP. I will, and know her mind early to morrow; To-night she's mew'd up' to her heaviness. * SCENE IV.] Some few unnecessary verses are omitted in this scene according to the oldest editions. POPE. Mr. Pope means, as appears from his edition, that he has followed the oldest copy, and omitted some unnecessary verses which are not found there, but inserted in the enlarged copy of this play. But he has expressed himself so loosely, as to have been misunderstood by Mr. Steevens. In the text these unnecessary verses, as Mr. Pope calls them, are preserved, conformably to the enlarged copy of 1599. MALONE. 7 mew'd up-] This is a phrase from falconry, A mew was a place of confinement for hawks. So, in Albumazar, 1614; fully mew'd "From brown soar feathers-." Again, in our author's King Richard III: “And, for his meed, poor lord he is mew'd up.” STEEVENS. CAP. Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender Of my child's love: I think, she will be rul'd In all respects by me; nay more, I doubt it not. Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed; Acquaint her here of my son Paris' love; And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday nextBut, soft; What day is this? PAR. Monday, my lord. CAP. Monday? ha! ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon, O'Thursday let it be;-o'Thursday, tell her, Therefore we'll have some half a dozen friends, And there an end. But what say you to Thursday? PAR. My lord, I would that Thursday were to morrow. CAP. Well, get you gone :- O' Thursday be it then : Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed, Prepare her, wife, against this wedding-day.Farewell, my lord.-Light to my chamber, ho! Afore me, it is so very late, that we May call it early by and by :-Good night. Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender [Exeunt. Of my child's love:] Desperate means only bold, adventu rous, as if he had said in the vulgar phrase, I will speak a bold word, and venture to promise you my daughter. JOHNSon. So, in The Weakest goes to the Wall, 1600: "Witness this desperate tender of mine honour." STEEVENS. SCENE V. Juliet's Chamber.9 Enter ROMEO and JULIET. JUL. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:' It was the nightingale, and not the lark, 9 SCENE V. Juliet's Chamber.] The stage-direction in the first edition is" Enter Romeo and Juliet, at a window." In the second quarto, "Enter Romeo and Juliet aloft." They appeared probably in the balcony which was erected on the old English stage. See The Account of the Ancient Theatres in Vol. III. MALONE. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: &c.] This scene is formed on the following hints in the poem of Romeus and Juliet, 1562: "The golden sun was gone to lodge him in the west, "When restless Romeus and restless Juliet, "In wonted sort, by wonted mean, in Juliet's chamber "Thus these two lovers pass away the weary night "But now, somewhat too soon, in farthest east arose "What colour then the heavens do show unto thine eyes, That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear; 2 ROM. It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east: Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops; I must be gone and live, or stay and die. JUL. Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I: It is some meteor that the sun exhales, To be to thee this night a torch-bearer, And light thee on thy way to Mantua: Therefore stay yet, thou need'st not to be 3 gone. "Then Romeus in arms his lady gan to fold, Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree:] This is not merely a poetical supposition. It is observed of the nightingale, that, if undisturbed, she sits and sings upon the same tree for many weeks together. the What Eustathius, however, has observed relative to a fig-tree mentioned by Homer, in his 12th Odyssey, may be applied to passage before 66 us: -These particularities, which seem of no consequence, have a very good effect in poetry, as they give the relation an air of truth and probability. For what can induce a poet to mention such a tree, if the tree were not there in reality?" STEEVENS. 3 It is some meteor that the sun exhales, To be to thee this night a torch-bearer, And light thee on thy way-] Compare Sidney's Arcadia, 13th edit. p. 109: "The moon, then full, (not thinking scorn to be a torch-bearer to such beauty) guided her steps." And Sir J. Davies's Orchestra, 1596, st. vii. of the sun: "When the great torch-bearer of heauen was gone "Downe in a maske unto the Ocean's court." And Drayton's Eng. Heroic. Epist. p. 221, where the moon is described with the stars "Attending on her, as her torch-bearers." TODD. |