What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears? An if thou could'st, thou could'st not make him live; Therefore, have done: Some grief shows much of love; But much of grief shows still some want of wit. JUL. Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss. LA. CAP. So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend Which you weep for. JUL. Feeling so the loss, I cannot choose but ever weep the friend. LA. CAP. Well, girl, thou weep'st not so much for his death, As that the villain lives which slaughter'd him. That same villain, Romeo. lives. JUL. Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands. 'Would, none but I might venge my cousin's death! LA. CAP. We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not: 1 God pardon him!] The word him, which was inadvertently omitted in the old copies, was inserted by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. 2 Ay, madam, from &c.] Juliet's equivocations are rather too artful for a mind disturbed by the loss of a new lover. JOHNSON. Then weep no more. I'll send to one in Mantua,- JUL. Indeed, I never shall be satisfied 3 That shall bestow on him so sure a draught,] Thus the elder quarto, which I have followed in preference to the quartos 1599 and 1609, and the folio, 1623, which read, less intelligibly: Shall give him such an unaccustom'd dram. STEEVENS. The elder quarto has-That should &c. The word shall is drawn from that of 1599. MALONE. unaccustom'd dram,] In vulgar language, Shall give him a dram which he is not used to. Though I have, if I mistake not, observed, that in old books unaccustomed signifies wonder ful, powerful, efficacious. JOHNSON. I believe Dr. Johnson's first explanation is the true one. Barnaby Googe, in his Cupido Conquered, 1563, uses unacquainted in the same sense: "And ever as we mounted up, "I lookte upon my wynges, "And prowde I was, me thought, to see "Suche unacquaynted thyngs." STEEVENS. my cousin Tybalt-] The last word of this line, which is not in the old copies, was added by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. LA. CAP. Find thou the means, and I'll fmd such a man. But now I'll tell thee joyful tidings, girl. JUL. And joy comes well in such a needful time: What are they, I beseech your ladyship? LA. CAP. Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child; One, who, to put thee from thy heaviness, The gallant, young, and noble gentleman, 5 Find thou &c.] This line in the quarto 1597, is given to Juliet. STEEVENS. in happy time,] A la bonne heure. This phrase was interjected, when the hearer was not quité so well pleased as the speaker. JOHNSON. áડ The county Paris,] It is remarked, that " Paris, though in one place called Earl, is most commonly stiled the Countie in this play. Shakspeare seems to have preferred, for some reason or other, the Italian Comte to our Count: perhaps he took it from the old English novel, from which he is said to have taken his plot." He certainly did so: Paris is there first stiled a young Earle, and aftewards Counte, Countée, County; according to the unsettled orthography of the time. The word, however, is frequently met with in other writers; particularly in Fairfax : "As when a captaine doth besiege some hold, "Set in a marish, or high on a hill, “ And trieth waies and wiles a thousand fold, See p. 56-57, n. 3. MALONE. FARMER. Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride. JUL. Now, by Saint Peter's church, and Peter too, He shall not make me there a joyful bride. I wonder at this haste; that I must wed Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo. pray you, tell my lord and father, madam, I will not marry yet; and, when I do, I swear, It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, Rather than Paris:-These are news indeed! I LA. CAP. Here comes your father; tell him so yourself, And see how he will take it at your hands. Enter CAPULET and Nurse. CAP. When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;8 • When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;] Thus the undated quarto. The quarto 1599, and the folio, read-the earth doth drizzle dew. The line is not in the original copy. The reading of the quarto 1599, and the folio, is philosophically true; and perhaps ought to be preferred. Dew undoubtedly rises from the earth, in consequence of the action of the heat of the sun on its moist surface. Those vapours which rise from the earth in the course of the day, are evaporated by the warmth of the air as soon as they arise; but those which rise after sun-set, form themselves into drops, or rather into that fog or mist which is termed dew. Though, with the modern editors, I have followed the undated quarto, and printed-the air doth drizzle dew, I suspected when this note was written, that earth was the poet's word, and a line in The Rape of Lucrece, strongly supports that reading: "But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set, MALONE. When our author, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, says: "And when she [the moon] weeps, weeps every little flower;" he only means that every little flower is moistened with dew, as if with tears; and not that the flower itself drizzles dew. This passage sufficiently explains how the earth, in the quotation from The Rape of Lucrece, may be said to weep. STEEVENS. But for the sunset of my brother's son, How now? a conduit, girl? what, still in tears ?9 Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind: Thy tempest-tossed body.-How now, wife? LA. CAP. Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks. I would, the fool were married to her grave! That Shakspeare thought it was the air and not the earth that drizzled dew, is evident from other passages. So, in King John: "Before the dew of evening fall." Again, in King Henry VIII: "His dews fall every where." Again, in the same play: "The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her." Again, in Hamlet: "Dews of blood fell." RITSON. 9 How now? a conduit, girl? what, still in tears?] In Thomas Heywood's Troia Britannica, cant. ii. st. 40, 1609, there is the same allusion: "You should not let such high-priz'd moysture fall, "Which from your hart your conduit-eyes distill." HOLT WHITE. Conduits in the form of human figures, it has been already observed, were common in Shakspeare's time. See Vol. IX. p. 404, n. 9. We have again the same image in The Rape of Lucrece: "A pretty while these pretty creatures stand, "Like ivory conduits coral cisterns filling." MALONE. |