Be quiet, or More light, more light, for shame!I'll make you quiet; What! Cheerly, my hearts. TYB. Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting, Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. I will withdraw: but this intrusion shall, Now seeming sweet, convert to bitter gall. [Exit. ROM. If I profane with my unworthy hand [To JULIET. This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this,My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. JUL. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims' handsdo touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. ROM. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? JUL. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. ROM. O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. • Patience perforce-] This expression is part proverbial: the old adage is 6 "Patience perforce is a medicine for a mad dog." If I profane with my unworthy hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this, STEEVENS. My lips, two blushing pilgrims, &c.] The old copies read sin. MALONE. All profanations are supposed to be expiated either by some meritorious action, or by some penance undergone, and punishment submitted to. So Romeo would here say, If I have been profane in the rude touch of my hand, my lips stand ready, as JUL Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. ROM. Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purg'd. 8 [Kissing her. JUL. Then have my lips the sin that they have took. ROM. Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg'd! Give me my sin again. JUL. You kiss by the book. two blushing pilgrims, to take off, that offence, to atone for it by a sweet penance. Our poet therefore must have wrote: the gentle fine is this. WARBUrton. O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.] Juliet had said before that" palm to palm was holy palmer's kiss." She afterwards says that" palmers have lips that they must use in prayer." Romeo replies, "that the prayer of his tips was, that they might do what hands do; that is, that they might kiss. M. MASON. [Kissing her.] Our poet here, without doubt, copied from the mode of his own time; and kissing a lady in a publick assembly, we may conclude, was not thought indecorous. In King Henry VIII. he in like manner makes Lord Sands kiss Anne Boleyn, next to whom he sits at the supper given by Cardinal Wolsey. MALONE. You kiss by the book.] In As you like it, we find it was usual to quarrel by the book, and we are told in the note, that there were books extant for good manners. Juliet here appears to refer to a third kind, containing the art of courtship, an example from which it is probable that Rosalind hath adduced. HENLEY. Of all men who have loosed themselves on Shakspeare, none is there who so inveigleth me to amorous meditations, as the critick aforesaid. In Antony and Cleopatra he sore vexed and disquieted mine imagination touching the hair and voice of women; in King Lear he hinted at somewhat touching noninos; and lo! now disserteth he on lip-gallantry! But (saith a wag NURSE. Madain, your mother craves a word idin bwith you.99% ROM. What is her mother? NURSE. Marry, bachelor, Her mother is the lady of the house, And a good lady, and a wise, and virtuous : ROM. Is she a Capulet? O dear account! my life is my foe's debt. BEN. Away, begone; the sport is at the best. ROM. Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest. 1 CAP. Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone; We have a trifling foolish banquet towards. at mine elbow) on the business of kissing, surely Calista's question might be addressed to our commentator" Is it become an art then? a trick that bookmen can teach us to do over ??? I believe, no dissertation, or guide, to this interchange of fondness was ever penned, at least while Shakspeare was alive. All that Juliet means to say is-you kiss methodically; you offer as many reasons for kissing, as could have been found in a treatise professedly written on the subject. When Hamlet observes on the Grave-digger's equivocation-"we must speak by the card," can he be supposed to have had a literal meaning? Without reference to books, however, Juliet betrays little ignorance on the present occasion; but could have said (with Mortifier, in King Henry IV.) "I understand thy kisses, and thou mine; the chinks.] Thus the old copies; for which Mr. Pope and the subsequent editors have substituted chink. MALONE. We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.] Towards is ready, at hand. So, in Hamlet: "What might be towards, that this sweaty haste 3 : Is it e'en so? Why, then I thank you all NURSE. The son and heir of old Tiberio. 153 1 NURSE. I know not. JUL. Go, ask his name :-if he be married, My grave is like to be my wedding bed. Again, in The Phoenix, by Middleton, 1607: "here's a voyage towards, will make us all." STEEVENs. It appears, from the former part of this scene, that Capulet's company had supped. A banquet, it should be remembered, often meant, in old times, nothing more than a collation of fruit, wine, &c. So, in The Life of Lord Cromwell, 1602: yo say Their dinner is our banquet after dinner.' 199 Again, in Howel's Chronicle of the Civil Wars, 1661, p. 662: After dinner, he was served with a banquet." MALONE. It appears, from many circumstances, that our ancestors quitted their eating-rooms as soon as they had dined, and in warm weather retired to buildings constructed in their gardens. These were called banqueting-houses, and here their desert was served. STEEVENS. honest gentlemen;] Here the quarto, 1597, adds: "I promise you, but for your company, I would have been in bed an hour ago: "Light to my chamber, ho!" STEEVENS. Come hither, nurse: What is yon gentleman?] This and the following questions are taken from the novel. STEEVENS. See the poem of Romeus and Juliet. MALONE. NURSE. His name is Romeo, and a Montague; The only son of your great enemy. JUL. My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, That I must love a loathed enemy. NURSE. What's this? what's this? JUL. Of one I danc'd withal. NURSE. A rhyme I learn'd even now [One calls within, JULIET. Anon, anon: Come, let's away; the strangers all are gone. [Exeunt. Enter CHORUS.5 Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie, CHORUS.] This Chorus added since the first edition. POPE. The use of this Chorus is not easily discovered; it conduces nothing to the progress of the play, but relates what is already known, or what the next scene will show; and relates it without adding the improvement of any moral sentiment. JOHNSON. That fair,] Fair, it has been already observed, was formerly used as a substantive, and was synonymous to beauty. See Vol. VIII. p. 88, n. 9. MALONE. 7 That fair, which love groan'd for, and would die,] The instances produced in a subsequent note, by Mr. Malone, to justify the old and corrupt reading, are not drawn from the quartos, which he judiciously commends, but from the folio, which with equal judgment he has censured. These irregularities, therefore, standing on no surer ground than that of copies published by ignorant players, and printed by careless compositors, I utterly refuse to admit their accumulated jargon as the grammar of Shakspeare, or of the age he lived in. |