Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear; at which he starts and wakes;
And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab,
That plats the manes of horses in the night:
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them, and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.
This, this is she-

Rom.

Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace;
Thou talk'st of nothing.

Mer.
True, I talk of dreams;
Winch are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air;
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

Ben. This wind, you talk of, blows us from our-
selves;

Supper is done, and we shall come too late.

Rom. I fear, too early; for my mind misgives,
Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

With this night's revels; and expire3 the term
Of a despised life, clos'd in my breast,
By some vile forfeit of untimely death:
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.
Ben. Strike, drum.4

[Exeunt.

1 Serv. Where's Potpan, that he helps not to take away? be shift a trencher! he scrape a trencher!

2 Serv. When good manners shall lie all in one or two men's hands, and they unwashed too, 'tis a foul thing.

1 Serv. Away with the joint-stools, remove the court-cupboard," look to the plate:-good thou, save me a piece of marchpane; and, as thou lovest

1 i. e. fairy locks, locks of hair clotted and tangled in the night. It was a common superstition ;-and Warburtou conjectures that it had its rise from the horrid disease called Plica Polonica.

2 So in Love's Labour's Lost, Act i. Sc. 2 :

- let them be men of great repute and carriage. Moth. Sampson, master; he was a man of good carriage, great carriage; for he carried the town-gates.' 3 So in The Rape of Lucrece :

An expir'd date cancell'd ere well begun.'
And in Mother Hubbard's Tale :-

Now whereas time flying with wings swift
Expired had the term,' &c.

4 Here the folio adds:- They march about the stage,
and serving men come forth with their napkins.'
5 This scene is not in the first copy in the quarto of
1597.

6 To shift a trencher was technical. So in The Miseries of Enforst Marriage, 1609:- Learne more manners, stand at your brother's backe, as to shift a trencher neately,' &c. Trenchers were used in Shakspeare's time, and long after, by persons of good fashion and quality. They continued common till a late period in many public societies, and are now, or were lately, still retained at Lincoln's Inn.

7 The court cupboard was the ancient sideboard; it was a cumbrous piece of furniture, with stages or shelves gradually receding, like stairs, to the top, whereon the plate was displayed at festivals. They are mentioned in many of our old comedies. Thus in Chapman's Monsieur D'Olive, 1606: Here shall stand my court cupboard, with its furniture of plate. Again in his May Day, 1611:- Court cupboards planted with flagons, cans, cups, beakers,' &c. Two of these ancient pieces of furniture are still in Stationer's Hall: they are used at public festivals, to display the antique silver vessels of the Company, consisting of cans, cups, beakers, flagons, &c. There is a print in a curious work, entitled Laurea Austriaca, folio, 1627, representing an entertainment given by King James I. to the Spanish Ambassadors, in 1623; from which the reader will get a better notion of the court cupboard than volumes

me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone, and Nell.-Antony! and Potpan!

2 Serv. Ay, boy; ready.

1 Serv. You are looked for, and called for, asked for, and sought for, in the great chamber.

2 Serv. We cannot be here and there too.-
Cheerly, boys; be brisk awhile, and the longer
liver take all.
[They retire behind.

Enter CAPULET, &c. with the Guests and the
Maskers.

Cap. Gentlemen, welcome! ladies, that have
their toes

Unplagu'd with corns, will have a bout with you :-
Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all
Will now deny to dance? she that makes dainty she,
I'll swear hath corns; Am I come near you now?
You are welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day,
That I have worn a visor; and could tell
A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear,
Such as would please;-'tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone:
You are welcome, gentlemen!-Come, musicians,
play.

A hall! a hall! give room, and foot it, girls.
[Music plays, and they dance.
More lights, ye knaves; and turn the tables up,10
And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.-
Ah, sírrah, this unlook'd-for sport comes well.
Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin11 Capulet;
For you and I are past our dancing days:
How long is't now, since last yourself and I
Were in a mask?
2 Cap.
By'r lady, thirty years. [much:
1 Cap. What, man! 'tis not so much, 'tis not so
"Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,
Come pentecost as quickly as it will,
Some five and twenty years; and then we mask'd.
2 Cap. "Tis more, 'tis more: his son is elder, sir:
His son is thirty.

1 Cap.
Will you tell me that?
His son was but a ward two years ago.12
Rom. What lady's that, which doth enrich the hand
Of yonder knight?

Serv. I know not, sir.

Rom. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she13 hangs upon the cheek of night of description would afford him. It was sometimes also called a cupboard of plate, and a livery cupboard.

8 Marchpune was a constant article in the desserts of our ancestors. It was a sweet cake, composed of filberts, almonds, pistachoes, pine kernels, and sugar of roses, with a small portion of flour. They were often made in fantastic forms. In 1562, the Stationers' Company paid for ix. marchpaynes xxvi. s. viii. d.'

9 An exclamation commonly used to make room in a crowd for any particular purpose, as we now say, a ring! a ring! So Marston, Sat. iii. :A hall! a hall!

Roome for the spheres, the orbs celestial
Will dance Kempe's jigg.'

The passages are numberless that may be cited in illus.
tration of this phrase.

10 The ancient tables were flat leaves or boards joined by hinges and placed on tressels; when they were to be removed they were therefore turned up. The phrase is sometimes taken up. Thus in Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, ed. 1925, p. 198:- After that the boards-end was taken up.'

11 Cousin was a common expression for kinsman. Thus in Hamlet, the king, his uncle and stepfather, addresses him with

But now, my cousin Hamlet and my son.'
12 This speech stands thus in the quarto of 1597:--
Will you tell me that? it cannot be so:
His son was but a ward three years ago;
Good youths, i'faith!-Oh, youth's a jolly thing!
There are many trifling variations in almost every
speech of this play; but when they are of little conse.
quence I have not encumbered the page with them.
The last of these three lines, however, is natural and
pleasing.-Steevens.

13 Steevens reads, with the second folio:-
'Her beauty hangs upon,' &c.
Shakspeare has the same thought in his 27th Sonnet:-
Which like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lyly in his Euphues, has 'A fair pearl in a Morian's ear.,

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear:
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As youder lady o'er her fellows shows:
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make happy my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

Tyb. This, by his voice, should be a Montague:--
Fetch me my rapier, boy:-What! dares the slave
Come hither, cover'd with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?
Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,
To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.

1 Cap. Why, how now, kinsman? wherefore storm
you so?

Tyb. Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe;
A villain, that is hither come in spite,
To scorn at our solemnity this night.
1 Cap. Young Romeo is't?
Tyb.
'Tis he, that villain Romeo.
1 Cap. Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone,
He bears him like a portly gentleman;
And, to say truth, Verona brags of him,
To be a virtuous and well govern'd youth:
I would not for the wealth of all this town,
Here in my house, do him disparagement:
Therefore be patient, take no note of him,
It is my will; the which if thou respect,
Show a fair presence, and put off these frowns,
An ill beseeming semblance for a feast.

Tyb. It fits, when such a villain is a guest;
I'll not endure him.

soul

1 Cap.
He shall be endur'd;
What, goodman boy ?--I say, he shall ;-Go to ;-
Am I the master here, or you? go to..
You'll not endure him!-God shall mend
You'll make a mutiny among my guests!
You will set cock-a-hoop! you'll be the man!
Tyb. Why, uncle, 'tis a shame.

my

1 Cap.
Go to, go to.
You are a saucy boy :-Is't indeed?-
So,
This trick may chance to scath' you ;-I know what.
You must contrary me! marry, 'tis time-
Well said, my hearts:-You are a princox;2 go:-
Be quiet, or-More light, more light, for shame!-
I'll make you quiet; What! Cheerly, my hearts.
Tyb. Patience perforce with wilful choler meet-
ing,

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' hands do 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 ;4

They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

1 i. e. do you an injury. The word has still this meaning in Scotland.

2 A pert forward youth. The word is apparently a corruption of the Latin præcox.

3 There is an old adage- Patience perforce is a medicine for a mad dog. To which this is an allusion. 4 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 lips was, that they might do what hands do; that is, that they might kiss.

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:
I nurs'd her daughter, that you talk'd withal:
I tell you,-he, that can lay hold of her,
Shall have the chinks.

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. Av, so I fear; the more is my unrest.
1 Cap. Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone;
We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.*—
Is it e'en so? Why, then I thank you all;

I thank you, honest gentlemen; good night :-
More torches here!-Come on, then let's to bed.
Ah, sirrah, [To 2 Cap.] by my fay, it waxes late;
I'll to my rest. [Exeunt all but JULIET and Nurse.
Jul.Come hither nurse: What is yon gentleman ?
Nurse. The son and heir of old Tiberio.

Jul. What's he, that now is going out of door?
Nurse. Marry, that, I think, be young Petruchio.
Jul. What's he, that follows there, that would
not dance?

Nurse. I know not.

Jul. Go ask his name:-if he be married,
My grave is like to be my wedding bed.

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. A rhyme I learn'd even now
Of one I danc'd withal.
Nurse.
Come, let's away;

the

[One calls within, Juhet. Anon, anon :strangers all are gone. [Exeunt

Enter CHORUS.

Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie,
And young affection gapes to be his heir;
That fair, which love groan'd for, and would die,
With tender Juliet match'd is now not fair.
Now Romeo is belov'd, and loves again,

Alike bewitched by the charm of looks;
But to his foe suppos'd he must complain,
And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks:
Being held a foe, he may not have access

To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear;
And she as much in love, her means much less
To meet her new-beloved any where :

6 Towards is ready, at hand. A banquet, or reresupper, as it was sometimes called, was similar to our

dessert.

7 Here the quarto of 1597 adds :

'I promise you, but for your company,
I would have been in bed an hour ago:
Light to my chamber, ho!'

sThis chorus is not in the first edition, quarto, 1597. Its use 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.

9 Fair, it has been already observed, was formerly used as a substantive, and was synonymous with beauty. The old copies read :

5 The poet bere, without doubt, copied from the mode of his own time; and kissing a lady in a public assem That fair for which love groan'd for,' &e bly, we may conclude, was not then thought indecorous. This reading Malone defends. Steevens treats it as a In King Henry VIII. Lord Sands is represented as kiss-corruption, and says, that fair, in the present instance, ing Anne Boleyn, next whom he sat at supper. is used as a dissyllable.

3 All the old copies read, Abraham Cupid. The And Drayton in the thirteenth Song of his Polyolbion :

alteration was proposed by Mr. Upton. It evidently
alludes to the famous archer Adam Bell. So in Decker's
Satiromastix:- He shoots his bolt but seldom; but
when Adam lets go, he hits. He shoots at thee too,
Adam Bell; and his arrows stick here. The ballad
alluded to is King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid, or,
as it is called in some copies, The Song of a Beggar
and a King. It may be seen in the first volume of
Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The following
stanza Shakspeare had particularly in view :-

The blinded boy that shoots so trim,
From heaven down did hie;

He drew a dart and shot at him,
In place where he did lie.'

'I might perceive his eye in her eye lost,
His eye to drink her sweet tongue's utterance.

2 i. e. if either thee displease. This was the usual phraseology of Shakspeare's time. So it likes me well; for it pleases me well.

3 i. e. no stop, no hinderance. Thus the quarto of 1597. The subsequent copies read, no stop to me.' 4 Beaumont and Fletcher have copied this thought in The Maid in the Mill:

The lady may command, sir;

She bears an eye more dreadful than your weapon.' 5 But is here again used in its exceptive sense, with

6 i. e. postponed, delayed or deferred to a more distant period. So in Act iv. Sc. I :—

'I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it, On Thursday next be married to the county.' The whole passage above, according to my view of it, has the following construction:- I have night to screen me; yet unless thou love me, let them find me here. It were better that they ended my life at once, than to have death delayed, and to want thy love.'

7 i. e. farewell attention to forms.

8 This Shakspeare found in Ovid's Art of Love; perhaps in Marlowe's translation:

'For Jove himself sits in the azure skies, And laughs below at lovers' perjuries. With the following beautiful antithesis to the above lines (says Mr. Douce) every reader of taste will be gratified. It is given memoriter from some old play, the name of which is forgotten :

When lovers swear true faith, the list'ning angels Stand on the golden battlements of heaven, And waft their vows to the eternal throne.'

So thrive my soul,-
Jul. A thousand times good night! [Exit.
Rom. A thousand times the worse, to want thy
light.-

Love goes toward love, as school-boys from their
books;

But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. [Retiring slowly.

Re-enter JULIET, above.

Jul. Hist! Romeo, hist!-0, for a falconer's
voice,

To lure this tassel-gentle1 back again!
Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud;
Else would I tear the cave where echo lies,
And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine
With repetition of my Romeo's name ;

Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry,
I must fill up this osier cage of ours,

With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers."

The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb;"
And from her womb children of divers kind
What is her burying grave, that is her womb :
We sucking on her natural bosom find;
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some, and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
At what o'clock to-morrow within the infant rind of this small flower
And vice sometime's by action dignified.

Rom. It is my soul, that calls upon my name; How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears!

Jul. Romeo!

Rom.
Jul.

My sweet!3

Shall I send to thee?

Rom.
At the hour of nine.
Jul. I will not fail; 'tis twenty years till then.
I have forgot why I did call thee back.

Rom. Let me stand here till thou remember it.
Jul. I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,
Rememb'ring how I love thy company.

Rom. And I'll still stay, to have thee still forget,
Forgetting any other home but this.

Jul. "Tis almost morning, I would have thee gone;
And yet no further than a wanton's bird;
Who lets it hop a little from her hand,
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,
And with a silk thread plucks it back again,
So loving-jealous of his liberty.
Rom. I would, I were thy bird.

Jul.
Sweet, so would I;
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say-good night, till it be morrow. [Exit.

1 The tassel, or tiercel, (for so it should be spelt,) is the male of the gosshairk, and is said to be so called because it is a tierce or third less than the female. This is equally true of all birds of prey. This species of hawk had the epithet of gentle annexed to it, from the ease with which it was tamed, and its attachment to man. Tardif, in his book of Falconry, says that the tiercel has its name from being one of three birds usually found in the aerie of a falcon, two of which are females, and the third a male; hence called tiercelet, or the third. According to the old books of sport the falcon gentle and tiercel gentle are birds for a prince.

2 This strong expression is more suitably employed by Milton:- A shout that tore hell's concave.

3 The quarto of 1597 puts the cold, distant, and formal appellation Madam, into the mouth of Romeo.The two subsequent quartos and the folio have my niece,' which is a palpable corrhiption; but it is difficult to say what word was intended. 'My sweet,' is the reading of the second folio.

4 In the folio and the three later quartos these four lines are printed twice over, and given once to Romeo and once to the Friar.

5 Flecked is spotted, dappled, streaked, or varie gated. Lord Surrey uses the word in his translation of the fourth Eneid:

Her quivering cheekes flecked with deadly stain." So in the old play of The Four Prentices :We'll fleck our white steeds in your Christian blood.' 6 This is the reading of the second folio. The quarto of 1597 reads:

"From forth day's path and Titan's firy wheels.' The quarto of 1599 and the folio have burning wheels.'

Poison hath residence, and med'cine power:
For this, being smelt, with that partio cheers each

part;

Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
In man as well as herbs, grace, and rude will;
Two such opposed foes encamp them still
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.
And, where the worser is predominant,

Enter ROMEO.

Benedicite!

Rom. Good morrow, father!
Fri.
What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?—
Young son, it argues a distemper'd head,
So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed:
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;

7 So Drayton, in the eighteenth Song of his Polyolbion, speaking of a hermit:

His happy time he spends the works of God to see, In those so sundry herbs which there in plenty grow, Whose sundry strange effects he only seeks to know. And in a little maund, being made of oziers small, Which serveth him to do full many a thing withal, He very choicely sorts his simples got abroad.' Shakspeare has very artificially prepared us for the part Friar Lawrence is afterwards to sustain. Having thus early discovered him to be a chemist, we are not surprised when we find him furnishing the draught which produces the catastrophe of the piece. The passage was, however, suggested by Arthur Brooke's poem.

8 'Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum.
Lucretius.
The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave.'
Milton.

6

Time's the king of men,

For he's their parent, and he is their grave.'

Pericles.

9 Efficacious virtue.
10 i. e. with its odour. Not, as Malone says, 'with the
olfactory nerves, the part that smells.'

11 So in Shakspeare's Lover's Complaint:-
terror and dear modesty

6

Encamp'd in hearts, but fighting outwardly.' Our poet has more than once alluded to these opposed foes. So in Othello :

'Yea, curse his better angel from his side.' See also his forty-fourth Sonnet. He may have remembered a passage in the old play of King Arthur,

1587:

Peace hath three foes encamped in our breastu, Ambition, wrath, and envie'