Rom. This shall determine that.

451

And 'twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm
[They fight; TYBALT falls. An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life
Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled:
Who had but newly entertain'd revenge,
But by and by comes back to Romeo,
And to 't they go like lightning; for, ere I
Could draw to part them, was stout Tybalt slain;
And, as he fell, did Romeo turn and fly;
This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.

Ben. Romeo, away, be gone!
The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain :
Stand not amaz'd:-the prince will doom thee death
If thou art taken :-hence!-be gone !-away!
Rom. O! I am fortune's fool!!
Ben.

Why dost thou stay?
[Exit ROMEO.
Enter Citizens, &c.
1 Cit. Which way ran he, that kill'd Mercutio?
Tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he?
Ben. There lies that Tybalt.
1 Cit.

Up, sir, go with me;
I charge thee in the prince's name, obey.
Enter Prince, attended; MONTAGUE, CAPULET,
their Wives, and others.

Prin. Where are the vile beginners of this fray?
Ben. O, noble prince, I can discover all
The unlucky manage of this fatal brawl:
There lies the man, slain by young Romeo,
That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.

Lu. Cap. Tybalt, my cousin!-O, my brother's
child!

Unhappy sight! ah, me, the blood is spill'd
Of my dear kinsman!-Prince, as thou art true,2
For blood of ours, shed blood of Montague.
O, cousin, cousin!

Prin. Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?
Ben. Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo's hand did
slay;

Romeo that spoke him fair, bade him bethink
How nice3 the quarrel was, and urg'd withal
Your high displeasure:-All this-uttered
With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow'd,
Could not take truce with the unruly spleen
Of Tybalt deaf to peace, but that he tilts
With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast;
Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point,
And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats
Cold death aside, and with the other sends
It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity

Retorts it: Romeo, he cries aloud,

La. Cap. He is a kinsman to the Montague,
Affection makes him false; he speaks not true:
Some twenty of them fought in this black strife,
And all those twenty could but kill one life:
I beg for justice, which thou, prince, must give;
Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.

Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?
Prin. Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio;
Mon. Not Romeo, prince, he was Mercutio's
friend;

His fault concludes but, what the law should end,
The life of Tybalt.

Prin.
And, for that offence,
I have an interest in your hates' proceeding,
Immediately we do exile him hence:
My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding;
But I'll amerce you with so strong a fine,
That you
shall all repent the loss of mine:
I will be deaf to pleading and excuses;
Nor tears, nor prayers, shall purchase out abuses,
Else, when he's found, that hour is his last.
Therefore use none: let Romeo hence in haste,
Bear hence this body, and attend our will:
Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill."

[Exeunt. SCENE II. A Room in Capulet's House. Enter JULIET.

Jul. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' mansion; such a wagoner
As Phaeton would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately."-
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night!
That run-away's eyes may wink: and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untaĺk'd of, and unseen!-

Hold, friends! friends, part! and, swifter than his Lovers can see to do their amorous rites

tongue,

His agile arm beats down their fatal points,

By their own beauties: or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night.-Come, civil1o night,

1 In the first quarto, 'O! I am fortune's slave.'-night as the run-away; making Juliet wish that its Shakspeare is very fond of alluding to the mockery of fortune. Thus we have in Lear:-Tam the natural fool of fortune.' And in Timon of Athens:- Ye fools of fortune.' In Julius Cæsar the expression is, 'He is but fortune's knave.' Hamlet speaks of the fools of nature.' And in Measure for Measure we have merely thou art death's fool.' See Pericles, Act iii. Sc. 2.

2 As thou art just and upright. So in King Richard III. :- And if King Edward be as true and just.'

8 Nice here means silly, trifling, or wanton. 4 The charge of falsehood on Benvolio, though produced at hazard, is very just. The author, who seems to intend the character of Benvolio as good, meant perhaps to show how the best minds, in a state of faction and discord, are distorted to criminal partiality.'— Johnson.

5 The sentiment here enforced is different from that found in the first edition, 1597. There the Prince concludes his speech with these words :

Pity shall dwell, and govern with us still;
Mercy to all but murderers,-pardoning none that kill.
6 The poet probably remembered Marlowe's King
Edward II. which was performed before 1593:--

Gallop apace, bright Pho bus, through the skie,
And duskie night in rusty iron car;
Between you both, shorten the time, I pray,
That I may see that most desired day.'"
There is also a passage in Barnabe Riche's Farewell
to the Militarie Profession, 1583, which bears some
resemblance to this.

7 Here ends this speech in the original quarto. The rest of the scene has likewise received considerable alterations and additions.

eyes, the stars, might retire, to prevent discovery. Mr. Justice Blackstone can perceive nothing optative in the lines, but simply a reason for Juliet's wish for a cloudy night; yet, according to this construction of the passage, the grammar is not very easily to be discovered.Whoever attentively reads over Juliet's speech will be the whole tenor of it is optative. inclined to think, or even to be altogether satisfied, that With respect to the calling night a run-away, one might surely ask how it Is it a greater fugitive than the morning, the noon, or can possibly be so termed in an abstract point of view? the evening? Mr. Steevens lays great stress on Shakspeare's having before called the night a run-away in the Merchant of Venice :

For the close night doth play the run-away.'
fore with great propriety he said to play the run-away;
But there it was already far advanced, and might there-
here it was not begun. The same remark will apply to
the passage cited from the Fair Maid of the Exchange.
Juliet herself? She who has just been secretly married
Where then is this run-array to be found? or can it be
to the enemy of her parents might with some propriety
be termed a run-away from her duty; but she had not
abandoned her native pudency. She therefore invokes
the night to veil those rites which she was about to per-
form, and to bring her Romeo to her arms in darkness
be thought to favour this interpretation; and the whole
and silence. The lines that immediately follow may
scene may possibly bring to the reader's recollection an
Psyche.-Douce.
interesting part in the beautiful story of Cupid and

9 So in Marlowe's Hero and Leander :-
dark night is Cupid's day.'

'Virtue can see to do what virtue would

SA great deal of ingenious criticism has been bestow-Milton, in his Comus, might have been indebted to ed in endeavouring to ascertain the meaning of this Shakspeare:expression. Dr. Warburton thought that the run-away in question was the sun; but Mr. Heath has most completely disproved this opinion. Mr. Steevens consi. ders the passage as extremely elliptical, and regards the

By her own radiant light, though sun and moon
Were in the flat sea sunk.'

10 Civil is grave, solemn.

Jul. Ah me! what news! why dost thou wring, what a beast was I to chide at him.

When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?-
But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?
That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband:
Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring;
Your tributary drops belong to wo,

Jul. What devil art thou, that dost torment me Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.

This torture should be roar'd in dismal hell.
Hath Romeo slain himself? say thou but I,4
And that bare vowel I shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice :5
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 wo.
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 bedaub'd in blood,
All in gore blood; I swoonded at the sight.
Jul. O, break, my heart!-poor bankrupt, break

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?

1 These are terms of falconry. An unmanned hawk is one that is not brought to endure company. Bating is fluttering or beating the wings as striving to fly away. 2 Why here walk I, in the black brow of night. King John.

3 Milton had this speech in his thoughts when he wrote II Penseroso :

Hide me from day's garish eye.' Hence also Till civil-suited morn appear. Garish is gaudy, glittering.

4 In Shakspeare's time the affirmative particle ay was usually written I, and here it is necessary to retain the old speilling.

5 See what is said of the basilisk, King Henry VI. Part II. Act iii. Sc. 2.

In that word's death; no words can that wo sound.-O friar, the damned use that word in hell;
Where is my father, and my mother, nurse?
Nurse. Weeping and wailing over Tybalt's corse:
Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.
Jul. Wash they his wounds with tears? mine
shall be spent,

When theirs are dry, for Romeo's banishment.
Take up those cords:-Poor ropes, you are beguil'd,
Both you and I; for Romeo is exil'd:
He made you for a highway to my bed;
But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.
Come, cords; come, nurse; I'll to my wedding bed;
And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead.

Nurse. Hie to your chamber: I'll find Romeo
To comfort you :-I wot well where he is.
Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night;
I'll to him; he is hid at Laurence' cell.

Jul. O, find him! give this ring to my true knight,
And bid him come to take his last farewell.

[Exeunt. SCENE III. Friar Laurence's Cell. Enter FRIAR

LAURENCE and ROMEO.

Is my dear son with such sour company:
I bring thee tidings of the prince's doom.

Rom. What less than dooms-day is the prince's
doom?

Fri. A gentler judgment vanish'd from his lips,
Not body's death, but body's banishment.

Rom. Ha! banishment? be merciful, say-death:
For exile hath more terror in his look,
Much more than death: do not say-banishment.
Fri. Hence from Verona art thou banished:
Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.

Rom. There is no world without Verona walls,
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.

Hence-banished is banish'd from the world,
And world's exile is death :-then banishment
Is death misterm'd: calling death banishment,
Thou cut'st my head off with a golden axe,
And smil'st upon the stroke that murders me.

Fri. O, deadly sin! O, rude unthankfulness!
Thy fault our law calls death; but the kind prince,
Taking thy part, hath rush'd aside the law,
And turn'd that black word death to banishment:
This is dear mercy,' and thou seest it not.

Rom. 'Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven is here,
Where Juliet lives: and every cat and dog,
And little mouse, every unworthy thing,
Live here in heaven, and may look on her,
But Romeo may not.-More validity,"
More honourable state, more courtship lives
In carrion flies, than Romeo: they may seize
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand,
And steal immortal blessing from her lips;
Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,
Still blush as thinking their own kisses sin;
But Romeo may not; he is banished:

es may do this, when I from this must fly
They are free men, but I am banished.
And say'st thou yet, that exile is not death?
Hadst thou no poison mix'd, no sharp-ground knife,
No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean,
But-banished-to kill me; banished?

1 The quarto, 1537, reads 'This is mere mercy,' i. e absolute mercy.

Howlings attend it: How hast thou the heart,
Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,
A sin-absolver, and my friend profess'd,
To mangle me with that word-banishment?
Fri. Thou fond mad man, hear me but speak a

word.

Rom. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.
Fri. I'll give thee armour to keep off that word;
Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy,4
To comfort thee, though thou art banished.
Rom. Yet banished?-Hang up philosophy!
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom:
It helps not, it prevails not, talk no more.
Fri. O, then I see that madmen have no ears.
Rom. How should they, when that wise men
have no eyes?

Fri. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate."
Rom. Thou canst not speak of what thou dost not
feel:

Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,
An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,
Doting like me, and like me banished,
Then might'st thou speak, then might'st thou tear
thy hair,

2 From this and the foregoing speech of Romeo, Dryden has borrowed in his beautiful paraphrase of Chaucer's Palamon and Arcite :

'Heaven is not but where Emily abides, And where she's absent all is hell besides.' 3 Validity is again employed to signify worth, value, in the first scene of King Lear. By courtship, courtesy, gourtly behaviour is meant.

And fall upon the ground, as I do now,
Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

self.

Fri. Arise; one knocks; good Romeo, hide thy-
[Knocking within.
Rom. Not I; unless the breath of heart-sick

groans,
Mistlike, infold me from the search of eyes.

[Knocking. Fri. Hark, how they knock!-Who's there?— Romeo, arise;

Thou wilt be taken :-Stay awhile: stand up;
[Knocking.
Run to my study:-By and by :-God's will!
What wilfulness is this?--I come, I come.

[Knocking. Who knocks so hard? whence come you? what's your will?

Nurse. [Within.] Let me come in, and you shall
know my errand;

I come from Lady Juliet.
Fri.

Welcome, then.

Nurse. O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and | And bid her hasten all the house to bed,

O' Thursday let it be ;-o' Thursday, tell her,
She shall be married to this noble earl:—
Will you be ready? do you like this haste?
We'll keep no great ado;-a friend, or two:-
For hark you, Tybalt being slain so late,
It may be thought we held him carelessly,
Being our kinsman, if we revel much:
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-

3 So in King Richard II. Act v. Sc. 3:

And thy abundant goodness shall excuse This deadly blot in thy digressing son.' And in Barnabe Riche's Farewell:- Knowing that you should otherwise have used me than you have, you should have digressed, and swerved from your kind

4 To understand the force of this allusion, it should be remembered that the ancient English soldiers, using match-locks, instead of locks with flints, as at present, were obliged to carry a lighted match hanging at their belts, very near to the wooden flask in which they car ried their powder. The same allusion occurs in Hu mour's Ordinary, an old collection of English Epigrams: "When she his flask and touch-box set on fire, And till this hour the burning is not out.'

5 And thou torn to pieces with thine own weapons. 6 Much of this speech has also been added since the first edition.

7 The whole of your fortune depends on this.

8 Desperate means only bold, adventurous, as if he had said in the vulgar phrase, I will speak a bold word, and venture to promise you my daughter-Johnson

'Witness this desperate tender of mine honour.” Weakest goes to the Wall, 1600.

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.'

[Exeunt.

3 SCENE IV. Juliet's Chamber. Enter ROMEO
and JULIET.

Jul. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree :3
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

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 daylight, 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 gone.
Rom. Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say, yon gray is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads;
I have more care to stay, than will to go;-
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.--
How is't, my soul? let's talk, it is not day.

Jul. It is, it is, hie hence, be gone, away:
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords, and unpleasing sharps.
Some say, the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us:

Some say,

the lark and loathed toad chang'd eyes;"
O, now I would they had chang'd voices too!
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunts-up to the day.
O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.
Rom. More light and light ?-more dark and dark

our woes.

1 The latter part of this scene is a good deal varied from the first quarto.

2 The stage direction in the first edition is, Enter Romeo and Juliet at à 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 Malone's Account of the Ancient Theatres, in vol. iii. of Boswell's e-lition of Shakspeare. 3 This is not merely a poetical supposition. It is observable that the nightingale, if undisturbed, sits and sings upon the same tree for many weeks together. [As almost all birds sing only during the period of incubation, this may be accounted for; the male bird sings near where the female is sitting.] What Eustathius has observed relative to a fig-tree mentioned by Homer, in his twelfth Odyssey, may be applied to the passage before 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.

4 Compare Sidney's Arcadia, 13th edition, p. 109: 'The moon, then full, (not thinking scorn to be a torchbearer to such beauty,) guided her steps.' 5 The quarto, 1597, reads:

Then stay awhile, thou shalt not go [so] soon.' The succeeding speech, I think, (says Mr. Boswell,) is better in the same copy:

'Let me stay here, let me be ta'en, and die;
If thou wilt have it so, I am content.
I'll say yon gray is not the morning's eye,
It is the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
I'll say it is the nightingale that beats
The vaulty heaven so far above our heads,
And not the lark, the messenger of morn;

Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so-
What says my love? let's talk, 'tis not yet day.'

6 Adivision, in music, is a variation in melody upon

some given fundamental harmony.

grataque feminis

Imbelli cithara carmina divides."

ber:

The day is broke; be wary, look about.

[Exit Nurse. Jul. Then, window, let day in, and let life out. Rom. Farewell, farewell! one kiss, and I'll descend. [ROMEO descends.

Jul. Art thou gone so? my love! my lord! my
friend!

I must hear from thee every day i' the hour,
For in a minute there are many days:
O! by this count I shall be much in years,"
Ere I again behold my Romeo.

Rom. Farewell! I will omit no opportunity
That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
Jul. O, think'st thou, we shall ever meet again?
Rom. I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve
For sweet discourses in our time to come.

Jul. O, God! I have an ill-divining soul.10
Methinks, I see thee, now thou art below,
As one dead in the bottom of a tomb:
Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale.
Rom. And trust me, love, in my eye so do you:
Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu! adieu!

[Exit ROMEO.
Jul. O, fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle :
If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him
That is renown'd for faith? Be fickle, fortune;
For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long,
But send him back.

La. Cap. [Within.] Ho, daughter! are you up?
Jul. Who is't that calls? is it my lady mother?
Is she not down so late, or up so early?
What unaccustom'd cause procures
Enter LADY CAPULET
La. Cap. Why, how now, Juliet?

Jul.

her hither?

Madam, I am not well. La. Cap. Evermore weeping for your cousin's

death?

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.

7 The toad having very fine eyes, and the lark very ugly ones, was the occasion of a common saying, that the toad and the lurk had changed eyes. This tradition was expressed in a rustic rhyme:

To heav'n I'd fly,

But that the toad beguil'd me of mine eye.' The sense of the passage is, the lark, they say, has changed eyes with the toad, and now I would they had changed voices too, since the lark's song serves but to separate us. The croak of the toad would have been no indication of the appearance of day, and consequently no signal for her lover's departure.

8 The hunt's up was originally a tune played to wake sportsmen, and call them together. It was a common burthen of hunting ballads. Puttenham says that one Gray grew into good estimation with the Duke of Somerset for making certain merry ballads, whereof one chiefly was the hunte is up, the hunte is up. One of these ballads is given by Mr. Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. ii. p. 192. According to Cotgrave, the Reveille or morning song to a new married woman, was called the hunt's up. So Drayton, in his Polyolbion :

But hunt's up to the morn, the feather'd sylvans sing.' And in his third Eclogue:--

9

Time plays the hunt's up to thy sleepy head.'
Illa ego quæ fueram te decedente puella,
Protinus ut redeas, facta videbor anus.'
Ovid, Epist. 1.

10 This miserable prescience of futurity I have always
regarded as a circumstance peculiarly beautiful. The
same kind of warning from the mind, Romeo seems to
have been conscious of on his going to the entertainment
at the house of Capulet:-

My mind misgives me,

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
From this night's revels.'

11 Procures for brings.

Steevens