Where shall we dine?-O me! here? What fray was Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here's much to do with hate, but more with love:Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! Why then, O brawling love! &c.] Of these lines neither the sense nor occasion is very evident. He is not yet in love with an enemy; and to love one and hate another is no such uncommon state, as can deserve all this toil of antithesis. JOHNSON. Had Dr. Johnson attended to the letter of invitation in the next scene, he would have found that Rosaline was niece to Capulet. ANONYMUS. Every sonnetteer characterises Love by contrarieties. Watson begins one of his canzonets: "Love is a sowre delight, a sugred griefe, Turberville makes Reason harangue against it in the same manner: "A fierie frost, a flame that frozen is with ise! "A heavie burden light to beare! A vertue fraughte with vice!" &c. Immediately from The Romaunt of the Rose: "Loue it is an hateful pees, "A free aquitaunce without reles,— "An heavie burthen light to beare, "A wicked wawe awaie to weare; "And health full of maladie, "A laughter that is weping aie, "Rest that trauaileth night and daie," &c. This kind of antithesis was very much the taste of the Provençal and Italian poets; perhaps it might be hinted by the ode of Sappho preserved by Longinus. Petrarch is full of it: "Pace non trovo, e non hó da far guerra; "E temo, e spero, e ardo, e son un ghiaccio; "E nulla stringo, e tutto'l mondo abbraccio." &c. Sonnet 105. Sir Thomas Wyat gives a translation of this sonnet, without any notice of the original, under the title of Description of the contrarious Passions in a Louer, amongst the Songes and Sonnettes, by the Earle of Surrey, and others, 1574. FARMER. O any thing, of nothing first create! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! This love feel I, that feel no love in this. BEN. No, coz, I rather weep. ROM. Good heart, at what? At thy good heart's oppression. ROM. Why, such is love's transgression.*— Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast; Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest With more of thine: this love, that thou hast shown, Doth add more grief to too much of mine own. Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs; Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears: 6 5 Why, such is love's transgression.] Such is the consequence of unskilful and mistaken kindness. JOHNSON. 5 Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;] The author may mean being purged of smoke, but it is perhaps a meaning never given to the word in any other place. I would rather read, Being urg'd, a fire sparkling-. Being excited and inforced. To urge the fire is the technical term. JOHNSON. Dr. Akenside in his Hymn to Cheerfulness, has the same expression: "Haste, light the tapers, urge the fire, "And bid the joyless day retire." REED. Again, in Chapman's version of the 21st Iliad: 6 "And as a caldron, under put with store of fire- Being vex'd, &c.] As this line stands single, it is likely that the foregoing or following line that rhymed to it is lost. JOHNSON. What is it else? a madness most discreet, BEN. Soft, I will go along; An if you leave me so, you do me wrong. [Going. ROM. Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here; This is not Romeo, he's some other where. BEN. Tell me in sadness," who she is you love. ROM. What, shall I groan, and tell thee? Groan? why, no; Ben. But sadly tell me, who. ROM. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will:Ah, word ill urg'd to one that is so ill! In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman. BEN. I aim'd so near, when I suppos'd you lov'd. ROM. A right good marks-man!—And she's fair I love. BEN. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit. hit With Cupid's arrow, she hath Dian's wit; 8 And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd, It does not seem necessary to suppose any line lost. In the former speech about love's contrarieties, there are several lines which have no other to rhyme with them; as also in the following, about Rosaline's chastity. STEEVENS. Tell me in sadness,] That is, tell me gravely, tell me in seriousness. JOHNSON. See Vol. VI. p. 35, n. 9. MALONE. • And, in strong proof &c.] As this play was written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, I cannot help regarding these speeches of Romeo as an oblique compliment to her majesty, who was not liable to be displeased at hearing her chastity praised after she was She will not stay the siege of loving terms, That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store.' suspected to have lost it, or her beauty commended in the 67th year of her age, though she never possessed any when she was young. Her declaration that she would continue unmarried, increases the probability of the present supposition. STEEVENS. -in strong proof-] In chastity of proof, as we say in armour of proof. JOHNSON. She will not stay the siege of loving terms,] So, in our author's Venus and Adonis: 1 with beauty dies her store.] "Remove your siege from my unyielding heart; "To love's alarm it will not ope the gate." MALONE. Mr. Theobald reads, "With her dies beauty's store;" and is followed by the two succeeding editors. I have replaced the old reading, because I think it at least as plausible as the correction. She is rich, says he, in beauty, and only poor in being subject to the lot of humanity, that her store, or riches, can be destroyed by death, who shall, by the same blow, put an end to beauty. JOHNSON. Mr. Theobald's alteration may be countenanced by the following passage in Swetnam Arraign'd, a comedy, 1620: "Nature now shall boast no more "Of the riches of her store; "All the stock of beauty dies." Again, in the 14th Sonnet of Shakspeare: "Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date." Again, in Massinger's Virgin-Martyr: with her dies "The abstract of all sweetness that's in woman." STEEVENS, Yet perhaps the present reading may be right, and Romeo means to say, in his quaint jargon, That she is poor, because she leaves no part of her store behind her, as with her all beauty will die. M. MASON. press; Words are sometimes shuffled out of their places at the but that they should be at once transposed and corrupted, is highly improbable. I have no doubt that the old copies are right. What is it else? a madness most discreet, BEN. Soft, I will go along; An if you leave me so, you do me wrong. [Going. ROM. Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here; This is not Romeo, he's some other where. BEN. Tell me in sadness," who she is you love. ROM. What, shall I groan, and tell thee? BEN. But sadly tell me, who. Groan? why, no; ROM. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will:Ah, word ill urg'd to one that is so ill!— In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman. BEN. I aim'd so near, when I suppos'd you lov❜d. ROM. A right good marks-man!-And she's fair I love. BEN. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit. ROM. Well, in that hit, you miss: she'll not be hit 8 With Cupid's arrow, she hath Dian's wit; It does not seem necessary to suppose any line lost. In the former speech about love's contrarieties, there are several lines which have no other to rhyme with them; as also in the following, about Rosaline's chastity. STEEVENS. Tell me in sadness,] That is, tell me gravely, tell me in seriousness. JOHNSON. See Vol. VI. p. 35, n. 9. MALONE. • And, in strong proof &c.] As this play was written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, I cannot help regarding these speeches of Romeo as an oblique compliment to her majesty, who was not liable to be displeased at hearing her chastity praised after she was |