FRI. Holy Saint Francis! what a change is here! Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline! Women may fall, when there's no strength in men. To lay one in, another out to have. Not in a grave, ROM. I pray thee, chide not: she, whom I love now §, Doth grace for grace, and love for love allow; FRI. O, she knew well, Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell 9. Quarto A, of love. + Quarto B, Thy groans yet ringing in my ancient ears. Quarto A, If ever thou wert thus, and these woes thine. § Quarto A, I pray thee, chide me not; her I love now. 9- AND could not spell.] Thus the quarto 1597. The subsequent ancient copies all have "Thy love did read by rote that could not spell." I mention these minute variations only to show, what I have so often urged, the very high value of first editions. MALONE. For this alliance may so happy prove, To turn your households' rancour to pure love 1. ROM. O, let us hence; I stand on sudden haste 2. FRI. Wisely, and slow; They stumble, that run fast. SCENE IV. A Street. Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO. [Exeunt. MER. Where the devil should this Romeo be * ?— Came he not home to-night? BEN. Not to his father's; I spoke with his man. MER. Ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, Torments him so, that he will sure run mad. BEN. Romeo will answer it. MER. Any man, that can write, may answer a letter. BEN. Nay, he will answer the letter's master, how he dares, being dared. MER. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! stabbed with a white wench's black eye; shot thorough the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft 3 And is he a man to encounter Tybalt ? Quarto A, Why, what's become of Romeo. The two following lines were added since the first copy of this play. STEEVENS. 2 - I stand on SUDDEN HASTE.] i. e. it is of the utmost consequence for me to be hasty. So, in King Richard III.: 66 it stands me much upon, "To stop all hopes," &c. STEEVENS. 3 -the very PIN of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's BUTT-shaft ;] So, in Love's Labour's Lost: BEN. Why, what is Tybalt? MER. More than prince of cats, I can tell you O, he is the courageous captain of compliments". He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion'; rests me his minim rest 8, "Then she will get the upshot, by cleaving of the pin." See note on the word-pin, vol. iv. p. 351. A butt-shaft was the kind of arrow used in shooting at butts. STEEVENS. The allusion is to archery. The clout or white mark at which the arrows are directed, was fastened by a black pin placed in the center of it. To hit this was the highest ambition of every marksman. So, in No Wit like a Woman's, a comedy, by Middleton, 1657: "They have shot two arrows without heads, "They cannot stick i' the but yet: hold out, knight, "And I'll cleave the black pin i' the midst of the white." Again, in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, 1590: "For kings are clouts that every man shoots at, "Our crown the pin that thousands seek to cleave." MALONE. 4 More than prince of cats,] Tybert, the name given to the cat, in the story-book of Reynard the Fox. So, in Decker's Satiromastix, 1602: 66 66 WARBURTON tho' you were Tybert, the long-tail'd prince of cats." Again, in Have with You to Saffron Walden, &c. 1598: not Tibalt prince of cats," &c. STEEVENS. It appears to me that these speeches are improperly divided, and that they ought to run thus: "Ben. Why, what is Tybalt more than prince of cats? M. MASON. -I can tell you.] So the first quarto. These words are omitted in all the subsequent ancient copies. MALONE. 6-courageous captain of compliments.] A complete master of all the laws of ceremony, the principal man in the doctrine of punctilio. "A man of compliments, whom right and wrong "Have chose as umpire;" says our author, of Don Armado, the Spaniard, in Love's Labour's Lost. JOHNSON. 7-keeps time, distance, and proportion;] So Ben Jonson's Bobadil: "Note your distance, keep your due proportion of time." STEEVENS. 8 — his MINIM rest,] A minim is a note of slow time in musick, equal to two crotchets. MALONE. one, two, and the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house,-of the first and second cause1: Ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverso! the hay 2! BEN. The what? MER. The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents!-By 9- -the very butcher of a silk BUTTON,] So, in The Return from Parnassus, 1606: "Strikes his poinado at a button's breadth." 66 This phrase also occurs in the Fantaisies de Bruscambille, 1612, p. 181: -un coup de mousquet sans fourchette dans le sixiesme bouton-." STEEVENS. I a gentleman of the very first house,-of the first and second cause:] i. e. one who pretends to be at the head of his family, and quarrels by the book. See a note on As You Like It, Act V. Sc. VI. WARBURTON. Tybalt cannot pretend to be at the head of his family, as both Capulet and Romeo barred his claim to that elevation. "A gentleman of the first house;-of the first and second cause," is a gentleman of the first rank, of the first eminence among these duellists; and one who understands the whole science of quarrelling, and will tell you of the first cause, and the second cause, for which a man is to fight.-The Clown, in As You Like It, talks of the seventh cause in the same sense. STEEVENS. We find the first of these expressions in Fletcher's Women Pleas'd: 2 66 a gentleman's gone then; "A gentleman of the first house; there's the end of't." MALONE. -the hay!] All the terms of the modern fencing-school were originally Italian; the rapier, or small thrusting sword, being first used in Italy. The hay is the word hai, you have it, used when a thrust reaches the antagonist, from which our fencers, on the same occasion, without knowing, I suppose, any reason for it, cry out, ha! JOHNSON. 3-affecting FANTASTICOES;] Thus the oldest copy, and rightly. The modern editors read-phantasies. Nash, in his Have with You to Saffron Walden, 1596, says-" Follow some of these newfangled Galiardo's and Signor Fantastico's," &c. Again, in Decker's comedy of Old Fortunatus, 1600:-" I have danc'd with queens, dallied with ladies, worn strange attires, seen fantasticoes, convers'd with humorists," &c. STEEVENS. Jesu, a very good blade!—a very tall man!—a very good whore!-Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardonnez-moy's * 5, who stand so much on the new form, that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? O, their bons, their bons'! * Quarto A, pardon-mees; quarto B and folio, pardons-mees. Fantasticoes is the reading of the first quarto, 1597; all the subsequent ancient copies read arbitrarily and corruptly-phantacies. MALOne. 4 Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire,] Humorously apostrophising his ancestors, whose sober times were unacquainted with the fopperies here complained of. WARBURTON. 5 -these PARDONNEZ-MOY'S,] Pardonnez-moi became the language of doubt or hesitation among men of the sword, when the point of honour was grown so delicate, that no other mode of contradiction would be endured. JOHNSON. 6 - stand so much on the NEW FORM, that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench ?] This conceit is lost, if the double meaning of the word form be not attended to. FARMER. A quibble on the two meanings of the word form occurs in Love's Labour's Lost, Act I. Sc. I.: " - sitting with her on the form, and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is, in manner and form following." STEEVENS. "Who stand so much on the new form," &c. Perhaps here is a further allusion. I have read that during the reign of large breeches (for which see Strype, Annals, v. i. Appendix, p. 78, and v. ii. Appendix, N°. 17; also a note of Mr. Steevens's on Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. I.) it was necessary to cut away hollow places in the benches in the House of Commons, to make room for those monstrous protuberances, without which contrivance they who stood on the new form could not sit at ease in the old bench. BLAKEWAY. 7 O, their BONS, their BONS!] Mercutio is here ridiculing those Frenchified fantastical coxcombs whom he calls pardonnez-moi's: and therefore, I suspect here he meant to write French too. “O, their bon's! their bon's!" i. e. how ridiculous they make themselves in crying out, good, and being in ecstasies with every trifle; as he had just described them before: a very good blade!" &c. THEOBALD. The old copies read-O, their bones, their bones! Mr. Theobald's emendation is confirmed by a passage in Greene's Tu Quo |