Nurse!-What should she do here?

My dismal scene I needs must act alone.-
Come, phial.—

What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married then to-morrow morning? a
No, no;-this shall forbid it :-lie thou there.—
[Laying down a dagger.
What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead;
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear, it is: and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man :
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,

The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,-

3

As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,

Where, for these many hundred years, the bones

Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies fest'ring in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort ;-
Alack, alack! it is not like, that I,
So early waking,—what with loathsome smells;
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,

a This speech of Juliet, like many others of the great passages throughout the play, received the most careful elaboration and the most minute touching. In the first edition it occupies only eighteen lines; it extends to fortyfive in the "amended" edition of 1599. And yet it was a recent custom to make a patchwork of the two. This line in (4) is thus:

"Must I of force be married to the county?" The line which follows lower down

"I will not entertain so bad a thought "Steevens says he has recovered from the quarto. We print the eighteen lines of the original, that the reader may see with what consummate skill the author's corrections have been made.

Farewell, God knows when we shall meet again.
Ah, I do take a fearful thing in hand.
What if this potion should not work at all,
Must I of force be married to the county?
This shall forbid it. Knife, lie thou there.
What if the friar should give me this drink
To poison me, for fear I should disclose

Our former marriage? Ah, I wrong him much,
He is a holy and religious man:

I will not entertain so bad a thought.
What if I should be stifled in the tomb ?
Awake an hour before the appointed time:
Ah, then I fear I shall be lunatic:
And playing with my dead forefathers' bones,
Dash out my frantic brains. Methinks I see
My cousin Tybalt weltering in his blood,
Seeking for Romeo: Stay, Tybalt, stay.
Romeo I come, this do I drink to thee."

That living mortals, hearing them, run mad ;—
O! if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefathers' joints ?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks, I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point:-Stay, Tybalt, stay !—
Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, I drink to thee."
[She throws herself on the bed.
SCENE IV.-Capulet's Hall.
Enter Lady CAPULET and NURSE.
La. Cap. Hold, take these keys, and fetch
more spices, nurse.

Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.

Enter CAPULET.

Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock

hath crow'd.

The curfeu bell hath rung, 't is three o'clock :-
Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica :
Spare not for cost.

Nurse. Go, you cot-quean, go, Get you to bed; 'faith, you 'll be sick to-morrow For this night's watching.

Cap. No, not a whit; What! I have watch'd

ere now

All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick. La. Cap. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in

your time;

But I will watch you from such watching now. [Exeunt Lady CAPULET and Nurse. Cap. A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!-Now, fellow, What's there?

Enter Servants, with spils, logs, and baskets.♦
1 Serv. Things for the cook, sir; but I know
not what.

Cap. Make haste, make haste. [Exit 1 Serv.]
-Sirrah, fetch drier logs;

Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.

2 Serv. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs, And never trouble Peter for the matter. [Exit. Cap. 'Mass, and well said; A merry whoreson! ha,

The ordinary reading is that of (4):

"Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee."

In the subsequent quartos, and the folio, we have, "Romeo, Romeo, Romeo!-here's drink-I drink to thee." We think with Mr. Dyce that "here's drink," was the stagedirection of here drink. We do not adopt the first reading, because "I come" would seem to imply that Romeo was dead, and Juliet was about to meet him in another world. 61

(Marry, and amen!) how sound is she asleep!
I must needs wake her:-Madam, madam, ma-
dam!

Ay, let the county take you in your bed;
He'll fright you up, i' faith.-Will it not be ?
What, dress'd! and in your clothes! and down
again!

I must needs wake you: Lady! lady! lady!
Alas! alas-Help! help! my lady's dead!-
O, well-a-day, that ever I was born!—
Some aqua-vitæ, ho!--my lord! my lady!

Enter Lady CAPULET.

La. Cap. What noise is here?
Nurse.
O lamentable day!
La. Cap. What is the matter?
Nurse.
Look, look! O heavy day!
La. Cap. O me, O me!-my child, my only
life,

Revive, look up, or I will die with thee!—
Help, help!-call help.

Enter CAPULET.

Cap. For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord is come.

Nurse. She's dead, deceas'd, she's dead; alack the day!

La. Cap. Alack the day! she's dead, she's dead, she's dead.

Cap. Ha! let me see her :-Out, alas! she's cold;

Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;
Life and these lips have long been separated:
Death lies on her, like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field."
Nurse. O lamentable day!
La. Cap.
O woeful time!
Cap. Death, that hath ta'en her hence to
make me wail,

Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak.

Enter Friar LAURENCE and PARIS, with
Musicians.

Fri. Come, is the bride ready to go to church?
Cap. Ready to go, but never to return:
O son, the night before thy wedding-day
Hath death lain with thy wife :-There she lies,
Flower as she was, deflowered by him.
Death is my son-in-law, death is my heir;
My daughter he hath wedded! I will die,
And leave him all; life leaving, all is death's.
Par. Have I thought long to see this morn-
ing's face,

And doth it give me such a sight as this?

La. Cap. Accurs'd, unhappy, wretched, hateful day!

Most miserable hour, that e'er time saw
In lasting labour of his pilgrimage!
But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,
But one thing to rejoice and solace in,
And cruel death hath catch'd it from my sight.
Nurse. O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day!
Most lamentable day! most woeful day,
That ever, ever, I did yet behold!

O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!
Never was seen so black a day as this:
O woeful day, O woeful day!

Par. Beguil'd, divorced, wronged, spited, slain!
Most detestable death, by thee beguil❜d,
By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown !—
O love! O life! not life, but love in death!

a In the original we want these four exquisite lines. And yet the variorum editors have thrust in the single line which they found in (4) :—

"Accursed time, unfortunate old man."

b The original text is life, living, all is death's. The substitution of life leaving was Capell's.

Cap. Despis'd, distressed, hated, martyr'd,

kill'd!

Uncomfortable time! why cam'st thou now
To murder, murder our solemnity?

O child! O child!-my soul, and not my child!-
Dead art thou!-alack! my child is dead!
And, with my child, my joys are buried!

Fri. Peace, ho, for shame! confusion's cure
lives not

In these confusions. Heaven and yourself Had part in this fair maid; now heaven hath all,

And all the better is it for the maid:

Your part in her you could not keep from death;

But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.
The most you sought was her promotion;
For 't was your heaven, she should be advanc'd :
And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc'd,
Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
O, in this love, you love your child so ill,
That you run mad, seeing that she is well:
She's not well married that lives married long;
But she's best married that dies married young.
Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary
On this fair corse; and, as the custom is,
In all her best array bear her to church:
For though some nature bids us all lament,
Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment.

อ

a Dump was not originally a burlesque term, but it generally implied somewhat sorrowful or mournful.

b I'll RE you, I'll FA you. Re and fa are the syllables, or names, given in solmization, or sol-faing to the sounds D and F in the musical scale.

c See Illustrations to this Act.

d Catling-a lute-string.

e (C), pratest.

Rebeck-the three-string'd violin.

A dull and dismal noise assail'd the ear,
A wail, a chant, louder and louder yet;
And now a strange fantastic troop appear'd!
Thronging, they came-as from the shades below;
All of a ghostly white! Oh! say,' I cried,
'Do not the living here bury the dead?

Do spirits come and fetch them? What are these,
That seem not of this world, and mock the day;
Each with a burning taper in his hand?'
'It is an ancient brotherhood thou seest.
Such their apparel. Through the long, long line,
Look where thou wilt, no likeness of a man;
The living mask'd, the dead alone uncover'd.
But mark'-And, lying on her funeral couch,
Like one asleep, her eyelids closed, her hands
Folded together on her modest breast,

As 't were her nightly posture, through the crowd
She came at last-and richly, gaily clad,
As for a birthday feast!"

2 SCENE II." Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks."

The "cunning cook," in the time of Shakspere, was, as he is at present, a great personage. According to an entry in the books of the Stationers' Company for 1560, the preacher was paid six shillings and two pence for his labour; the minstrel twelve shillings; and the cook fifteen shillings. The rela tive scale of estimation for theology, poetry, and gastronomy, has not been much altered during three centuries, either in the city generally, or in the Company which represents the city's literature. TRAGEDIES.-VOL. I. F

Ben Jonson has described a master cook in his gorgeous style :-

"A master cook! why, he is the man of men,
For a professor; he designs, he draws,

He paints, he carves, he builds, he fortifies,
Makes citadels of curious fowl and fish.

Some he dry-ditches, some moats round with broths,
Mounts marrow-bones, cuts fifty angled custards,
Rears bulwark pies; and, for bis outer works,
He raiseth ramparts of immortal crust,
And teacheth all the tactics at one dinner-
What ranks, what files, to put his dishes in,
The whole art military! Then he knows
The influence of the stars upon his meats,
And all their seasons, tempers, qualities,
And so to fit his relishes and sauces.
He has nature in a pot, 'bove all the chemists,
Or bare-breech'd brethren of the rosy cross.
He is an architect, an engineer,

A soldier, a physician, a philosopher,
A general mathematician."

Old Capulet, in his exuberant spirits at his daughter's approaching marriage, calls for "twenty" of these artists. The critics think this too large a number. Ritson says, with wonderful simplicity, "Either Capulet had altered his mind strangely, or our author forgot what he had just made him tell us." This is, indeed, to understand a poet with admirable exactness. The passage is entirely in keeping with Shakspere's habit of hitting off a character almost by a word. Capulet is evidently a man of ostentation; but his ostentation, as is most generally the case, is covered with a thin veil of affected indifference. In the first Act he says to his guests,

"We have a trifling foolish banquet toward." In the third Act, when he settles the day of Paris' marriage, he just hints,

"We'll keep no great ado-a friend or two." But Shakspere knew that these indications of the "pride which apes humility" were not inconsistent with the "twenty cooks," the regret that

"We shall be much unfurnish'd for this time,"

and the solicitude expressed in

"Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica."

Steevens turns up his nose aristocratically at Shakspere, for imputing "to an Italian nobleman and his lady all the petty solicitudes of a private house, concerning a provincial entertainment;" and he adds, very grandly, "To such a bustle our author might have been witness at home; but the like anxieties could not well have occurred in the family of Capulet." Steevens had not well read the history of society, either in Italy or in England, to have fallen into the mistake of believing that the great were exempt from such "anxieties." The baron's lady overlooked the baron's kitchen from her private chamber; and the still-room and the spicery not unfrequently occupied a large portion of her attention.

65