1861. dec. 24 Sharistan fund. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by RICHARD GRANT WHITE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. “AN EXCELLENT conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Iuliet. As it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon his Seruants. LONDON, Printed by Iohn Danter." 1597. 4to. 39 leaves. "THE MOST Excellent and lamentable Tragedie, of Romeo and Iuliet. Newly corrected, augmented, and amended: As it hath bene sundry times publiquely acted, by the right Honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. LONDON Printed by Thomas Creede, for Cuthbert Burby, and are to be sold at his shop neare the Exchange." 1599. 4to. 46 leaves. The same. "As it hath beene sundrie times publiquely Acted, by the Kings Maiesties Seruants at the Globe. Printed for Iohn Smethwick, and are to be sold at his Shop in Saint Dunstanes Church-yard, in Fleetestreete vnder the Dyall.” 1609. 4to. 46 leaves. Romeo and Juliet occupies twenty-five pages in the folio of 1623, viz. from p. 53 to p. 79, inclusive, in the division of Tragedies. It is not divided into Acts and Scenes, and is without a list of Dramatis Personæ. (4) ROMEO AND JULIET. INTRODUCTION. FROM what hidden recesses of the past the story of Romeo and Juliet is derived, and through how many strata it had filtered before it burst forth from Shakespeare's mind a spring of living beauty, it is hardly worth the trouble very curiously to inquire. The incidents of the tale are based upon political and social conditions which existed in Italy in the first half of the fourteenth century; and to that period they are referred by Luigi da Porto, one of its earliest relators, who in the title page of his book assigns the death of the lovers to the time of Bartholomeo della Scala, and by the traditions of Verona, which limit that event more exactly to the year 1303, a time when the family called Della Scala did rule that city.* Some of the leading incidents of the story- the secret marriage, the banishment of the husband, the proposal of second nuptials, and the bride's recourse to a sleeping potion were originally embodied, as far as we * Da Porto was a gentleman of Vicenza, who was born in 1485, and died in 1529. The title of the first edition of his book, which is dateless, is, "Istoria nouellamente ritrouata di due nobili amanti: con la loro pietosa morte interuenuta già nella città di Verona, nel tempo del signor Bartholomeo della Scala. Venezia, per Benedetto di Bendoni."- A second edition was published in 1535. In the brief introduction of his novel Da Porto professes to have learned the history of Romeo and Juliet from a Veronese archer named Peregrino, who, in his turn, had heard his father tell it. But, according to the novelist, his informant doubted the truth of the story, because he had read in some chronicle that the Capelletti and Montecchi were of the same faction. Whether Peregrino is a fictitious character or not, the doubt is quite surely Da Porto's; for in his day archers did not read chronicles. That the Capelletti and Montecchi (or Monticoli) were at deadly variance seems, however, to be true. See Alessandro Torri's most thoroughly edited edition of Da Porto's novel, 8vo., Pisa, 1831, pp. xiv.-xviii. 56-63, and, also, Su la pietosa morte di Giulia Cappelletti e Romeo Montecchi Lettere Critiche de Filippo Scolari, 8vo., Livorno, 1831, pp. 7, 8, and passim. know, in the twenty-third novel of Massucio's collection, published at Naples in 1476. But Da Porto's narrative — in which the Capelletti and Montecchi first appear; in which Verona is first made the scene, and its civil broils the disastrous element, of the tragedy; in which the lovers are first called Romeo and Giulietta, and have their first meeting at a feast given by Giulietta's father, their second in his garden, and their last in the tomb of her ancestors; and in which Mercutio, Tibaldo, and the Nurse first take part in the action- is justly regarded as the original relation of what the whole world knows as the story of Romeo and Juliet. That narrative corresponds with Shakespeare's play, except as to the catastrophe, in which Da Porto represents Juliet as waking from her trance before the death of Romeo. But Shakespeare did not go to Da Porto for his story. After his usual manner, he took what lay nearer at hand. The loves of Romeo and Juliet, with their tragic end, as Da Porto had related them, were retold by Matteo Bandello in the ninth novel of the second part of his collection, published in 1554; † and Bandello's version was translated into French (with a variation in the catastrophe before alluded to, and of which more hereafter) by Pierre Boisteau, whose translation forms a part of a book known as Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques. Boisteau's French version was translated into English, and published by William Paynter as part of the second volume of his Palace of Pleasure, which appeared in 1567. Five years previous to this date, however, the story of Romeo and Juliet had been given to the English public in the form of a poem by Arthur Brooke.§ * See Dunlop's History of Fiction, Vol. II. p. 93, Philad. ed. I cannot regard Douce's endeavor (Illustrations of Shakespeare, Vol. II. p. 108) to trace this story to the Greek romance of Xenophon of Ephesus as other than an ingenious perversion of recondite learning. "La prima (la seconda et la terza) parte de le novelle del Bandello. Lucca, per il Burdrago." 1554. 3 vols. 4to. That Paynter translated the translation of Boisteau I am able to state only on the authority of Steevens' assertion, repeated by Malone and Mr. Collier. For, although Masuccio's, Da Porto's, and Bandello's novels are at my hand, I have not met with a copy of Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques; and I can find no notice of its publication at an earlier date than 1580, under the following title: "Histoires tragiques extraites des œuvres italiennes de Bandel, et mises en langue françoise; les six 1res par P. Boiastuau surnommé Launay, et les suivantes par Fr. de Belleforest. Paris, Jean de Bordeaux. 1580." 7 vols. 16mo. Unless there was an earlier edition either of Belleforest's collection or Boisteau's six Histoires by themselves, (of which I can discover no evidence,) here is a conflict of dates. ? "The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Iuliet, written first in Italian by |