Cap. Why, I am glad on't; this is well, - stand up: This is as't should be. Let me see the county: Jul. Nurse, will you go with me into my closet, Lady C. No, not till Thursday: there is time enough. Cap. Go, nurse, go with her. We'll to church [Exeunt JULIET and Nurse. Lady C. We shall be short in our provision to-morrow. 'Tis now near night. Cap. Tush! I will stir about, And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife. Go thou to Juliet; help to deck up her: I'll not to bed to-night;-let me alone; Against to-morrow. My heart is wondrous light, [Exeunt. SCENE III. JULIET'S Chamber. Enter JULIET and the Nurse. Jul. Ay, those attires are best: But, gentle nurse, I pray thee, leave me to myself to-night; For I have need of many orisons To move the heavens to smile upon my state, Which, well thou know'st, is cross and full of sin. Enter Lady CApulet. Lady C. What are you busy, ho? need you my help? Jul. No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries As are behoveful for our state to-morrow: So please you, let me now be left alone, And let the nurse this night sit up with you; Lady C. Good night: Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need. Jul. Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, What if this mixture do not work at all? No, no ; What if it be a poison, which the friar I fear, it is; and yet, methinks, it should not, 1 .. Daggers," says Gifford, "or, as they are commonly called, knives, were worn at all times by every woman in England; whether they were so in Italy, Shakespeare, I believe, never in quired, and I cannot tell." H. For he hath still been tried a holy man: I wake before the time that Romeo Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point! To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in The horrible conceit of death and night, Where, for these many hundred years, the bones 3 This line, found only in the quarto of 1597, is retained, as making the sense more complete. We subjoin the whole of this speech as it stands in the first quarto, that the reader may observe with what growth of power it was afterwards worked out by the Poet: 66 Farewell: God knows when we shall meet again Ab! 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. Our former marriage? Ah! I wrong him much; I will not entertain so bad a thought. What if I should be stifled in the tomb? H. This idea was probably suggested to the Poet by his native place. The charnel at Stratford-upon-Avon is a very arge one, Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, So early waking, what with loathsome smells, -- And madly play with my forefathers' joints, [She throws herself on the Bed. and perhaps contains a greater number of bones than are to be found in any other repository of the same kind in England. 4«The mandrake," says Thomas Newton in his Herbal, "has been idly represented as a creature having life, and engendered under the earth of the seed of some dead person that hath beene convicted and put to death for some felonie or murther, and that they had the same in such dampish and funerall places where the saide convicted persons were buried." So in Webster's Duchess of Malfy, 1623: "I have this night digg'd up a mandrake, and am grown mad with it." See 2 Henry VI., Act iii. sc. 2, note 14. 5 Such is the closing line of this speech in the quarto of 1597. The other old copies give it thus: Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, here's drink: I drink to thee;" where a stage-direction "[Here drink.] has evidently got misprinted as a part of the text. The oldest reading is retained by all modern editors except Knight, Collier, and Verplanck.-Coleridge remarks upon the passage thus: "Shakespeare provides for the finest decencies. It would have been too bold a thing for a girl of fifteen;- but she swallows the draught in a fit of fright." Schlegel has the same thought: "Her imagination falls into an uproar, tender brain of the maiden, -so many terrors bewilder the and she drinks off the cup in a SCENE IV. CAPULET'S Hall. Enter Lady CAPULET and the Nurse. Lady C. Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse. Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.' Enter CAPULET. [Exit. Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow'd, The curfew bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock. -- Spare not for cost. Lady C. Go, go, you cot-quean, go; Get you to bed: 'faith, you'll be sick to-morrow For this night's watching.2 Cap. No, not a whit: What! I have watch'd ere now All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick. Lady C. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time; But I will watch you from such watching now. [Exit Lady CAPULET tumult, to drain which with composure would have evinced a too masculine resolvedness." The room where the pastry was made. H 2 The old copies assign this speech to the Nurse It was transferred to Lady Capulet at the suggestion of Z. Jackson, who pertinently asks, -"Can we imagine that a nurse would take so great a liberty with her master, as to call him a cot-quean, and order him to bed?" Besides, the Nurse has just been sent forth by her mistress to 64 fetch more spices."— Cot-quean was a term for a man who busied himself overmuch in women's affairs: so used down to the time of Addison, as appears from the Spectator, No. 482. H. The animal called the mouse-hunt is the martin, which, being |