Where fhall we dine?-O me!-What fray was here? 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!3 O loving hate! 3 Why then, O brawling love! &c.] Of thefe lines neither the fenfe nor occafion is very evident. He is not yet in love with an enemy; and to love one and hate another is no fuch uncommon ftate, as can deserve all this toil of antithefis. JOHNSON. Had Dr. Johnfon attended to the letter of invitation in the next fcene, he would have found that Rofaline was niece to Capulet. ANONYMUS. Every fonnetteer characterises Love by contrarieties. Watson begins one of his canzonets: "Love is a fowre delight, a fugred griefe, "A living death, an ever-dying life," &c. Turberville makes Reafon harangue against it in the fame manner: "A fierie froft, 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 Rofe: "A free aquitaunce without reles, "A laughter that is weping aie, "Reft that trauaileth night and daie," &c. This kind of antithefis was very much the tafte of the Provençal and Italian poets; perhaps it might be hinted by the ode of Sappho preferved by Longinus. Petrarch is full of it: "Pace non trovo, e non hó da far guerra; "E temo, e fpero, e ardo, e fon un ghiaccio; "E nulla ftringo, e tutto'l mondo abbraccio." &c. Sonnet 105. Sir Thomas Wyat gives a tranflation of this fonnet, without any notice of the original, under the title of Defcription of the contrarious Paffions 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, fick health! Still-waking fleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Doft thou not laugh? BEN. No, coz, I rather weep. ROM. Good heart, at what? At thy good heart's oppreffion. ROM. Why, fuch is love's tranfgreffion.4Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breaft; Which thou wilt propagate, to have it preft With more of thine: this love, that thou haft fhown, Doth add more grief to too much of mine own. Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of fighs; Being purg'd, a fire fparkling in lovers' eyes; 5 Being vex'd, a fea nourish'd with lovers' tears: 4 Why, fuch is love's tranfgreffion.] Such is the confequence of unskilful and mistaken kindness. JOHNSON. 5 Being purg'd, a fire fparkling in lovers' eyes;] The author may mean being purged of fmoke, but it is perhaps a meaning never given to the word in any other place. I would rather read, Being urg'd, a fire fparkling-. Being excited and inforced. To urge the fire is the technical term. JOHNSON. Dr. Akenfide in his Hymn to Cheerfulness, has the fame expreffion : "Hafte, light the tapers, urge the fire, "And bid the joyless day retire." REED, Again, in Chapman's verfion of the 21ft Iliad: "And as a caldron, under put with store of fire- • Being vex'd, &c.] As this line ftands fingle, it is likely that the foregoing or following line that rhymed to it is loft. JOHNSON. What is it elfe? a madness moft difcreet, [Going: BEN. BEN. Tell me in fadness," who she is you But fadly tell me, who, love. Groan? why, no; ROM. Bid a fick man in sadness make his will: Ah, word ill urg'd to one that is fo ill! In fadness, coufin, I do love a woman. BEN. I aim'd so near, when I fuppos'd you lov'd. BEN. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit. With Cupid's arrow, the hath Dian's wit; And, in ftrong proof of chastity well arm'd, It does not feem neceffary to fuppofe any line loft. In the former fpeech about love's contrarieties, there are several lines which have no other to rhyme with them; as alfo in the following, about Rosaline's chaftity. STEEVENS. "Tell me in fadnefs,] That is, tell me gravely, tell me in ferioufnefs. JOHNSON. See Vol. VI. p. 35, n. 9. MALONE. And, in ftrong 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 majefty, who was not liable to be displeased at hearing her chastity praised after she was She will not stay the fiege of loving terms, That, when the dies, with beauty dies her store.' fufpected to have loft it, or her beauty commended in the 67th year of her age, though the never poffeffed any when the was young. Her declaration that he would continue unmarried, increases the probability of the present fuppofition. STEEVENS. -in ftrong proof-] In chastity of proof, as we say in armour of proof. JOHNSON. She will not ftay the fiege of loving terms,] So, in our author's Venus and Adonis : "Remove your fiege from my unyielding heart; MALONE. with beauty dies her flore.] Mr. Theobald reads, "With her dies beauty's Store ;" and is followed by the two fucceeding editors. I have replaced the old reading, because I think it at least as plaufible as the correction. She is rich, fays he, in beauty, and only poor in being fubject to the lot of humanity, that her flore, or riches, can be deftroyed by death, who fhall, by the fame blow, put an end to beauty. JOHNSON. Mr. Theobald's alteration may be countenanced by the following paffage in Swetnam Arraign'd, a comedy, 1620: "Nature now fhall boaft no more "Of the riches of her ftore; Again, in the 14th Sonnet of Shakspeare: Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date." Again, in Maffinger's Virgin-Martyr: with her dies "The abstract of all sweetness that's in woman." STEEVENS. Yet perhaps the prefent reading may be right, and Romeo means to fay, in his quaint jargon, That the is poor, because the leaves no part of her ftore behind her, as with her all beauty will die. M. MASON. Words are fometimes fhuffled out of their places at the prefs; ~ but that they fhould be at once tranfpofed and corrupted, is highly improbable. I have no doubt that the old copies are right. BEN. Then the hath fworn, that fhe will ftill live chafte? ROM. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge wafte;2 For beauty, ftarv'd with her severity, BEN. Be rul'd by me, forget to think of her. She is rich in beauty; and poor in this circumstance alone, that with her, beauty will expire; her fiore of wealth [which the poet has already faid was the fairness of her perfon,] will not be tranfmitted to pofterity, inafmuch as the will" lead her graces to the grave, and leave the world no copy." MALONE. 2 She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste ;] So, in our autho: firft Sonnet: "And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.” 3 For beauty, fiarv'd with her feverity, MALONE. Cuts beauty off from all pofterity.] So, in our author's third Sonnet : "Or who is he fo fond will be the tomb "Of his felf-love, to stop pofterity ?" Again, in his Venus and Adonis: 4 "What is thy body but a fwallowing grave, Seeming to bury that pofterity, "Which by the rights of time thou need'st must have!" MALONE. wifely too fair, &c.] There is in her too much fan&timonious wisdom united with beauty, which induces her to continue chafte with the hopes of attaining heavenly blifs. MALONE. None of the following fpeeches of this fcene are in the first edition of 1597. POPE. 5 Do I live dead,] So, Richard the Third : 66 now they kill me with a living death." See Vol. XIV. p. 291, n. 2. MALONE. |