Ben. Good morrow, cousin. Ben. But new struck nine. Is the day so young? Ah me! sad hours seem long. Was that my father that went hence so fast? Ben. It was.-What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours? Rom. Not having that, which, having, makes them short. Ben. In love? Rom. Out Ben. Of love? Rom. Out of her favor, where I am in love. Ben. Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof! Rom. Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still, Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will! 1 Where shall 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. O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Mishapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!— This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Dost thou not laugh? Ben. No, coz, I rather weep. Rom. Good heart, at what? Ben. At thy good heart's oppression. 1 i. e. should blindly and recklessly think he can surmount all obstacles to his will. 2 Every ancient sonnetteer characterized Love by contrarieties. Watson begins one of his canzonets "Love is a sowre delight, and sugred griefe, Turberville makes Reason harangue against it in the same manner :— "A fierie frost, a flame that frozen is with ise! A heavie burden light to beare! A vertue fraught with vice!" &c. Rom. Why, such is love's transgression.Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast; Which thou wilt propagate, to have it pressed With more of thine: this love, that thou hast shown, Doth add more grief to too much of mine own. Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; Being urged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears. What is it else? a madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet. Farewell, my coz. Ben. Soft, I will go along; An if you leave me so, you do me wrong. [Going. Rom. Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here; Ben. Tell me in sadness,3 whom she is you love. But sadly tell me who. Rom. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will. Ah, word ill urged to one that is so ill! In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman. Ben. I aimed so near, when I supposed you loved. From love's weak, childish bow she lives unharmed. That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store.* 1 Such is the consequence of unskilful and mistaken kindness. 66 2 The old copy reads, " Being purged a fire," &c.-The emendation admitted into the text was suggested by Dr. Johnson. To urge the fire is to kindle or excite it. 3 i. e. in seriousness. 4 The meaning appears to be, as Mason gives it, " She is poor only, because she leaves no part of her store behind her, as with her, all beauty will die." Ben. Then she hath sworn, that she will still live chaste ? Rom. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste; For beauty, starved with her severity, Ben. Be ruled by me, forget to think of her. Rom. 2 'Tis the way To call hers, exquisite, in question more.1 SCENE II. A Street. Enter CAPULET, PARIS, and Servant. Cap. And Montague is bound as well as I, In penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, I think, For men so old as we to keep the peace. Par. Of honorable reckoning are you both; 1 i. e. to call her exquisite beauty more into my mind, and make it more the subject of conversation. 2 This means no more than the happy masks, according to a form of expression not unusual with the old writers. And pity 'tis, you lived at odds so long. She hath not seen the change of fourteen years; Par. Younger than she are happy mothers made. But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart, 4 Such as I love; and you, among the store, 5 And like her most, whose merit most shall be ; 1 The quarto of 1597 reads: “And too soon marred are those so early married.” 2 Fille de terre is the old French phrase for an heiress; but Mason suggests that earth may here mean corporal part, as again in this play "Can I go forward, when my heart is here? Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out." 3 i. e. in comparison to. 4 For "lusty young men "Johnson would read "lusty yeomen." Ritson has clearly shown that young men was used for yeomen in our elder language. 5 To inherit, in the language of Shakspeare, is to possess. 6 By a perverse adherence to the first quarto copy of 1597, which reads, "Such amongst view of many," &c., this passage has been made unin Come, go with me.-Go, sirrah, trudge about My house and welcome on their pleasure stay. [Exeunt CAPULET and PARIS. Serv. Find them out, whose names are written here? 1 It is written-that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard, and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his pencil, and the painter with his nets; but I am sent to find those persons, whose names are here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. I must to the learned.-In good time. Enter BENVOLIO and ROMEO. Ben. Tut, man! one fire burns out another's burning, One pain is lessened by another's anguish ; Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning ; One desperate grief cures with another's languish. Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die. Rom. Your plantain-leaf is excellent for that.2 Rom. For your broken skin. Ben. Why, Romeo, art thou mad? telligible. The subsequent quartos and the folio read, "Which one [on] more," &c., evidently meaning, "Hear all, see all, and like her most who has the most merit; her, which, after regarding attentively the many, my daughter being one, may stand unique in merit, though she may be reckoned nothing, or held in no estimation. The allusion, as Malone has shown, is to the old proverbial expression, "One is no number." It will be unnecessary to inform the reader that which is here used for who, a substitution frequent in Shakspeare, as in all the writers of his time. One of the later quartos has corrected the error of the others, and reads as in the present text: "Which on more view," &c. 1 The quarto of 1597 adds, " And yet I know not who are written here; I must to the learned to learn of them: that's as much as to say, the tailor," &c. 2 The plantain-leaf is a blood-stancher, and was formerly applied to green wounds. So in Albumazar:— "Help, Armellina, help! I'm fallen i'the cellar: Bring a fresh plantain-leaf; I've broke my shin.” |