JUL. I'll look to like, if looking liking move': But no more deep will I endart mine eye 1, Than your consent gives strength to make it fly. Enter a Servant. SERV. Madam 2, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity. I must hence to wait; I beseech you, follow straight. (LA. CAP. We follow thee.-Juliet, the county stays. NURSE. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy [Exeunt. days.() SCENE IV. A Street. Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six Maskers, Torch-Bearers, and Others. ROM. What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse ? 66 9 I'll look to like, if looking liking move :] Such another jingle of words occurs in the second book of Sidney's Arcadia : - and seeing to like, and liking to love, and loving straight" &c. I ENDART mine eye,] The quarto 1597 mine eye." STEEVENS. 66 STEEVENS. reads-" engage 2 Madam, &c.] Thus in the quarto 1597. Madam, you are called for; supper is ready; the nurse cursed in the pantry; all things in extremity; make haste, for I must be gone to wait." BOSWELL. 66 3-Mercutio,] Shakspeare appears to have formed this character on the following slight hint in the original story: another gentleman called Mercutio, which was a courtlike gentleman, very wel beloved of all men, and by reason of his pleasant and courteous behaviour was in al companies wel intertained." Painter's Palace of Pleasure, tom. ii. p. 221. STEEVENS. Mercutio is thus described in the poem which Shakspeare followed : Or shall we on without apology? BEN. The date is out of such prolixity *: "At thone side of her chair her lover Romeo, “And on the other side there sat one call'd Mercutio; "Such was among the bashful maids Mercutio to behold. A gift he had, that nature gave him in his swathing band "That frozen mountain ice was never half so cold, "As were his hands, though ne'er so near the fire he did them hold." Perhaps it was this last circumstance which induced our poet to represent Mercutio as little sensible to the passion of love, and a jester at wounds which he never felt." See Othello, Act III. Sc. IV. : 66 "This argues fruitfulness and liberal heart; 66 Hot, hot, and moist." MALONE. The date is out of such prolixity:] i. e. Masks are now out of fashion. That Shakspeare was an enemy to these fooleries, appears from his writing none; and that his plays discredited such entertainments, is more than probable. WARBURTon. The diversion going forward at present is not a masque, but a masquerade. In Henry VIII. where the king introduces himself to the entertainment given by Wolsey, he appears, like Romeo and his companions, in a mask, and sends a messenger before, to make an apology for his intrusion. This was a custom observed by those who came uninvited, with a desire to conceal themselves for the sake of intrigue, or to enjoy the greater freedom of conversation. Their entry on these occasions was always prefaced by some speech in praise of the beauty of the ladies, or the generosity of the entertainer; and to the prolixity of such introductions, I believe Romeo is made to allude. So, in Histriomastix, 1610, a man expresses his wonder that the maskers enter without any compliment: "What come they in so blunt, without device?" In the accounts of many entertainments given in reigns antecedent to that of Elizabeth, I find this custom preserved. Of the same kind of masquerading, see a specimen in Timon, where Cupid precedes a troop of ladies with a speech. STEEVENS. Shakspeare has written a masque which the reader will find introduced in the 4th Act of The Tempest. It would have been difficult for the reverend annotator to have proved they were discontinued during any period of Shakspeare's life. PERCY. We'll have no Cupid hood-wink'd with a scarf, 5 Bearing a TARTAR's painted bow of lath,] The Tartarian bows, as well as most of those used by the Asiatick nations, resemble in their form the old Roman or Cupid's bow, such as we see on medals and bas reliefs. Shakspeare used the epithet to distinguish it from the English bow, whose shape is the segment of a circle. DOUCE. 6- like a CROW-KEEPER ;] The word crow-keeper is explained in King Lear, Act IV. Sc. VI. JOHNSON. 7 Nor no without-book prologue, &c.] The two following lines are inserted from the first edition. POPE. 8 — for our ENTRANCE:] Entrance is here used as trisyllable; enterance. MALONE. 9 We'll measure them a MEASURE,] i. e. a dance. MALONE. 1 Give me a torch,] The character which Romeo declares his resolution to assume, will be best explained by a passage in Westward Hoe, by Decker and Webster, 1607: "He is just like a torch-bearer to maskers; he wears good cloaths, and is ranked in good company, but he doth nothing." A torch-bearer seems to have been a constant appendage on every troop of masks. So, in the second part of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, 1601 : 66 As on a masque; but for our torch-bearers, "Hell cannot rake so mad a crew as I." Again, in the same play : 66 a gallant crew, "Of courtly maskers landed at the stairs; Before the invention of chandeliers, all rooms of state were illuminated by flambeaux which attendants held upright in their hands. This custom is mentioned by Froissart, and other writers who had the merit of describing every thing they saw. wooden cut introduced in the notes to the Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. III. See a To hold a torch, however, was anciently no degrading office. Queen Elizabeth's Gentlemen-Pensioners attended her to Cam Being but heavy, I will bear the light. MER. Nay, gentle Romeo, we* must have you dance. ROM. Not I, believe me: you have dancing shoes, With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead, So stakes me to the ground, I cannot move. ROM. I am too sore enpierced with his shaft, 3 MER. And, to sink in it, should you burden love*; Too great oppression for a tender thing. ROM. Is love a tender thing? it is too rough, Too rude, too boist'rous; and it pricks like thorn. MER. If love be rough with you, be rough with love; * Quarto A, Believe me, Romeo, I. bridge, and held torches while a play was acted before her in the Chapel of King's College, on a Sunday evening. At an entertainment also, given by Louis XIV. in 1664, no less than 200 valets-de-pied were thus employed. STEEVENS. King Henry VIII. when he went masked to Wolsey's palace, (now Whitehall,) had sixteen torch-bearers. See Henry III. Act I. Sc. IV.: MALONE. 2 Mer. You are a lover; &c.] The twelve following lines are not to be found in the first edition. Pope. I cannot bound, &c.] Let Milton's example, on this occasion, keep Shakspeare in countenance: 4 66 -in contempt "At one slight bound high over-leap'd all bound 66 Of hill," &c. Paradise Lost, book iv. 1. 180. STEEVENS. SHOULD YOU burden love;] i. e. by sinking in it, you should, or would, burden love. Mr. Heath, on whose suggestion a note of interrogation has been placed at the end of this line in the late edition, entirely misunderstood the passage. Had he attended to the first two lines of Mercutio's next speech, he would have seen what kind of burdens he was thinking of. See also the concluding lines of Mercutio's long speech in p. 56. MALONE. Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.—() Give me a case to put my visage in : [Putting on a Mask. (A visor for a visor!-what care I,(||) What curious eye doth quote deformities"? ROM. A torch for me: let wantons, light of heart", Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels 7; 8 - doth Quote deformities ?] To quote is to observe. So, in Hamlet: "I am sorry, that with better heed and judgment I had not quoted him." See note on this passage. STEEVENS. 6-let wantons, light of heart, &c.] Middleton has borrowed this thought in his play of Blurt Master-Constable, 1602: bid him, whose heart no sorrow feels, "Tickle the rushes with his wanton heels, "I have too much lead at mine." STEEVENS. 7 Tickle the senseless RUSHES with their heels;] It has been already observed, that it was anciently the custom to strew rooms with rushes, before carpets were in use. See Henry IV. Part I. Act III. Sc. I. So Hentzner, in his Itinerary, speaking of Queen Elizabeth's presence-chamber at Greenwich, says: "The floor, after the English fashion, was strewed with hay," meaning rushes. So, in The Dumb Knight, 1633 : "Thou dancest on my heart, lascivious queen, "Even as upon these rushes which thou treadest." The stage was anciently strewn with rushes. So, in Decker's Gul's Hornbook, 1609: " on the very rushes when the comedy is to daunce." STEEVENS. Shakspeare, it has been observed, gives the manners and customs of his own time to all countries and all ages. It is certainly true; but let it always be remembered that his contemporaries offended against propriety in the same manner. Thus, Marlowe, in his Hero and Leander: 8 "She, fearing on the rushes to be flung, "Striv'd with redoubled strength." MALOne. a grandsire phrase, &c.] The proverb which Romeo means, is contained in the line immediately following. To hold |