And first as to the surreptitious procurement of the copy for She hath forsworn to love; and, in that vow Do I live dead, that live to tell it now. Ben. Be rul'd by me, forget to think of her. Rom. 'Tis the way To call hers, exquisite, in question more: These happy masks, that kiss fair ladies' brows, Farewell; thou canst not teach me to forget. Ben. I'll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt." Ibid. "La. Cap. What say you? can you love the gentleman? This night you shall behold him at our feast; Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face, And find delight writ there with beauty's pen; Examine every married lineament, And see how one another lends content: And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies, This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him, only lacks a cover: The fish lives in the sea; and 'tis much pride, That book in many's eyes doth share the glory, So shall you share all that he doth possess, By having him, making yourself no less. Nurse. No less? nay, bigger; women grow by men." Act I. Sc. 3. "Mer. You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings, And soar with them above a common bound. Rom. I am too sore enpierced with his shaft, To soar with his light feathers; and so bound, I cannot bound a pitch above dull wo: Under love's heavy burden do I sink. 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; Act I. Sc. 4. "Nurse. Now God in heaven bless thee! - Hark you, sir. Nurse. Is your man secret? Did your ne'er hear say- Rom. I warrant thee; my man's as true as steel. Nurse. Well, sir; my mistress is the sweetest lady,-lord, lord! - when 'twas a little prating thing, O, there's a nobleman in town, one Paris, that would fain lay knife aboard: but she, good soul, had as lieve see a toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger her sometimes, and tell her that Paris is the properer man: but, I'll warrant you, when I say so, she looks as pale as any clout in the varsal world. Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter? Rom. Ay, nurse; what of that? both with an R. Nurse. Ah, mocker! that's the dog's name. Ris for the dog. No; I know it begins with some other letter: and she hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it. the earlier edition. This, of course, is only to be inferred from Rom. Commend me to thy lady. Nurse. Ay, a thousand times.-Peter!" Act II. Sc. 4. "Spread thy close curtain. love-performing night! Leap to these arms, untalk'd of, and unseen! - By their own beauties: or, if love be blind, And learn me how to lose a winning match, Play'd for a pair of stainless maiden hoods: Hood my unmann'd blood bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold, Think true love acted, simple modesty. Come, night-come, Romeo! come, thou day in night! Whiter than new snow on a raven's back. — Come, gentle night! come, loving, black-brow'd night, Take him and cut him out in little stars, To an impatient child, that hath new robes, And usest none in that true use indeed Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit. Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, Digressing from the valour of a man: Thy dear love, sworn, but hollow perjury, Killing that love which thou hast vow'd to cherish: Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, Misshapen in the conduct of them both, Like powder in a skill-less soldier's flask, Is set on fire by thine own ignorance, [Exit. Act III. Sc. 2. And thou dismember'd with thine own defence." Act III. Sc. 3. Let the reader who desires to form his own judgment upon this point compare the passages above with the following, which are found both in the quarto of 1597 and that of 1599: "Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun," Act I. Sc. 1; "She is the fairies' midwife," Act I. Sc. 4; "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright," Act I. Sc. 5, to the end of the Scene; "He jests at scars," &c., Act II. Sc. 1, to Romeo's exit; "Wilt thou begone," &c., Act III. Sc. 5. to Romeo's exit. And besides these there are the numerous passages which in the second quarto are much longer than in the first by the addition of lines and parts of lines interspersed throughout them, and where it is evident that the added matter is not new cloth in old garments, but that the fabric is all of a piece. * Mr. Collier advanced the opinion, in his Introduction to this play in his internal evidence. If the text of the first edition were perfect in itself, the fact that the text of the second is nearly one quarter longer would only sustain the assertion on the title page of that edition, that the play had been augmented. But this is not the case. The text of the first edition, although not so mutilated as that of the first edition of Henry the Fifth, or even as that of the first edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor, is so often incoherent that its great corruption is manifest upon its face; and, on a comparison of the corrupted passages with the text of the second edition, the corruption, in most instances, seems unmistakably due to an imperfect representation of that text, and not to mere typographical or clerical errors in the printing or transcribing of another and a briefer. Thus, in the passage (Act I. Sc. 3) in which the Nurse tells of Juliet's fall the day before she was weaned, Lady Capulet's speech, beginning, "Enough of this," and the Nurse's reply, are not found in the quarto of 1597; the cause apparently being that the latter speech ends in the same words as the former, "it stinted and said, Ay," which misled the transcriber of the notes taken at the performance. Just below, in the same Scene, Juliet, being asked if she can " like of Paris love," replies, "I'll look to like, if looking liking move," &c. But why should she at that time say, "I'll look to like"? The quarto of 1597 gives no occasion for this reply of Juliet's, simply because it omits Lady Capulet's immediately preceding speech of sixteen lines, beginning, "What say you? can you love the gentleman ? This speech and the Nurse's reply to it were plainly a part of the text before the printing of the quarto of 1597. — In the famous balcony Scene (Act II. Sc. 2) we find the following passage in the first quarto: "Three wordes goode Romeo and good night indeed. If that thy bent of love be honourable Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow By one that I'll procure to come to thee Where and what time thou wilt performe that right, edition of Shakespeare's works. 1843, Vol. VI., that the manuscript nsed by the printers for the first quarto edition "was made up partly from portions of the play as it was acted, but unduly [sic] obtained, and partly from notes taken at the theatre during representation." And al my fortunes at thy foote Il'e lay And follow thee my Lord through out the world. Ro. Loue goes toward loue like schoole boyes from their bookes, But loue from loue, to school with heauie lookes. Jul. Romeo, Romeo O for a falkners voice To lure [t]his Tassell gentle backe againe." But Romeo was there; her tassel gentle had not taken wing. Such, at least, is the case according to this text, where there is no farewell, no reason apparent why Juliet should suddenly find her lover out of sight, and almost out of reach of her voice. We see that Shakespeare never could have written thus; and our difficulty is cleared up by finding that the quarto of 1599 reads as follows; all the words in brackets having been omitted from the text of the previous edition, accidentally beyond a doubt, there being here no other variation whatever between them. "And all my fortunes at thy foote Ile lay, And follow thee my L. throughout the world: [Madam. I come anon: - - But if thou meanest not well, Madam. (by and by I come) To cease thy suit, and leave me to my griefe: To-morrow will I send. Ro. So thriue my soul, Ju. A thousand times good night! Ro. A thousand times the worse, to want thy light. -] Ju. -- - Again, when Romeo, in the fourth Scene of Act II., makes the appointment at Friar Lawrence' cell, he says in the quarto of 1597, "Bid her get leave to-morrow morning to come to shrift," &c., and the Nurse replies, "to-morrow morning," but in the quarto of 1599 he says, "Bid her devise some means to come to shrift this afternoon," and the Nurse replies, "this afternoon." Now this variation is not the result of a correction by the author of a slip of memory; for in both versions it is but a few lines below, though in the next Scene, that we learn from Juliet's soliloquy that the Nurse was sent at nine in the morning, that she was slow on her errand, and that on her return Juliet was to go directly to the Friar's. The error is the result of forgetfulness or carelessness on the part of the person who provided the manuscript for the first edition. That such was the origin of this discrepancy, appears yet further by a speech of Romeo's, according to the first quarto, just after he enters the Friar's cell. Conforming to its previous appointment of the morning for the marriage, this text makes Romeo say, "This morning here she 'pointed we should meet." But this consistency operates rather against than in favor of the Shakespearian origin of the other passages in which this word appears; for any person of ordinary poetic, apprehension and discrimination, on reading the whole of the latter speech, will see clearly and at once that it is none of Shakespeare's. Thus it runs : — "This morning here she pointed we should meet, And consumate those neuer parting bands Witnes of our harts loue by joyning hands, And come she will." Who will believe that this dribble of tame sense and feeble rhythm was written by the same man who (according to the same edition) had written in the first Scene of the play the following passage, and others like it? 66 Madame, an houre before the worshipt sunne So early walking might I see your sonne," &c. - Again, when, in the second Scene of Act III., Juliet exclaims, according to the same quarto of 1597, "But wherefore villaine didst thou kill my Cousen? we naturally ask, All what is comfort? There is no reply short of the quarto of 1599, where we find these lines interposed between the second and third of those above: |