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 ! 14 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 : Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! 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. Rom. Why, such is love's transgression. Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast; Which thou wilt propagate, to have it press'd 16 With more of thine: this love, that thou hast shown, Doth add more grief to too much of mine own. 14 Should think he sees a way to his will merely because he wishes to have it so, and when in truth there is none. 15 This string of antithetical conceits seems absurd enough to us; but such was the most approved way of describing love in Shakespeare's time. Perhaps the best defence of the use here made of it is, that such an affected way of speaking not unaptly shows the state of Romeo's mind, that his love is rather self-generated than inspired by any object. At all events, as compared with his style of speech after meeting with Juliet, it serves to mark the difference between being love-sick and being in love. 16 That is, "by having it press'd." An instance of the infinitive used gerundively, where present usage does not admit of it. Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; Ben. And, if Soft! I will go along; you leave me so, you do me wrong. Rom. Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here; This is not Romeo, he's some other where. Ben. Tell me in sadness,18 who 'tis that you love. Rom. What, shall I groan, and tell thee? Ben. But sadly tell me who. Groan! why, no ; 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 aim'd so near, when I supposed you loved. Rom. A right good mark-man! And she's fair I love. Ben. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit. With Cupid's arrow, she hath Dian's wit; And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd, From Love's weak childish bow she lives encharm'd.19 17 Purged is here used in the same sense as in St. Matthew, iii. 12: "And he will throughly purge his floor." The figure is of a fire purified of the smoke. 18 In sadness is in seriousness, or seriously. The usage was common. 19 That is, shielded from Cupid's artillery as by a charm. So in Cymbeline, v. 3: "I, in mine own woe charm'd, could not find Death where I did hear him groan, nor feel him where he struck." And in Macbeth, v. 7: "Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; I bear a charmed life," in earnest. So, a little after, sadly for See Much Ado, page 64, note 13. She will not stay the siege of loving terms, O, she is rich in beauty; only poor, That, when she dies, with her dies beauty's store.20 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, Cuts beauty off from all posterity. She is too fair, too wise; wisely too fair, To merit bliss by making me despair: Do I live dead that live to tell it now. Ben. Be ruled by me, forget to think of her. 'Tis the way Rom. Where I may read who pass'd that passing fair? 20 Poor only in that, when she dies, her great estate of beauty must die with her, as she will have none to inherit it. 21 To call her exquisite beauty more into my mind, and make it more the subject of conversation. Question was often used in this sense. 22 These appears to be here used indefinitely, and as equivalent merely to the. We often use the demonstratives in the same way. Farewell thou canst not teach me to forget.2 23 Ben. I'll pay that doctrine,24 or else die in debt. [Exeunt. Enter CAPULET, PARIS, and Servant. Cap. But Montague is bound as well as I, Cap. But saying o'er what I have said before : She hath not seen the change of fourteen years: Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride. Par. Younger than she are happy mothers made. She is the hopeful lady of my earth: 1 But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart, 28 It would have displeased us if Juliet had been represented as already in love, or as fancying herself so; but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really near the heart.-COLERIDGE. 24 Doctrine for lesson or instruction; one of the Latin senses of the word. 1 Fille de terre is the old French phrase for an heiress. Earth is put for lands, or landed estate, in other old plays. My will to her consent is but a part; Such as I love; and you, among the store, One more, most welcome, makes my number more. And like her most whose merit most shall be : May stand in number, though in reckoning none.+ Come, go with me.-[To the Servant.] Go, sirrah, trudge about Through fair Verona; find those persons out Whose names are written there, [Gives a paper.] and to them say, 2 The Poet's 98th Sonnet yields a good comment on the text: From you have I been absent in the Spring, When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. * Inherit in its old sense of possess or have. See Tempest, page 125, note 30 44 * The allusion is to the old proverbial expression, “ One is no number." So in the Poet's 136th Sonnet: Among a number one is reckon'd none; |