More torches here!-Come on, then let's to bed. Ah, sirrah [To 2 Cap.], by my fay, it waxes late; I'll to my rest. [Exeunt all but JULIET and Nurse. Jul. Come hither, nurse: What is yon gentleman? Nurse. The son and heir of old Tiberio.

Jul. What's he, that now is going out of door? Nurse. Marry, that, I think, be young Petruchio. Jul. What's he, that follows there, that would not dance?

Nurse. I know not.

Jul. Go, ask his name:—if he be married, My grave is like to be my wedding bed.

Nurse. His name is Romeo, and a Montague; The only son of your great enemy.

Jul. My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me,

That I must love a loathed enemy.
Nurse. What's this? what's this?

Jul.

one I danc'd withal.

Of

Nurse.

A rhyme I learn'd even now [One calls within, Juliet. Anon, anon:—

Come, let's away; the strangers all are gone.

Enter CHORUS 17.

[Exeunt.

Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie,

And young affection gapes to be his heir; That fair 18, which love groan'd for, and would die, With tender Juliet match'd is now not fair.

17 This chorus is not in the first edition, quarto, 1597. Its use is not easily discovered; it conduces nothing to the progress of the play; but relates what is already known, or what the next scene will show; and relates it without adding the improvement of any moral sentiment.'-Johnson.

18 Fair, it has been already observed, was formerly used as a VOL. X.

F

Now Romeo is belov'd, and loves again,

Alike bewitched by the charm of looks; But to his foe suppos'd he must complain,

And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks: Being held a foe, he may not have access

To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear; And she as much in love, her means much less To meet her new-beloved any where:

But passion lends them power, time means to meet, Temp'ring extremities with extreme sweet. [Exit.

АСТ II.

SCENE I. An open Place, adjoining Capulet's Garden.

Enter ROMEO.

Rom. Can I go forward, when my heart is here? Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out. [He climbs the Wall, and leaps down within it.

Enter BENVOLIO, and MERCUTIO.
Ben. Romeo! my cousin Romeo!

Mer.

He is wise;

And, on my life, hath stolen him home to bed.

Ben. He ran this way, and leap'd this orchard1 wall:

Call, good Mercutio.

substantive, and was synonymous with beauty. See vol. i. p. 228. The old copies read

-

That fair for which love groan'd for,' &c.

This reading Malone defends. Steevens treats it as a corruption; and says, that fair, in the present instance, is used as a dissyllable. See vol. iii. p. 148, note 20.

1 See note on Julius Cæsar, vol. viii. p. 295.

Mer.

Nay, I'll conjure too.—

Romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover!

Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh,

Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied;
Cry but―Ah me! pronounce2 but—love and dove;
Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,
One nickname for her purblind son and heir,
Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim3,
When king Cophetua lov'd the beggar-maid.—
He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not;
The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.—
I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes,
By her high forehead, and her scarlet lip,
By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh,
And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,
That in thy likeness thou appear to us.

4

Ben. An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him. Mer. This cannot anger him: 'twould anger him To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle

2 This is the reading of the quarto of 1597. Those of 1599 and 1609 and the folio read provaunt, an evident corruption. The folio of 1632 has couply, meaning couple, which has been the reading of many modern editions. Steevens endeavours to persuade himself and his readers that provant may be right, and mean provide, furnish.

3 All the old copies read, Abraham Cupid. The alteration was proposed by Mr. Upton. It evidently alludes to the famous archer Adam Bell. So in Decker's Satiromastix :-' He shoots his bolt but seldom; but when Adam lets go, he hits.'' He shoots at thee too, Adam Bell; and his arrows stick here.' The ballad alluded to is King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid, or, as it is called in some copies, 'The Song of a Beggar and a King.' It may be seen in the first volume of Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The following stanza Shakspeare had particularly in view :

The blinded boy that shoots so trim,

From heaven down did hie;

He drew a dart and shot at him,

In place where he did lie.'

This phrase in Shakspeare's time was used as an expression of tenderness, like poor fool, &c.

Of some strange nature, letting it there stand
Till she had laid it, and conjur❜d it down;
That were some spite: my invocation

Is fair and honest, and, in his mistress' name,
I conjure only but to raise up him.

Ben. Come, he hath hid himself among those trees, To be consorted with the humorous 5 night:

Blind is his love, and best befits the dark.

Mer. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will he sit under a medlar tree,

And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit,
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.
Romeo, good night;-I'll to my truckle-bed;
This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep:

Come, shall we go?

Ben.

Go, then; for 'tis in vain

To seek him here, that means not to be found.

SCENE II. Capulet's Garden.

Enter ROMEO.

[Exeunt.

Rom. He jests at scars, that never felt a wound.[JULIET appears above, at a Window. But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks!

5 i. e. the humid, the moist dewy night. Chapman uses the word in this sense in his translation of Homer, b. ii. edit. 1598: 'The other gods and knights at arms slept all the humorous night.'

And Drayton, in the thirteenth Song of his Polyolbion which late the humorous night

Bespangled had with pearl.'

And in The Baron's Wars, canto i.:-
:-

The humorous fogs deprive us of his light.'

Shakspeare uses the epithet, vaporous night,' in Measure for Measure.

6 After this line in the old copies are two lines of ribaldry, which have justly been degraded to the margin :

'O Romeo, that she were, ah that she were
An open et cetera, thou a poprin pear.'

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!-
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid1, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,

And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.-
It is my lady; O, it is my love:

O, that she knew she were!

Her

eye

She speaks, yet she says nothing; What of that?
discourses, I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright,
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!

Jul.

Rom.

Ah me!

She speaks:

O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this sight, being o'er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wond'ring eyes
Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him,
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds,
And sails upon the bosom of the air.

ri.e. be not a votary to the moon, to Diana.

2 The old copies read, to this night.' Theobald made the emendation, which appears to be warranted by the context.