And flecked1 darkness like a drunkard reels 2 The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry, 5 With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers. 9 None but for some, and yet all different. For this, being smelt, with that part13 cheers each part; In man as well as herbs, grace, and rude will; Full 14 soon the canker death eats up that plant. 1) Spotted, streaked. 2) To stagger. 3) Damp, moist, humid. 4) Osier-basket, willow-basket. 5) Pernicious, poisonous. Shakspeare, on his introduction of Friar Laurence, has very artificially prepared us for the part he has afterwards to sustain. Having thus early discovered him to be a chemist, we are not surprised when we find him furnishing the draught which produces the catastrophe of the piece. Steevens. 6) Translate, lap; Schooss. Steevens quotes this line of Lucretius: "Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum." ROм. Good morrow, father! Enter ROMEO. Benedicite! FRI. Thou art up-rous'd by some distemp'rature; 3 Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night. FRI. Wast thou with Rosaline? ROM. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? no; I have forgot that name, and that name's woe. FRI. That's my good son: But where hast thou been then? ROм. I'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again. I have been feasting with mine enemy; FRI. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift; ROM. Then plainly know, my heart's dear love is set On the fair daughter of rich Capulet: As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine; And all combin'd, save what thou must combine By holy marriage: When, and where, and how, We met, we woo'd, and made exchange of vow, strengthen their signification; as, full which Shakspeare has sacrificed grammar to rhyme. sad. 1) Unhurt, not harmed. 2) Not filled with anxious cares. 3) Perturbation of mind. This is one of the passages in 5) He calls his entreaty intercession, because it will be a mediation between the two parties at variance, with a view to reconciliation. FRI. Holy saint Francis! what a change is here? FRI. 4 To lay one in, another out to have. Not in a grave, ROM. I pray thee, chide not: she, whom I love now, Doth grace for grace, and love for love allow; The other did not so. Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell. 5 For this alliance may so happy prove, To turn your households' rancour to pure love. ROM. O let us hence; I stand on sudden haste. 8 1) Brine, properly water impregnated with salt; thence figuratively, tears. 2) Of a pale, sickly colour. 3) The sighs are thought to obscure heaven like clouds or fog. To clear is to remove. 4) To dote, usually with on or upon, to love to excess or extravagance. 5) Rote means memory of words without comprehension of the sense. Thus children learn to speak by rote; [Exeunt we learn to sing by rote. But he who knows how to spell, must know the rules or principles. 6) One who is unsettled in faith or opinion, who vacillates; here, of course, inconstant in love. 7) Inveterate or implacable enmity. This is the strongest term for enmity, which the English language supplies. 8) It is of the utmost consequence that I should hasten away. Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO. MER. Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home to night? BEN. Not to his father's; I spoke with his man. MER. Ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, Torments him so, that he will sure run1 mad. BEN. Tybalt, the kinsman of old Capulet, Hath sent a letter to his father's house. MER. A challenge, on my life. BEN. Romeo will answer it. MER. Any man, that can write, may answer a letter. BEN. Nay, he will answer the letter's master, how he dares, being dared. 2 MER. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! stabb'd with a white wench's black eye! shot thorough the ear with a love-song: the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft; 4 And is he a man to encounter Tybalt? BEN. Why, what is Tybalt? MER. More than prince of cats,5 I can tell you. O, he is the courageous captain of compliments. 6 He fights as you sing, keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me his minim rest," one, two, and the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause: Ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverso! the hay!? 1) To pass from one state or condition to another; as, to run into confusion; to run distracted; here, to run mad, to fall into madness, to grow mad. 2) That he has courage, being challenged or provoked. 3) A young woman; despitefully for girl. 4) A butt-shaft was the kind of arrow used in shooting at butts. The clout or white mark at which the arrows are directed, was fastened by a black pin placed in the centre of it. To hit (to cleave) this was the highest ambition of a marksman. Malone. 5) Tybert, the name given to the| cat, in the story-book of Reynard the Fox. Warburton. 6) A complete master of all the laws of ceremony. 7) A minim is a note of slow time in music, equal to two crotchets. Malone. 8) A gentleman of the first rank, of the first eminence among these duellists; and one who understands the whole science of quarrelling, and will tell you of the first cause, and the second cause, for which a man is to fight. The Clown, in As you like it, talks of the seventh cause in the same sense. Steevens. 9) A passado, a push or thrust. Punto reverso, a faint, a show of BEN. The what? MER. The plague of1 such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents! Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire,2 that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardonnez-moys, 4 who stand so much on the new form, that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench?5 O, their bons, their bons!6 Enter Romeo. BEN. Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo. MER. Without his roe, like a dried herring: - O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her: Dido, a dowdy; Cleopatra, a gipsy; Thisbé, a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bon jour! there's a French salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night. ROM. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you? MER. The slip, sir, the slip; 10 Can you not conceive? "sit ting with her on the form, and taken following her into the park, which, put together, is in manner and form following." making a thrust at one part, to de- | (a bench without a back). See Love's ceive an antagonist, when the inten- Labour's Lost, Act I. sc. 1: tion is to strike another part. All the terms of the modern fencingschool were originally Italian; the rapier, or small thrusting sword, being first used in Italy. The hay is the word hai, you have it, used when a thrust reaches the antagonist. Johnson. 1) A curse upon, etc. 2) Humorously apostrophising his ancestors, whose sober times were unacquainted with the fopperies here complained of. Warburton. 3) One who studies the fashion; a fop. 4) Pardonnez-moi became the language of doubt or hesitation among men of the sword, when the point of honour was grown so delicate, that no other mode of contradiction would be endured. Johnson. 5) A quibble on the two meanings of the word form, manner and seat 6) Mercutio is here ridiculing those frenchified fantastical coxcombs whom he calls pardonnezmoi's. Besides we learn that bon jour was the common salutation of those who affected to appear fine gentlemen in our author's time. 7) He means to allow, says Malone, that Thisbé had a very fine eye: for from various passages it appears that a grey eye was thought eminently beautiful, as beautiful as what we now denominate a blue eye. 8) Trowsers or pantaloons, a French fashion in Shakspeare's time. 9) You cheated, you deceived us. 10) The slip is used equivocally in the meaning of an unexpected or secret desertion, and a counterfeit |