Par. Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones, Enter ROMEO and BALTHASAR, with a torch, mattock, &c. Rom. Give me that mattock, and the wrenching iron. Hold, take this letter: early in the morning But, chiefly, to take thence, from her dead finger In dear employment. Therefore hence, be gone: By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint, And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs. Bal. I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you. Live, and be prosperous; and farewell, good fellow. [Breaking open the door of the Monument. And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food! Par. This is that banish'd haughty Montague. That murder'd my love's cousin,-with which grief, It is supposed, the fair creature died,― And here is come to do some villainous shame [Advancing. Stop thy unhallow'd toil, vile Montague. Rom. I must, indeed; and therefore came I hither. Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man; By urging me to fury:-O, be gone! Page. O Lord! they fight: I will go call the watch. [Exit Page. Par. O! I am slain.-[Falls.] If thou be merciful, Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. [Dies. Rom. In faith, I will.-Let me peruse this Mercutio's kinsman, noble county Paris.- [Laying PARIS in the Monument. Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars last: Enter, at the other end of the Churchyard, Friar LAURENCE, with a lantern, crow, and spade. Fri. Saint Francis be my speed! how oft tonight Have my old feet stumbled at graves?-Who's there? Bal. Here's one, a friend, and one that knows you well. Fri. Bliss be upon you! Tell me, good my friend, What torch is yond', that vainly lends his light O! much I fear some ill unthrifty thing. Bal. As I did sleep under this yew-tree here, I dreamt my master and another fought, And that my master slew him. Romeo! [Advancing. Fri. [Entering the Monument. [JULIET wakes. Jul. Ó, comfortable friar! where is my lord? I do remember well where I should be, And there I am.-Where is my Romeo? [Noise within. Fri. I hear some noise.-Lady, come from that nest Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep. Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead; Stay not to question, for the watch is coming; Jul. Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.What's here? a cup, clos'd in my true love's hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.O churl! drink all, and left no friendly drop, To help me after?-I will kiss thy lips; Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them, To make me die with a restorative. [Kisses him. Thy lips are warm! 1 Watch. [Within.] Lead, boy-which way? Jul. Yea, noise?-then I'll be brief.-O happy [Snatching ROMEO's dagger. This is thy sheath; [Stabs herself;] there rust, and let me die. dagger! [Dies. Enter Watch, with the Page of PARIS. Page. This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn. 1 Watch. The ground is bloody search about the churchyard. Go, some of you; whoe'er you find, attach. Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain;- Enter some of the Watch, with Balthasar. 2 Watch. Here's Romeo's man; we found him in the churchyard. 1 Watch. Hold him in safety, till the Prince come hither. Enter another Watchman, with Friar LAURENCE. 3 Watch. Here is a friar, that trembles, sighs, and weeps: We took this mattock and this spade from him, As he was coming from this churchyard side. 1 Watch. A great suspicion: stay the friar too. Enter the Prince and Attendants. Prince. What misadventure is so early up, That calls our person from our morning rest? Enter CAPULET, Lady CAPULET, and others. Cap. What should it be, that they so shriek abroad? La. Cap. O! the people in the street cry Romeo, Some Juliet, and some Paris; and all run With open outcry toward our monument. Prince. What fear is this, which startles in your ears? This dagger has mista'en,-for, lo! his house And is mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom. That warns my old age to a sepulchre. Enter MONTAGUE and others. Prince. Come, Montague; for thou art early up, To see thy son and heir more early down. Mon. Álas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night; Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath. What further woe conspires against mine age? Prince. Look, and thou shalt see. Mon. O thou untaught! what manners is in this, To press before thy father to a grave? Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, Till we can clear these ambiguities, And know their spring, their head, their true de scent; And then will I be general of your woes, Fri. I am the greatest, able to do least, Prince. Then, say at once what thou dost know in this. Fri. I will be brief, for my short date of breath Is not so long as is a tedious tale. Be sacrific'd some hour before his time, Prince. We still have known thee for a holy man. Where's Romeo's man? what can he say in this? Bal. I brought my master news of Juliet's death, And then in post he came from Mantua, Prince. Give me the letter, I will look on it.Where is the county's page, that rais'd the watch? Sirrah, what made your master in this place? Page. He came with flowers to strew his lady's grave, And bid me stand aloof, and so I did: Prince. This letter doth make good the friar's words, Their course of love, the tidings of her death: love; And I, for winking at your discords too, "CHORUS"-As Malone suggested, means only that the Prologue was spoken by the same performer who delivered the chorus at the end of act i. The Prologue, as it is in the quarto, 1597, varies from the correction in every line. It runs literatim thus :- Two household Frends, alike in dignitie, Whose civil warre makes civill hands vncleane. (Through the continuing of their Fathers strife, What here we want, wee'l studie to amend. "-fair VERONA."-Verona, the city of Italy where, next to Rome, the antiquary most luxuriates;-where, blended with the remains of theatres, and amphitheatres, and triumphal arches, are the palaces of the fractious nobles, and the tombs of the despotic princes of the Gothic ages;-Verona, so rich in the associations of real history, has even a greater charm for those who would live in the poetry of the past: Are these the distant turrets of Verona? Saw her lov'd Montague, and now sleeps by him? So felt the tender and graceful poet, Rogers. He adds, in a note, "The old palace of the Cappelletti, with its uncouth balcony and irregular windows, is still standing in a lane near the market-place; and what Englishman can behold it with indifference?" When we enter Verona, we forget ourselves, and are almost inclined to say with Dante, Vieni a veder Montecchi, e Cappelletti. ACT I.-SCENE I. "Gregory, on my word, we'll not carry coals."-This phrase was used proverbially for submitting to degradation, putting up with insult. Its origin is thus explained by Mr. Gifford :-" In all great houses, but particularly in the royal residences, there were a number of mean and dirty dependents, whose office it was to attend the wood-yard, sculleries, &c. Of these (for in the lowest deep there was a lower still) the most forlorn wretches seem to have been selected to carry coals to the kitchen, halls, &c. To this smutty regiment, who attended the progresses, and rode in the carts with the pots and kettles, which, with every other article of furniture, were then removed from palace to palace, the people in derision gave the name of blackguards; a term since become sufficiently familiar, and never properly explained." "-thou hadst been POOR JOHN."-Dried and salted fish was so called. "-which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it."— The meaning of this is shown by the following passage from Decker's "Dead Term," 1608, where he is adverting to the persons who visited the walks in St. Paul's church:-"What swearing is there, what shouldering, what justling, what jeering, what biting of thumbs to beget quarrels !" "Gregory, remember thy SWASHING blow."-We have "swashing" in As You LIKE IT, "We'll have a swashing and a martial outside." Barret, in his " Alvearie," 1580, states that " to swash is to make a noise with swords against targets." Ben Jonson also, in his "Staple of News," speaks of "a swashing blow." "Clubs, bills, and partisans !"-The cry of clubs is as thoroughly of English origin as the "bite my thumb" is of Italian. Scott has made the cry familiar to us in "The Fortunes of Nigel;" and when the citizens of Verona here raise it, we involuntarily think of the old watch-maker's hatch-door in Fleet-street, and Jin Vin and Tunstall darting off for the affray. "The great long club," (as described by Stowe,) on the necks of the London apprentices, was as characteristic as the flat cap of the same quarrelsome body, in the days of Elizabeth and James. The use by Shakespeare of home phrases, in the mouths of foreign characters, was a part of his art. It is the same thing as rendering Sancho's Spanish proverbs into the corresponding English proverbs, instead of literally translating them. The cry of clubs, by the citizens of Verona, expressed an idea of popular movements, which could not have been conveyed half so emphatically in a foreign phrase.-KNIGHT. |