O, now be gone; more light and light it grows. Nurse. Your lady mother's coming to your chamber: The day is broke; be wary, look about. [Exit Nurse. Jul. Then, window, let day in, and let life out. Rom. Farewel, farewel! one kiss, and I'll descend. [ROM. descends. Jul. Art thou gone so? my love! my lord! my friend!5 I must hear from thee every day i' the hour, For in a minute there are many days: O! by this count I shall be much in years, Ere I again behold my Romeo. Rom. Farewel! I will omit no opportunity That may convey my greetings, love, to thee. Jul. O, think'st thou, we shall ever meet again? Rom. I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve For sweet discourses in our time to come. Jul. O God! I have an ill-divining soul:7 Again, in the play of Orlando Furioso, 1594 and 1599: "To play him huntsup with a point of war, "I'll be his minstrell with my drum and fife." Steevens. Puttenham, in his Art of English Poesy, 1589, speaking of one Gray, says, "what good estimation did he grow into with king Henry [the Eighth] and afterwards with the duke of Somerset protectour, for making certaine merry ballads, whereof one chiefly was The Hunte is up, the Hunte is up." Ritson. A huntsup also signified a morning song to a new-married woman, the day after her marriage, and is certainly used here in that sense. See Cotgrave's Dictionary, in v. Resveil. Malone. 5 Art thou gone so? my love! my lord! my friend!] Thus the quarto, 1597. That of 1599, and the folio, read: Art thou gone so? love, lord, ay husband, friend! Malone. 60! by this count I shall be much in years, Ere I again behold my Romeo.] "Illa ego, quæ fueram te decedente puella, "Protinus ut redeas, facta videbor anus." Ovid, Epist. I. Steevens. ? O God! I have an ill-divining soul: &c.] This miserable prescience of futurity I have always regarded as a circumstance particularly beautiful. The same kind of warning from the mind, Methinks, I see thee, now thou art below, [Exit ROM. Jul. O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle: If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him That is renown'd for faith? Be fickle, fortune; For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long, But send him back. La. Cap. [within] Ho, daughter! are you up? Jul. Who is 't that calls? is it my lady mother? Is she not down so late, or up so early?2 What unaccustom'd cause procures her hither?3 Romeo seems to have been conscious of, on his going to the entertainment at the house of Capulet: 66 my mind misgives, "Some consequence yet hanging in the stars, "From this night's revels." Steevens. 8 O God! I have an ill-divining soul: Methinks, I see thee, now thou art below, As one dead -] So, in our author's Venus and Adonis: "I prophecy thy death." The reading of the text is that of the quarto, 1597. That of 1599, and the folio, read-now thou art so low. Malone. 9 Dry sorrow drinks our blood.] This is an allusion to the proverb -"Sorrow's dry." Chapman, in his version of the seventeenth Iliad, says— "Drunk from their faces all their blouds ; Steevens. He is accounting for their paleness. It was an ancient notion that sorrow consumed the blood, and shortened life. Hence, in The Third Part of King Henry VI, we have—“ blood-sucking sighs.” Malone. 1 That is renown'd for faith?] This Romeo, so renown'd for faith, was but the day before dying for love of another woman: yet this is natural. Romeo was the darling object of Juliet's love, and Romeo was, of course, to have every excellence. M. Mason. 2 Is she not down so late, or up so early?] Is she not laid down in her bed at so late an hour as this? or rather is she risen from bed at so early an hour of the morn? Malone. 3 procures her hither?] Procures for brings. Warburton. Enter Lady CAPULET. La. Cap. Why, how now, Juliet? Jul. Madam, I am not well. La. Cap. Evermore weeping for your cousin's death? What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears? An if thou could'st, thou could'st not make him live; Therefore, have done: Some grief shows much of love; But much of grief shows still some want of wit. Jul. Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss. La. Cap. So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend Which you weep for. Jul. Feeling so the loss, I cannot choose but ever weep the friend. La. Cap. Well, girl, thou weep'st not so much for his death, As that the villain lives which slaughter'd him. Jul. What villain, madam? La. Cap. That same villain, Romeo. Jul. Villain and he are many miles asunder. God pardon him!4 I do, with all my heart; And yet no man, like he, doth grieve my heart. La. Cap. That is, because the traitor murderer lives. Jul. Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands. 'Would, none but I might venge my cousin's death! La. Cap. We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not: Then weep no more. I'll send to one in Mantua,Where that same banish'd runagate doth live,That shall bestow on him so sure a draught," God pardon him!] The word him, which was inadvertently omitted in the old copies, was inserted by the editor of the second folio. Malone. 5 Ay, madam, from &c.] Juliet's equivocations are rather too artful for a mind disturbed by the loss of a new lover. Johnson. 6 That shall bestow on him so sure a draught,] Thus the elder quarto, which I have followed in preference to the quartos 1599 and 1609, and the folio, 1623, which read, less intelligibly: Shall give him such an unaccustom'd dram. Steevens. The elder quarto has-That should &c. The word shall is drawn from that of 1599. Malone. unaccustom❜d dram,] In vulgar language, Shall give him a dram which he is not used to. Though I have, if I mistake not, observed, that in old books unaccustomed signifies wonderful, powerful, efficacious. Johnson, I believe Dr. Johnson's first explanation is the true one. Bar That he shall soon keep Tybalt company: Jul. Indeed, I never shall be satisfied La. Cap. Find thou the means, and I'll find such a man. But now I'll tell thee joyful tidings, girl. Jul. And joy comes well in such a needful time: What are they, I beseech your ladyship? La. Cap. Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child; One, who, to put thee from thy heaviness, Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy, That thou expect'st not, nor I look'd not for. 9 Jul. Madam, in happy time, what day is that? La. Cap. Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn, The gallant, young, and noble gentleman, The county Paris, at Saint Peter's church, Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride. Jul. Now, by Saint Peter's church, and Peter too, He shall not make me there a joyful bride. I wonder at this haste; that I must wed Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo. naby Googe, in his Cupido Conquered, 1563, uses unacquainted in the same sense: 7 "And ever as we mounted up, "I lookte upon my wynges, "And prowde I was, me thought, to see my cousin Tybalt-] The last word of this line, which is not in the old copies, was added by the editor of the second folio. Malone. 8 Find thou &c.] This line in the quarto, 1597, is given to Juliet. Steevens. 9 in happy time,] A la bonne heure. This phrase was interjected, when the hearer was not quite so well pleased as the speaker. Johnson. I pray you, tell La. Cap. Here comes your father; tell him so yourself. And see how he will take it at your hands.` Enter CAPULET and Nurse. Cap. When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;1 But for the sunset of my brother's son, It rains downright.— How now? a conduit, girl? what, still in tears ?2 1 When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;] Thus the undated quarto. The quarto, 1599, and the folio, read-the earth doth drizzle dew. The line is not in the original copy. The reading of the quarto, 1599, and the folio, is philosophically true; and perhaps ought to be preferred. Dew undoubtedly rises from the earth, in consequence of the action of the heat of the sun on its moist surface. Those vapours which rise from the earth in the course of the day, are evaporated by the warmth of air as soon as they arise; but those which rise after sun-set, form themselves into drops, or rather into that fog or mist which is termed dew. Though, with the modern editors, I have followed the undated quarto, and printed-the air doth drizzle dew, I suspected when this note was written, that earth was the poet's word, and a line in The Rape of Lucrece, strongly supports that reading: "Malone. "But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set, —,’ When our author, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, says: " And when she [the moon] weeps, weeps every little flower;" he only means that every little flower is moistened with dew, as if with tears; and not that the flower itself drizzles dew. This passage sufficiently explains how the earth, in the quotation from The Rape of Lucrece, may be said to weep. Steevens. That Shakspeare thought it was the air and not the earth that drizzled dew, is evident from other passages. So, in King John: "Before the dew of evening fall." Again, in King Henry VIII: "His dews fall every where." Again, in the same play: "The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her." Again, in Hamlet: "Ders of blood fell." Ritson. 2 How now? a conduit, girl? what, still in tears?] In Thomas Heywood's Troia Britannica, cant. ii, st. 40, 1609, there is the same allusion: "You should not let such high-priz'd moysture fall, "Which from your hart your conduit-eyes distill.” H. White. |
