75 80 85 90 Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris! Will I set up my everlasting rest, 95 100 105 110 And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! 115 Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you 119 Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. [Dies.] Enter FRIAR LAURENCE, with lantern, crow, and spade. Fri. L. Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night Have my old feet stumbled at graves! Who's there? What torch is yond, that vainly lends his light To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern, 126 It burneth in the Capels' monument. Bal. It doth so, holy sir; and there's my master, One that you love. Stay not to question, for the watch is coming; Enter WATCH, with the PAGE of Paris. 1. Watch. Lead, boy; which way? Jul. Yea, noise? Then I'll be brief. O happy dagger! [Snatching Romeo's dagger.] This is thy sheath (Stabs herself); there rust, and let me die. 170 [Falls [on Romeo's body, and dies]. 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. [Exeunt some.] Pitiful sight! here lies the County slain; And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead, 175 Who here hath lain this two days buried. Go, tell the Prince; run to the Capulets; Raise up the Montagues; some others search. [Exeunt others.] We see the ground whereon these woes do lie; 181 But the true ground of all these piteous woes We cannot without circumstance descry. Re-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. Re-enter another WATCHMAN, with FRIAR LAU Fri. L. I am the greatest, able to do least, Yet most suspected, as the time and place Doth make against me, of this direful murder; And here I stand, both to impeach and purge Myself condemned and myself excus'd. Prince. Then say at once what thou dost know in this. Fri. L. I will be brief, for my short date of breath 230 Is not so long as is a tedious tale. I married them; and their stolen marriage-day 238 241 245 For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin'd. 250 255 Where's Romeo's man? What can he say to this? Bal. I brought my master news of Juliet's death; And then in post he came from Mantua To this same place, to this same monument. This letter he early bid me give his father, 275 And threat'ned me with death, going in the vault, If I departed not and left him there. 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. 281 285 Prince. This letter doth make good the Their course of love, the tidings of her death. 204 And I for winking at your discords too Mon. Cap. As rich shall Romeo's by his lady's lie, Poor sacrifices of our enmity! Prince. A glooming peace this morning with it brings; 305 The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. [Exeunt. 300 THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CÆSAR 66 THE tragedy of Julius Cæsar was first printed in the Folio of 1623. The earlier limit for the date of its composition is presumably fixed by its absence from the list given in Meres's Palladis Tamia in 1598; and a later limit is found in an allusion to the speeches of Brutus and Antony to the citizens in John Weever's Mirror of Martyrs, published in 1601. But Weever states in his Dedication that his work " some two years ago was made fit for the print"; and this piece of evidence is strengthened by an apparent reference in Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour (1599). In this play (III. i.) Clove, a talker of fustian, is made to quote, reason long since is fled to animals," which may, perhaps, derive its point from Julius Cæsar, III. ii. 109. With the date thus suggested, 1599, the metrical tests and the characteristics of style are in sufficient agreement; and few modern critics place the play later than 1601. An argument has been based on the use of the word "eternal" in 1. ii. 160. In 1600, it is urged, Shakespeare was still using "infernal" in such passages, but after that date he substituted " eternal," apparently out of deference to the Puritan agitation which culminated in legislation against profanity and other abuses on the stage. But this loses its force when it is observed that the change may here, as in other instances, have been made at a later date, and that it is by no means certain that Shakespeare wished to say "infernal." The history of Julius Cæsar had been treated on the Elizabethan stage before Shakespeare wrote his tragedy, but it has not yet been shown that he made use of any earlier version, though some scholars have argued that the present play is the result of the combination of two earlier dramas dealing respectively with the death and the avenging of Julius Cæsar. The evidence from an extant Dutch play of foreign origin has not yet been brought to bear on the problem. It is not questioned, however, that Shakespeare drew heavily on Plutarch's lives of Cæsar, Brutus, and Antony, which he read in Sir Thomas North's translation of Amyot's French version. A large portion of the play consists merely of North's language turned into blank verse, with that subtle heightening of the imaginative quality which Shakespeare habitually added to his sources; and much that has puzzled readers in the unheroic character of Cæsar finds its explanation in the text of Plutarch. Cæsar's great exploits are narrated in Plutarch's Life, but in the earlier part which Shakespeare did not use; and the later section taken alone conveys very much the same impression of Cæsar's pomposity and weaknesses as is given by the earlier part of the play. The characters of Casca and Lepidus are hardly hinted at by Plutarch. Cassius is strengthened by changing him from a man who was too familiar with his friends, and would jest too broadly with them," to one who smiles seldom, and by the omission of the petty causes of his hatred of Cæsar. Brutus is still more idealized. Several details that might have taken from his dignity are omitted, and the boy Lucius is invented that by the picture of their relations might be emphasized the tenderness of Brutus's disposition. The soliloquy of Brutus in which the workings of his mind before the assassination are laid bare, the scene in the orchard, that in which the conspirators bathe their arms in Cæsar's blood, and the speech of Antony over Cæsar's dead body are wholly Shakespeare's; while the orations of Brutus and Antony at Cæsar's funeral are elaborated from the slightest hints. 66 SCENE: Rome; the neighbourhood of Sardis; the neighbourhood of Philippi.] Mar. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels? You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, And do you now put on your best attire? Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, |