Where, and what time, thou wilt perform the rite;
And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay,

And follow thee my lord throughout the world:
Nurse. [Within.] Madam.

Jul. I come anon :-But if thou mean'st not well, I do beseech thee,

Nurse. [Within.] Madam.

Jul.

By and by, I come:

To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief:
To-morrow will I send.

Rom.

So thrive my soul,

[Exit.

Jul. A thousand times good night!
Rom. A thousand times the worse, to want thy

light.

Love goes toward love, as school-boys from their

books;

But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. [Retiring slowly.

Re-enter JULIET, above.

Jul. Hist! Romeo, hist!-O, for a falconer's voice, To lure this tassel-gentle 15 back again! Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud; Else would I tear the cave 16 where echo lies, And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine With repetition of my Romeo's name.

Rom. It is my soul, that calls upon my name;

How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,

Like softest musick to attending ears!

I have forgot why I did call thee back.

Rom. Let me stand here till thou remember it. Jul. I shall forget, to have thee still stand there, Rememb'ring how I love thy company.

- Rom. And I'll still stay, to have thee still forget, Forgetting any other home but this.

Jul. 'Tis almost morning, I would have thee gone; And yet no further than a wanton's bird; Who lets it hop a little from her hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, And with a silk thread plucks it back again,

So loving-jealous of his liberty.

Rom. I would, I were thy bird.

Jul.

Sweet, so would I;

Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet

sorrow,

That I shall say-good night, till it be morrow.

[Exit.

Rom. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast!

'Would, I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest! Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell;

His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell. [Exit.

17 The quarto of 1597 puts the cold, distant, and formal appellation Madam into the mouth of Romeo. The two subsequent quartos and the folio have my niece,' which is a palpable corruption; but it is difficult to say what word was intended. 'My sweet' is the reading of the second folio.

SCENE III. Friar Laurence's Cell.

Enter FRIAR LAURENCE, with a Basket. Fri. The gray-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning

night1,

Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day's path-way, made by Titan's

wheels 3:

Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry,
I must fill up this osier cage of ours,
With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers 4,

1 In the folio and the three later quartos these four lines are printed twice over, and given once to Romeo and once to the

Friar.

2 Flecked is spotted, dappled, streaked, or variegated. Lord Surrey uses the word in his translation of the fourth Æneid :'Her quivering cheekes flecked with deadly stain.'

So in the old play of The Four Prentices :

'We'll fleck our white steeds in your Christian blood.'

3 This is the reading of the second folio. The quarto of 1597 reads :

'From forth day's path and Titan's firy wheels.' The quarto of 1599 and the folio have 'burning wheels.'

4 So Drayton, in the eighteenth Song of his Polyolbion, speaking of a hermit :

'His happy time he spends the works of God to see,
In those so sundry herbs which there in plenty grow,
Whose sundry strange effects he only seeks to know.
And in a little maund, being made of oziers small,
Which serveth him to do full many a thing withal,

He very choicely sorts his simples got abroad.'

Shakspeare has very artificially prepared us for the part Friar Lawrence is 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. The passage was, however, suggested by Arthur Brooke's poem. VOL. X.

G

The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb5;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb:
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find;
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some, and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace, that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities :
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometime's by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence, and med'cine power:
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed foes encamp them still 8
In man as well as herbs, grace, and rude will;

5 Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum.'

،

Lucretius.

The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave.' Milton.

Time's the king of men,

For he's their parent, and he is their grave.' Pericles. 6 Efficacious virtue.

7 i. e. with its odour. Not, as Malone says, 'with the olfactory nerves, the part that smells.'

8 So in Shakspeare's Lover's Complaint :

،

terror and dear modesty

Encamp'd in hearts, but fighting outwardly.'

Our poet has more than once alluded to these opposed foes. So in Othello:

'Yea, curse his better angel from his side.'

See also his forty-fourth Sonnet. He may have remembered a passage in the old play of King Arthur, 1587 :

'Peace hath three foes encamped in our breasts,
Ambition, wrath, and envie.'

And, where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

Enter ROMEO.

Rom. Good morrow, father!

Fri.

Benedicite!

What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?-..
Young son, it argues a distemper'd head,
So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed:
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;
But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth

reign:

Therefore thy earliness doth me assure,
Thou art uprous'd by some distemp'rature;
Or if not so, then here I hit it right-
Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.

Rom. That last is true, the sweeter rest was mine.
Fri, God pardon sin! 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?

Rom. I'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again.
I have been feasting with mine enemy;
Where on a sudden, one hath wounded me,
That's by me wounded; both our remedies
Within thy help and holy physick lies 9:

9 This apparent false concord occurs in many places, not only of Shakspeare, but of all old English writers. It is sufficient to observe that in the Anglo Saxon and very old English the third person plural of the present tense ends in eth, and often familiarly in es, as might be exemplified from Chaucer and others. This idiom was not worn out in Shakspeare's time, who must not therefore be tried by rules which were invented after his