For sweet discourses in our time to come. JUL. O God! I have an ill-divining soul :3 Methinks, I see thee, now thou art below, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb: Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale. ROM. And trust me, love, in my eye so do you: Dry sorrow drinks our blood.5 Adieu! adieu! [Exit ROMEO. JUL. O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle: If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him 3 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, Romeo seems to have been conscious of, on his going to the entertainment at the house of Capulet: my mind misgives, "Some consequence yet hanging in the stars, "From this night's revels." STEEVENS. * 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: "The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed; "And fear doth teach it divination; "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. Dry sorrow drinks our blood.] This is an allusion to the proverb "Sorrow's dry." Chapman, in his version of the seventeenth Iliad, says— their harts 66 "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. See Vol. XVIII. p. 311, n. 4. STEEVENS. 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?7 What unaccustom'd cause procures her hither ? Enter Lady CAPULET. LA. CAP. Why, how now, Juliet? JUL. Madam, I am not well. LA. CAP. Evermore weeping for your cousin's death ?9 6 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. "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. procures her hither?] Procures for brings. WARBURTON. 9 Evermore weeping for your cousin's death? &c.] So, in The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet, 1562 : 66 time it is that now you should our Tybalt's death forget; "Of whom since God hath claim'd the life that was but lent, "He is in bliss, ne is there cause why you should thus lament: "You cannot call him back with tears and shriekings shrill; "It is a fault thus still to grudge at God's appointed will." MALONE. So, full as appositely, in Painter's Novel: "Thinke no more upon the death of your cousin Thibault, whom do you thinke to revoke with teares?" &c. STEEVENS. 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. 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: God pardon him!] The word him, which was inadvertently omitted in the old copies, was inserted by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. 2 Ay, madam, from &c.] Juliet's equivocations are rather too artful for a mind disturbed by the loss of a new lover. JOHNSON. Then weep no more. I'll send to one in Mantua,- JUL. Indeed, I never shall be satisfied 3 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. Barnaby Googe, in his Cupido Conquered, 1563, uses unacquainted in the same sense: 4 "And ever as we mounted up, "I lookte upon my wynges, "And prowde I was, me thought, to see "Suche unacquaynted thyngs." STEEVENS. 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. 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, morn, The gallant, young, and noble gentleman, 5 Find thou &c.] This line in the quarto 1597, is given to Juliet. STEEVENS. 6 in happy time,] A la bonne heure. This phrase was interjected, when the hearer was not quite so well pleased as the speaker. JOHNSON. 7 The county Paris,] It is remarked, that "Paris, though in one place called Earl, is most commonly stiled the Countie in this play. Shakspeare seems to have preferred, for some reason or other, the Italian Comte to our Count: perhaps he took it from the old English novel, from which he is said to have taken his plot."-He certainly did so: Paris is there first stiled a young Earle, and aftewards Counte, Countee, County; according to the unsettled orthography of the time." The word, however, is frequently met with in other writers; particularly in Fairfax: "As when a captaine doth besiege some hold, "Set in a marish, or high on a hill, "And trieth waies and wiles a thousand fold, FARMER. |