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And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,
Warm and new kill'd.

PRINCE. Search, seek, and know how this foul murther

comes.

1 WATCH. Here is a friar, and slaughter'd Romeo's man; With instruments upon them, fit to open

These dead men's tombs.

CAP. O, Heaven!—O, wife! look how our daughter bleeds! This dagger hath mista'en,-for, lo! his house

Is empty on the back of Montague,—

And is mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom.

LA. CAP. O me! this sight of death is as a bell, 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 now early down.

MON. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night; Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath: What further woe conspires against my 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 descent;
And then will I be general of your woes,

And lead you even to death: Meantime forbear,
And let mischance be slave to patience.-

Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

FRI. I am the greatest, able to do least,

Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me, of this direful murther;
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. I will be brief, for my short date of breath

Is not so long as is a tedious tale.

Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet,

And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife:

I married them; and their stolen marriage-day
Was Tybalt's doomsday, whose untimely death
Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from this city;
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin’d.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth'd and would have married her perforce
To county Paris:-Then comes she to me;
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some means
To rid her from this second marriage,

Or, in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her

The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, friar John,
Was stay'd by accident; and yesternight
Return'd my letter back: Then all alone,
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But when I came (some minute ere the time
Of her awaking), here untimely lay
The noble Paris, and true Romeo, dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
And bear this work of Heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But (as it seems) did violence on herself.
All this I know; and to the marriage
Her nurse is privy: And, if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrific'd, some hour before the time,
Unto the rigour of severest law.

PRINCE. We still have known thee for a holy man.---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;
And threaten'd 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:

Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb;

And, by and by, my master drew on him;
And then I ran away to call the watch.

PRINCE. This letter doth make good the friar's words,
Their course of love, the tidings of her death;
And here he writes-that he did buy a poison
Of a poor 'pothecary, and therewithal

Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.
Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!-
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That Heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!

And I, for winking at your discords too,

Have lost a brace of kinsmen:-all are punish'd.
CAP. O, brother Montague, give me thy hand.
This is my daughter's jointure, for no more
Can I demand.

MON. But I can give thee more:
For I will raise her statue in pure gold;

That whiles Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at that rate be set,

As that of true and faithful Juliet.

CAP. As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie;

Poor sacrifices of our enmity!

PRINCE. A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun for sorrow will not shew 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.

VARIOUS READINGS.

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THE variations in the several editions of this play are so numerous, that it would be impossible here to point them out. They are noticed minutely in our Pictorial' and 'National' editions. Several of the corrections in Mr. Collier's folio are adoptions of the early readings of the quartos. There are also a few other unimportant changes in that folio, which it is scarcely necessary to discuss. We therefore content ourselves with giving the following note on a long-disputed passage:

"Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,

That enemies' eyes may wink; and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of, and unseen."

ACT III., Sc. 2.

The common reading, which is that of all the old copies, is

tators.

"That runawayes' eyes may weep.

An un

This passage has been a perpetual source of contention to the commenTheir difficulties are well represented by Warburton's question -"What runaways are these, whose eyes Juliet is wishing to have stopped?" Warburton says Phoebus is the runaway. Steevens proves that Night is the runaway. Douce thinks that Juliet is the runaway. In several early poems Cupid is styled Runaway. Monck Mason is confident that the passage ought to be, "That Renomy's eyes may wink," Renomy being a new personage, created out of the French Renommée, and answering, we suppose, to the "Rumour" of Spenser. learned compositor, Zachary Jackson, suggests that runaways is a misprint for unawares. The word unawares, in the old orthography, is unawayres (it is so spelt in 'The Third Part of Henry VI.', and the r, having been misplaced, produced this word of puzzle, runawayes. Mr. Collier adopted this reading in his edition of 1842. Mr. Dyce suggests "that rude day's eyes may wink." Mr. R. G. White proposes "rumour's eyes," which had been previously suggested, without his knowledge, by Heath. Mr. Singer would read "rumourers." Lastly, in Mr. Collier's corrected folio, we have "enemies' eyes." Amidst all these amusing guesses it is the safer course to abide by the old "runaway's."

GLOSSARY.

ABRAHAM. Act II., Sc. 1.

66

Young Abraham Cupid."

Abraham Cupid is the cheat or rogue Cupid, a designation applied from the "Abraham man" of our old statutes.

ALLA STOCCATA. Act III., Sc. 1.

"Alla stoccata carries it away."

Alla stoccata was one of the terms of art of the Italian fencing-school, and meant a thrust with the rapier.

APE. Act II., Sc. 1.

"The ape is dead."

Ape is here an expression of kindly familiarity, as we sometimes now use monkey.

BEAR A BRAIN. Act I., Sc. 3. This is a common expression, meaning to have a memory.

BECOMED. Act IV., Sc. 2.

"And gave him what becomed love I might." Becomed is used for the participle becoming.

BITE MY THUMB. Act I., Sc. 1. This mode of insult, we apprehend, was originally peculiar to Italy, and was, perhaps, a mitigated form of the greater insult of making the fig, or fico, that is, thrusting out the thumb in a peculiar manner between the fingers. In Lodge's 'Wit's Miserie,' we have "Behold, I see contempt marching forth, giving me the fico with his thumb in his mouth," which shows almost an identity of the two. The practice had become naturalised in Shakspere's time, for Dekker, in 1608, describing the licentious groups that frequented "Paul's," has, "what swearing is there-what biting of thumbs to beget quarrels."

BITTER SWEETING. Act II., Sc. 4.

"Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting." Bitter sweeting was the name of an apple.

CATLING. Act IV., Sc. 5.

"What say you, Simon Catling?"

A catling was a lute-string, from the same original as our catgut.

CARRY COALS. Act I., Sc. 1.

"O' my word, we 'll not carry coals."

Gifford has well explained this phrase in a note on Jonson's 'Every Man out of his Humour.' He says that the lowest

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