R was called the dog's letter. In his English Grammar, Ben Jonson says, "R is the dog's letter, and hirreth in the sound." In our old writers we have a verb formed from the noise of a dog. Thus, in Nashe, 1600, They arre and bark at night against the moon : and in Holland's translation of Plutarch Morals, "a dog is, by nature, fell and quarrelsome, given to arre and war upon a very small occasion." Erasmus has a meaning for R being the dog's letter, which is not derived from the sound :--" R, litera quæ in Rixando prima est, canina vocatur.' دو SCENE V. "O! she is LAME: love's heralds should be thoughts." The first sketch in quarto follows up the line above quoted thus: And run more swift than hasty powder fir'd SCENE VI. This scene was rewritten by the author in his revision. As the original scene has its peculiar beauties, which were sacrificed to the graver tone of the revised scene, the reader will doubtless be gratified by being enabled to compare the two: Rom. Now, father Laurence, in thy holy grant Consists the good of me and Juliet. Friar. Without more words, I will do all I may To make you happy, if in me it lie. Rom. This morning here she 'pointed we should meet, And consummate those never-parting bands, Witness of our hearts' love, by joining hands; "A LA STOCCATA carries it away.”—A la stoccata is the Italian term of art for the thrust with a rapier. your sword out of his PILCHER by the ears.”So all the old editions but the first, which has scabbard, thereby explaining what was meant by "pilcher." A pilch is a covering of leather, but no other instance has been adduced of the use of the word "pilcher." "My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt.”—Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakespeare, that "he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him." Yet he thinks him "no such formidable person, but that he might have lived through the play, and died in his bed," without danger to the Poet. Dryden well knew, had he been in quest of truth, that in a pointed sentence, more re gard is commonly had to the words than the thought, and that it is very seldom to be rigorously understood. Mercutio's wit, gayety, and courage, will always procure him friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated; he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakespeare to have continued him in existence, though some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime.JOHNSON. Hallam suggests a different motive for the untimely end of this general favourite. He thinks that there is so much of excessive tenderness in Romeo's character, that we might be in some danger of mistaking it for effeminacy, if the loss of his friend had not aroused his courage. "It seems," says he, (Literature of Europe,) "to have been necessary to keep down the other characters, that they might not overpower the principal one; and though we can by no means agree with Dryden, that if Shakespeare had not killed Mercutio, Mercutio would have killed him, there might have been some danger of his killing Romeo. His brilliant vivacity shows the softness of the other a little to a disadvantage." Perhaps Hallam has hit upon the true reason, for it is worthy of note that the death of Mercutio is wholly the Poet's own invention. It does not come from the poem or novel, where is merely an accidental contest between the Capulets and Montagues, whom Romeo, endeavouring to part, is assailed by Tybalt, and kills him in self-defence, not in anger for the murder of a friend. "How NICE the quarrel was”—i. e. How trifling how slight as in act v. scene 2: "The letter was not nice," not a matter of small moment. “Affection makes him false, he speaks not true.”—The charge of falsehood on Benvolio, though produced at hazard, is very just. The author, who seems to intend the character of Benvolio as good, meant perhaps to show how the best minds, in a state of faction and discord, are distorted to criminal partiality.—JOHNSON. SCENE II. "Enter JULIET." The famous soliloquy, "Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds," teems with luxuriant imagery. The fond adjuration, "Come night, Come Romeo, come thou day in night!" expresses that fulness of enthusiastic admiration for her lover, which possesses her soul; but expresses it as only Juliet could or would have expressed it,-in a bold and beautiful metaphor. Let it be remembered that in this speech, Juliet is not supposed to be addressing an audience, nor even a confidant. And I confess I have been shocked at the utter want of taste and refinement in those who, with coarse derision, or in a spirit of prudery, yet more gross and perverse, have dared to comment on this beautiful "Hymn to the Night," breathed out by Juliet, in the silence and solitude of her chamber. She is thinking aloud; it is the young heart" triumphing to itself in words." In the midst of all the vehemence with which she calls upon the night to bring Romeo to her arms, there is something so almost infantine in her perfect simplicity, so playful and fantastic in the imagery and language, that the charm of sentiment and innocence is thrown over the whole; and her impatience, to use her own expression, is truly that of "a child before a festival, that hath new robes, and may not wear them." It is at the very moment too that her whole heart and fancy are abandoned to blissful anticipation, that the nurse enters with the news of Romeo's banishment; and the immediate transition from rapture to despair has a most powerful effect.-MRS. JAMESON. "That, UNAWARES, eyes may wink."-Thus Knight, with whom Collier agrees. They owe the reading to Jackson's Shakespeare's Genius Justified." "The common reading, (says Knight,) which is that of all the old copies, is That runaways' eyes may weep. "This passage has been a perpetual source of contention to the commentators. Their difficulties are well represented by Warburton's question-- What run-aways are these, whose eyes Juliet is wishing to have stopt?' Warburton says, Phœbus is the run-away. Stevens argues that Night is the run-away. Douce thinks that Juliet is the run-away. Monck Mason is confident that the passage ought to be, that Reomy's eyes may wink,' Reomy being a new personage, created out of the French Renommee, and answering, we suppose, to the Rumour' of Spenser. After all this learning, there comes an unlearned compositor, Zachary Jackson, and sets the matter straight. Run-aways is a misprint for unawares. The word unawares, in the old orthography, is unawayres, (it is so spelled in the third part of HENRY VI.,) and the r having been misplaced, produced this word of puzzle, run-awayes. We have not the least hesitation in adopting Jackson's reading." "Hood my UNMANN'D blood, BATING in my cheeks.”— Terms of falconry. An unmanned hawk, says Stevens, is one that is not brought to endure company. Bating, is fluttering with the wings, as striving to fly away. "say thou but I."-The affirmative ay was, in Shakespeare's time almost invariably spelt with a capital I; and "that bare vowel" it is obviously necessary to retain here. SCENE V. "Enter ROMEO and JULIET." The stage-direction in the first edition is :-"Enter Romeo and Juliet, at the window." In the later editions, "Enter Romeo and Juliet aloft." They appeared, probably, as Malone remarks, in the balcony at the back of the stage. The scene in the Poet's eye was doubtless the large and massy projecting balcony before one or more windows, common in Italian palaces, and not unfrequent in Gothic civil architecture. The loggia, an open gallery, or high terrace, communicating with the upper apartments of a palace, is a common feature in Palladian architecture, and would also be well adapted to such a scene. Malone and Collier also have shown, in the accounts of the old English stage, the actors were intended to appear on the balcony or upper stage, usual in the construction of the old English theatre, which was used for many similar purposes, as for the exhibition of the play in Hamlet, for dialogues, where part is from the walls of a castle or fortified town, as in the historical plays, &c. "the lark makes sweet DIVISION."-A division in music is a number of quick notes sung to one syllable; a kind of warbling. This continued to prevail in vocal music till recently. "Some say, the lark and loathed toad change eyes.”— The toad having very fine eyes, and the lark very ugly ones, was the occasion of a saying that the lark and toad had changed eyes. This tradition Dr. Johnson states himself to have heard in a rustic rhyme :To heaven I'd fly, But that the toad beguiled me of mine eye. Juliet means that the croak of the toad would have been no indication of the appearance of day, and consequently no signal for her lover's departure. The hunts-up" was the name of the tune anciently played to wake the hunters, and collect them together. See Chappell's "National English Airs.” "Enter Lady Capulet." In the dialogue between Juliet and her parents, and in the scenes with the Nurse, we seem to have before us the whole of her previous education and habits: we see her on the one hand, kept in severe subjection by her austere parents; and on the other fondled and spoiled by a foolish old nurse-a situation perfectly accordant with the manners of the time. Then Lady Capulet comes sweeping by with her train of velvet, her black hood, her fan, and rosary-the very beau-ideal of a proud Italian matron of the fifteenth century, whose offer to poison Romeo in revenge for the death of Tybalt, stamps her with one very characteristic trait of the age and country. Yet she loves her daughter; and there is a touch of remorseful tenderness in her lamentations over her, which adds to our impression of the timid softness of Juliet, and the harsh subjection in which she has been kept.-MRS. JAMESON. "O! he's a lovely gentleman."-The character of the Nurse exhibits a just picture of those whose actions have no principles for their foundation. She has been unfaithful to the trust reposed in her by Capulet, and is ready to embrace any expediency that offers, to avert the consequences of her first infidelity. The picture is not, however, an original; the nurse in the poem exhibits the same readiness to accommodate herself to the present conjuncture. Vanbrugh, in The Relapse, has copied, in this respect, the character of his nurse from Shakespeare.-STEVENS AND MALONE. ACT IV.-SCENE I. "And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo SEAL'D."-The seals of deeds were not formerly impressed on the parchment itself, but were appended on distinct slips or labels affixed to it. Hence, in KING RICHARD II., the Duke of York discovers, by the depending seal, a covenant with his son, the Duke of Aumerle, had entered into: What seal is that which hangs without thy bosom ? "Shall keep his native progress, but surcease."-The quarto, 1597, has, A dull and heavy slumber, which shall seize Each vital spirit; for no pulse shall keepe His natural progress, but surcease to beat. This may seem preferable; but the whole speech is much briefer in the earliest edition, occupying only fourteen lines. "In thy best robes uncover'd on the bier."-The Italian custom here alluded to is still continued. Rogers, in his "Italy," describes such a scene:But now by fits A dull and dismal noise assailed the ear, As 'twere her nightly posture, through the crowd SCENE II. "Sirrah, go hire me twenty CUNNING COOKS."-The "cunning cook," in the time of Shakespeare, was, as he is at present, a great personage. According to an entry in the books of the London Stationers' Co., for 1560, the preacher was paid six shillings and two pence for his labour; the minstrel twelve shillings; and the cook fifteen shillings. The relative scale of estimation for theology, poetry, and gastronomy, has not been much altered during two centuries, either in the city generally, or in the company which represents the city's literature. Ben Jonson has described a master-cook in his gorgeous style : A master cook! why, he is the man of men. Some be dry-ditches, some motes round with broths, He has a nature in a pot, 'bove all the chemists, He is an architect, an engineer, A soldier, a physician, a philosopher, Old Capulet, in his exuberant spirits at his daughter's approaching marriage, calls for "twenty" of these artists. The critics think this too large a number. Ritson says, with wonderful simplicity, "Either Capulet had altered his mind strangely, or our author forgot what he had just made him tell us." This is, indeed, to understand a poet with admirable exactness. The passage is entirely in keeping with Shakespeare's habit of hitting off a character almost by a word. Capulet is evidently a man of ostentation; but his ostentation, as is most generally the case, is covered with a thin veil of affected indifference. In the first act, he says to his guests, We have a trifling foolish banquet toward. In the third act, when he settles the day of Paris's marriage, he just hints, We'll keep no great ado-a friend or two. But Shakespeare knew that these indications of the "pride which apes humility," were not inconsistent with the "twenty cooks,"-the regret that We shall be much unfurnish'd for this time, and the solicitude expressed in Look to the baked meats, good Angelica. Stevens turns up his nose aristocratically at Shakespeare, for imputing "to an Italian nobleman and his lady, all the petty solicitudes of a private house, concerning a provincial entertainment;" and he adds, very grandly, "To such a bustle our author might have been witness at home; but the like anxieties could not well have occurred in the family of Capulet." Stevens had not well read the history of society, either in Italy or in England, to have fallen into the mistake of believing that the great were exempt from such anxieties." The baron's lady overlooked the baron's kitchen from her private chamber; and the still-room and the spicery not unfrequently occupied a large portion of her attention. KNIGHT. "And gave him what BECOMED"-i. e. becoming. SCENE III. "Laying down a DAGGER."-" Daggers, or, as they are commonly called, knives, (says Gifford, Ben Jonson's Works,) were worn at all times by every woman in England-whether they were so in Italy, Shakespeare, I believe, never inquired, and I cannot tell." "I will not entertain so bad a thought."-This line is only in the quarto, 1597; it seems necessary to the completeness of the rejection of Juliet's suspicion of the Friar. "As in a vault."-It has been conjectured that the charnel-house under the church at Stratford, which contains a vast collection of human bones, suggested to Shakespeare this description of "the ancient receptacle" of the Capulets. "Romeo! Romeo! Romeo!--here's drink-I drink to thee."-The last line of the original sketch, has been · 60 substituted to this of the original enlarged copies, by I will not entertain so bad a thought. A wake an hour before the appointed time: My cousin Tybalt weltering in his blood, SCENE IV. "They call for dates and quinces in the PASTRY.”i. e. in the room where what we now call pastry was made. "Go, go, you coT-QUEAN, go."—In the old copies this speech is given to the Nurse, which is followed in the ordinary editions, as well as by Collier. It is clearly an error of the press, the nurse having been sent to fetch spices, and made to re-enter shortly after. The correction is due to the ingenuity of Z. Jackson. "Can we imagine that a nurse would take so great a liberty with her master, as to call him a cot-quean, and order him to bed. Besides, what business has a nurse to make a reply to a speech addressed to her master? Lady Capulet afterwards calls her husband a mousehunt, another appellation which, like cot-quean, none but a wife would dare to use."-Shakespeare's Genius. Cot-qucan is a term now obsolete, but which lasted in use until the time of the Spectator, where it is used as here, for a man interfering in such household affairs as belong to the other sex. "— a mouse-hunt"-A hunter of mice, but evidently said here with allusion to a different object of pursuit, such as is called mouse only in playful endearment, as in HAMLET:-66 "Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse."-See NARE's Glossary. SCENE V. "-life, LIVING, all is death's."-Most modern editors, since Stevens, have thought fit to read, "life leaving, all is death's." Every old copy gives the passage as it stands in our text, and there is no reason for changing "living" to leaving. Capulet says that death is his heir-that he will die, and leave death all he has, viz:-" life, living, and every thing else." I concur with Mr. Collier, in his return to the authentic text. to see this morning's face."-The quarto, 1597, after this line, continues the speech of Paris thus:And doth it now present such prodigies? Accurst, unhappy, miserable man! Forlorn, forsaken, destitute I am; Born to the world to be a slave in it Distrest, remediless, and unfortunate. O heavens! Oh nature! wherefore did you make me The rest of the scene is considerably enlarged in the later editions. "For though FOND nature."-" Fond" is from the folio, 1632: the earlier editions have "For though some nature;" probably a misprint. Some was of old written with a long s, which might be easily mistaken for an f, and frequently it was so mistaken. Yet some may have possibly been the true word, meaning "some impulses of nature, some part of our nature." "Enter PETER." As the audience know that Juliet is not dead, this scene is, perhaps, excusable. But it is a strong warning to minor dramatists not to introduce at one time many separate characters agitated by one and the same circumstance. It is difficult to understand what effect, whether that of pity or of laughter, Shakespeare meant to produce; the occasion and the characteristic speeches are so little in harmony! For example, what the Nurse says is excellently suited to the Nurse's character, but grotesquely unsuited to the occasion.-COLERIDGE. "My heart is full of woe."-This and "Heart's ease," were the names of popular tunes of the time. "Heart's ease" is mentioned in "Misogonus," a play by Rychardes, written before 1570. A "dump" was a species of dance, (see Chappell's "National English Airs,") but it was also the name given to a species of poem. In TITUS ANDRONICUS we have had "dreary dumps," and in the Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA We meet with "Tune a deploring dump." Shortly after we have "doleful dumps." “I'll re you, I'll FÅ you.”—Re and fa are the syllables, or names, given in solmization, or sol-faing to the sounds D and F in the musical scale. "What say you, Simon CATLING"-A lute-string. "What say you, Hugh REBECK"-The three-stringed violin. ACT V.-SCENE I. "My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne.”—This and the two lines following, are very gay and pleasing. But why does Shakespeare give Romeo this involuntary cheerfulness just before the extremity of unhappiness? Perhaps to show the vanity of trusting to those uncertain and casual exaltations or depressions which many consider as certain foretokens of good and evil.—JOHN SON. roses, "What, ho! apothecary!"-We must imitate Knight and Collier, in trespassing upon our limited space by giving the speech descriptive of the apothecary, from the first edition. "The studies in poetical art, which Shakespeare's corrections of himself supply, are among the most instructive in the whole compass of literature:" Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. Let's see for means. As I do remember Here dwells a pothecary whom oft I noted As I past by, whose needy shop is stufft With beggarly accounts of empty boxes: And in the same an alligator bangs, Old ends of pack thread, and cakes of Are thinly strewed to make up a show. Him as I noted, thus with myself I thought: An if a man should need a poison now (Whose present sale is death in Mantua) Here he might buy it. This thought of mine, Did but forerun my need: and hereabout he dwells. Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut. What, ho! apothecary! come forth I say. "Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes, Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back." Instead of these lines, the quarto, 1597, has, Upon thy back hangs ragged misery, And starved famine dwelleth in thy cheek. Certainly very good lines, which might very well keep their place, if the author had chosen it, but we have no right, with Stevens, and the ordinary text, to make an entire new reading, by piecing together the two, thus :Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, Upon thy back hangs ragged misery. Otway, in his bold plagiarism of the whole play, in Caius Marius, altering it so as to adapt to Roman instead of Italian story, changed starveth to “stareth in thine eyes," a poetical and probable emendation, which is followed by Singer. Yet the original phrase, though harsh, is powerful and expressive, and not to be thrown out on mere conjecture. The singular verb starveth, with the two nouns, was not a grammatical error, according to old English usage, when both nominatives, as here, made up one compound idea. Unless, therefore, we choose to erase all the peculiarities of ancient idiom, there is no reason to adopt Pope's double emendation:: Need and oppression stare within thy eyes. SCENE II. "Going to find a bare-foot brother out."-This monkish custom the Poet learned from the old poem of "Romeus and Juliet." A pace our friar John to Mantua hies; And, for because in Italy it is a wonted guise, That friars in the town should seldom walk alone, But of their convent aye should be accompanied with one They travelled in pairs, says Baretti, that one might be a check on the other; a shrewd piece of policy, which has been adopted by our American Shakers. SCENE III. strew thy grave and weep."-Instead of these lines, the quarto has these verses : Sweet tomb, that in thy circuit dost contain Fair Juliet, that with angels dost remain, "Thou detestable maw."-The word "detestable," which is now accented on the second syllable, was once accented on the first; therefore this line was not originally inharmonious. In KING JOHN, act iii. scene 3, we read-" And I will kiss thy détestable bones." So, also, in Paris's lamentation, act. iv. :-"Most détestable death, by thee beguil'd." "Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man.”The gentleness of Romeo was shown before, as softened by love; and now it is doubled by love and sorrow, and fear of the place where he is.-COLERIDGE. "A grave? O, no! a LANTERN."-A "lantern" does not, in this instance, signify an enclosure for a lighted candle, but a louvre, or what in ancient records is styled lanternium, i. e. a spacious round or octagonal turret, full of windows, by means of which cathedrals and sometimes halls are illuminated; such as the beautiful lantern at Ely Minster. The same word, with the same sense, occurs in Churchyard's "Siege of Edinbrough Castle:" This lofty seat and lantern of that land, Like lodestarre stode, and lokte o'er ev'ry street. And in Holland's translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. b. XXXV.:-"Hence came the louvers and lanternes reared over the roofes of temples." A presence is a public room, which is at times the presence-chamber of a sovereign. This thought, extravagant as it is, is borrowed by Middleton in his "Blunt Master Constable:" The darkest dungeon which spite can devise STEVENS. "Ah, dear Juliet."-In the quarto of 1597, the above passage appears thus: Ah, dear Juliet, How well thy beauty doth become this grave! O, I believe that unsubstantial death Is amorous, and doth court my love. Therefore will I, O here, O ever here, Set up my everlasting rest With worms, that are thy chamber-maids. Thy drugs are swift: thus with a kiss I die. The text follows the quarto of 1599, which corresponds with the folio; except that some superfluous words and lines, which were repeated by the carelessness of the transcriber or printer, are here omitted. "I dreamt my master and another fought."-This is one of the touches of nature that would have escaped the hand of any painter less attentive to it than Shakespeare. What happens to a person while he is under the manifest influence of fear, will seem to him, when he is recovered from it, like a dream. Homer (book viii.) represents Rhesus dying, fast asleep, and, as it were, beholding his enemy in a dream, plunging a sword into his bosom. Eustathius and Dacier both applaud this image as very natural; for a man in such a condition, says Mr. Pope, awakes no further than to see confusedly what environs him, and to think it not a reality, but a vision.-STEVENS. "The lady stirs."-In the alteration of this play, now exhibited on the stage, Garrick appears to have been indebted to Otway, in his "Caius Marius," who, perhaps without any knowledge of the story as told by Da Porto and Bandello, does not permit his hero to die before his wife awakes. We somewhat reluctantly extract from Mrs. Inchbald's edition of ROMEO AND JULIET, as now acted, the alterations of the tomb-scene, as manufactured by Garrick, on the basis of a similar scene by Otway, between young Marius und Lavinia, in his Romanized "Romeo and Juliet." Had Shakespeare chosen to have so managed his catastrophe, his picture of bitter mental suffering, combined with the physical horrors of prolonged and violent death, would have been intensely painful. Otway's forced extravagance, which still, in substance, keeps possession of the stage, interpolated in Shakespeare's dialogue, is not only offensive as an unnatural rant, but also, as Browne acutely remarks, "as intruding on our better thoughts the possibility of so unalloyed and so unmerited a horror." Rom. Soft!-She breathes and stirs! Jul. Where am I?-Defend me, powers! Rom. She speaks, she lives, and we shall still be bless'd; My kind propitious stars o'erpay me now For all my sorrows past Rise, rise, my Juliet; And from this cave of death, this house of horror, Quick let me snatch thee to thy Romeo's arms; There breathe a vital spirit in thy lips, And call thee back, my soul, to life and love. Jul. Bless me, how cold it is!-Who's there? Rom. Thy husband; "Tis thy Romeo, Juliet, raised from desrair To joys unutterable.-Quit, quit this place, And let us fly together. (Raises her. (Brings her from the tomb Jul. Why do you force me so?-I'll ne'er consent;My strength may fail me, but my will's unmoved;— I'll not wed Paris;-Romeo is my husband. Rom. Romeo is thy husband! I am that Romeo; Nor all the opposing powers of earth or man Shall break our bonds, or tear thee from my heart. Jul. I know that voice;-Its magic sweetness wakes My tranced soul:-I now remember well Each circumstance. O my lord, my husband! Dost thou avoid me, Romeo? You fright me :-Speak ;-O, let me hear some voice Besides my own, in this drear vault of death, Or I shall faint.-Support me Rom. O, I cannot ; I have no strength; but want thy feeble aid.- Jul. Poison! What means my lord? Thy trembling voice, The transports that I felt To hear thee speak, and see thy opening eyes, Stopp'd, for a moment, his impetuous course, And all my mind was happiness and thee;But now the poison rushes through my veins :I have not time to tell, Fate brought me to this place, to take a last, Last farewell of my love, and with thee dic. Jul. Die-Was the friar false? I thought thee dead; distracted at the sight,— Jul. And did I wake for this! "Twixt death and love I'm torn, I am distracted: Rom. Fathers have flinty hearts, no tears can melt 'em :Nature pleads in vain; children must be wretched. Jul. O, my breaking heart! the watch is coming."-Malone maintains that there is no such establishment as the watch in Italy, Mr. Armitage Brown, more familiar with Italian customs, says, "If Dogberry and Verges should be pronounced nothing else than the constables of the night in London, before the new police was established, I can assert that I have seen those very officers in Italy." Still, he does not think that ROMEO AND JULIET indicates any knowledge of Italy and Italian manners beyond what could be gained from the original, whence the plot was taken; this play having been written before the period in which he conjectures Shakespeare to have visited Italy, and to have acquired some knowledge of the Italian language. "Thy lips are warm."-Upon Shakespeare's preference of the catastrophe of the old poem to that of the original tale, Augustus Schlegel remarks, that "the Poet seems to have hit upon what was best. There is a measure of agitation, beyond which all that is superadded becomes torture, or glides off ineffectually from the already saturated mind. In case of the cruel reunion of the lovers for an instant, Romeo's remorse for his over-hasty self-murder, Juliet's despair over her deceitful hope, at first cherished, then annihilated, that she was at the goal of her wishes, must have deviated into caricatures. Nobody surely doubts that Shakespeare was able to represent these with suitable force; but here every thing soothing was welcome, in order that we may not be frighted out of the melancholy, to which we willingly resign ourselves, by too painful discords. Why should we heap still more upon accident, that is already so guilty? Wherefore shall not the tortured Romeo quietly Shake the yoke of inauspicious stars, From his world-wearied flesh? He holds his beloved in his arms, and, dying, cheers She himself with a vision of everlasting marriage. also seeks death, in a kiss, upon his lips. These last moments must belong unparticipated to tenderness, that we may hold fast to the thought, that love lives, although the lovers perish." "I will be brief."-It is to be lamented that the Poet did not conclude the dialogue with the action, and avoid a narrative of events which the audience already knew.-JOHNSON. Shakespeare was led into this narrative by following Brooke's "Tragical Hystory of Romeus and Juliet." In this poem, the bodies of the dead are removed to a public scaffold; and from that elevation is the Friar's narrative delivered. A similar circumstance is introduced in HAMLET, near the conclusion. |