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Will I set up my everlasting rest;
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh.-Eyes, look your
last!

Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!-
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
Here's to my love!-[Drinks.] O true apothe-
cary!

Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

[Dies.

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To make me die with a restorative.

Thy lips are warm!

[Kisses him.

Watch. [Within.] 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.

[Falls on ROMEO's Body, and dies. Enter WATCH, with the PAGE of PARIS. Page. This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn.

1 Watch. The ground is bloody; Search about the church-yard:

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,
Who here bath lain these two days buried.-
Go, tell the prince,-run to the Capulets,-
Raise up the Montagues,-some others search;—
We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;
[Exeunt other WATCHMEN.
But the true ground of all these piteous woes,
We cannot without circumstance descry.

Enter some of the WATCH, with BALTHAZAR. 2 Watch. Here's Romeo's man, we found him in the church-yard.

1 Watch. Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither.

Enter another WATCHMAN, with Friar
LAURENCE.

3 Watch. Here is a friar, that trembles,

sighs, and weeps:

We took this mattock and this spade from him, As he was coming from this church-yard side. 1 Watch. A great suspicion; Stay the friar

too.

Enter the PRINCE and Attendants. Prince. What misadventure is so early up, That calls our person from our morning's rest? Enter CAPULET, Lady CAPULET, and others. Cap. What should it be, that they so shriek abroad?

La. Cap. The people in the street cry-
Romeo,

Some-Juliet, and some-Paris; and all run,
With open outcry toward our monument.

Prince. What fear is this, which startles in. our ears?

1 Watch. Sovereign, bere lies the county Paris slain;

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

Prince. Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.

1 Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter'd Romeo's man;

With instruments upon them, fit to open
These dead inen's tombs.

Cap. O heavens! O wife! look how our daugh

ter bleeds!

This dagger hath mista'en,-for lo! his house
Is empty on the back of Montagne,-
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 more early down.
Mon. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to
night.

1. e. The scabbard.

Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath :| All this I know; and to the marriage
What further woe conspires against mine 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 an clear these ambiguities,

And know their spring, their head, their true descent;

And then will I be general of your woes,

Her nurse is privy: And, if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrific'd some hour before his 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 in this?

Bal. I brought my master news of Juliet's death;

And then in post he came from Mantua,

And lead you even to death: Meantime for- To this same place, to this same monument.

bear,

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 mur-
der;

And here I stand, both to impeach and purge Myself condemned and myself accus'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-marriageday

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 per-
force,

To ounty 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 staid by accident; and yesternight
Return'd my letter back: Then all alone,
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came 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 awakening,) 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.

• Seat.

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

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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, while Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at such 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 show his head : Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;

Some shall be pardon'd, and some pun-
ished: t

For never was a story of more woe,
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

• Mercutio and Paris.

[Exeunt

In the original story (to which this line refers) the prince tortures and hangs the apothecary; banishes the old nurse; pardons Romeo's servant; and allons Friar Laurence to retire to a hermitage in the vicinity of Verona.

AS a piece for dramatic exhibition, this tragedy has been essentially improved by the celebrated Mr. Garrick ; not only in the style and language, by which the jingle and quibble of many of its passages are expunged, but also by the transposition of several scenes, and by the following essential deviation from the original plot : As amended by him, and represented at present, no mention is made of Rosaline, and the sudden and unnatural change of Romeo's affection from her to Juliet is thereby avoided : Juliet also revives from her death-like slumber before the potion has fully operated upon the frame of Romeo, and he dies in her arms, after attempting to carry her from the tomb. By this most judicious alteration, the pathos of the scene is heightened to its highest pitch; for nothing can be more melting than the incidents and expressions which so highly-wrought a catastrophe affords. In the Italian story upon which the play is founded, such was actually the development of the plot; but Shakspeare had certainly recourse to the English or French translation; in which this addition to the tale was upon some secount omitted.

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CYMBELINE.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL NOTICE.

MALONE supposes that Shakspeare wrote Cymbeline in the year 1605. The main incidents upon which the p ot turns, occur in a novel of Boccaccio's; but our poet obtained them in a different shape, from an old storybook entitled Westward for Smelts. Cymbeline, who gives name to the play, but is a cipher of royalty, began to reign over Britain in the 19th year of Augustus Cæsar. He filled the throne during thirty-five years, leaving two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus. The play commences in the 16th year of the Christian era, which was the 24th year of Cymbeline's reigu, and the 42nd of Augustus's. The subject of the piece is disjointed and much too diffuse: it exhibits some monstrous breaches of dramatic unity, and several very languid and make-shift scenes. But the part of Imogen is most delicately and delightfully drawn ; her ideas are remarkably luxuriant, yet restrained; and the natural warmth of her affections is, in many instances, most beautifully expressed. Cloten is an incongruous animal, with some strong points about him; and a fine contrast to Posthumus, who is sketched with great judgment, feeling, and consistency. The Queen is an unfinished character, desirous of producing mischief, but possessing neither energy nor ability to accomplish her schemes; and though lachimo's cunning is portrayed with uncommon skill in his first attempt upon Imogen's virtue, yet his subsequent penitence and candour (however conducive to the moral) are not consistent with the usual hardihood of so thorough-paced a villain. Notwithstanding its fine passages and affecting incidents, this play was lost to the stage until Garrick undertook to revise it, by the abridgment of some scenes, and the transposition of others, it was reduced within the compass of a night's performance; and has since continued a periodical favourite with the public. Dr. Johnson decides the merits of this historical drama in the following summary manner: "To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation." No one can deny the elegance or point of the Doctor's critical sentences, nor their murderous efficiency when meant to despatch an adversary at a single blow ; but the greatest fault of our poet consists in his having christened some characters of the first century with names which belonged to the fifteenth; and in his having seasoned their antique Roman honesty with a smattering of modern Italian villany.

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1 Gent. His daughter, and the heir of bis
kingdom, whom

He purpos'd to his wife's sole son, (a widow,
That late he married,) hath referr'd herself
Unto a poor but worthy gentleman: She's wedded;
Her husband banish'd; she imprison'd: all
Is outward sorrow; though, I think, the king
Be touch'd at very heart.

2 Gent. None but the king?

1 Gent. He, that hath lost her, too: so is the queen, [tier, That most desir'd the match: But not a courAlthough they wear their faces to the bent of the king's looks, hath a heart that is not Glad at the thing they scowl at.

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