Par. These times of woe afford no time to woo. Madam, good night : commend me to your daughter. Lady C. I will, and know her mind early to

morrow;

To-night she's mew'd up to her heaviness.

Cap. Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender Of my child's love: I think she will be rul'd In all respects by me; nay, more, I doubt it not. Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed; Acquaint her here of my son Paris' love; And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday next But, soft! What day is this?

Par.

Monday, my lord.

Cap. Monday ha! ha! Well, Wednesday is

too soon;

O' Thursday let it be:-o' Thursday, tell her,
She shall be married to this noble earl.

Will you be ready? do you like this haste?
We'll keep no great ado; a friend, or two;-
For, hark you, Tybalt being slain so late,
It may be thought we held him carelessly,
Being our kinsman, if we revel much:

Therefore we'll have some half a dozen friends,
And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?
Par. My lord, I would that Thursday were to-

morrow.

Cap. Well, get you gone: -O' Thursday be it then.

Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed;

Prepare her, wife, against this wedding-day.-
Farewell, my lord.-Light to my chamber, ho!

Desperate means only bold, adventurous, as if he had said in the vulgar phrase, I will speak a bold word, and venture to promise you my daughter. JOHNSON.

Afore me! it is so very late, that we

May call it early by and by.-Good night.

SCENE V. JULIET'S Chamber.1

Enter ROMEO and JULIET.

[Exeunt.

Jul. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day : It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yond' pomegranate tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

2

Rom. It was the lark, the herald of the morn,"

3

1 The stage direction in the first edition is, " Enter Romeo and Juliet at a Window." In the second quarto, "Enter Romeo and Juliet aloft." They appeared, probably, in the balcony which was erected on the old English stage.

2 A writer in the Pictorial Shakespeare gives the following on this passage: " Amongst the fruit-bearing trees, the pomegranate is in some respects the most beautiful; and therefore, in the South of Europe, and in the East, it has become the chief ornament of the garden. But where did Shakespeare find that the nightingale haunted the pomegranate tree, pouring forth her song from the same bough, week after week? Doubtless in some old travels with which he was familiar. Chaucer puts his nightingale in a fresh green laurel tree;' but the preference of the nightingale for the pomegranate is unquestionable. The nightingale sings from the pomegranate groves in the day-time,' says Russel, in his account of Aleppo. A friend, whose observations as a traveller are as acute as his descriptions are graphic and forcible, informs us that throughout his journeys in the East he never heard such a choir of nightingales as in a row of pomegranate trees that skirt the road from Smyrna to Boudjia."

H.

3 This office of the lark is choicely set forth by old Chaucer : the passage may be seen in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act iii. se. 2, note 29. Shakespeare has glorified the subject with special power, in Venus and Adonis :

"Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest,

From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,

And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty ;

Who doth the world so gloriously behold,

The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold."

H.

No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops:
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Jul. Yond' light is not daylight; I know it, I:
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,*
And light thee on thy way to Mantua:
Therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone.
Rom. Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death ;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.

5

I'll say, yon gray is not the morning's eye,
"Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's bow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
I have more care to stay, than will to go:
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so..
How is't, my soul? let's talk, it is not day.

4 So in Sidney's Arcadia: "The moon, then full (not thinking scorn to be a torch-bearer to such beauty) guided her steps." And Sir John Davies's Orchestra, speaking of the Sun :

"When the great torch-bearer of heaven was gone

Downe in a maske unto the ocean's court."

5 All the old copies have brow instead of bow. The happy change is made in Mr. Collier's second folio; and Mr. Singer says the same is done in his second folio.

H.

6 The quarto of 1597 gives this speech in a form which the Poet will hardly be thought to have improved; thus:

"Let me stay here, let me be ta'en, and die ;

If thou wilt have it so, I am content.

I'll say yon gray is not the morning's eye,
It is the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
I'll say it is the nightingale that beats
The vaulty heaven so far above our heads,
And not the lark, the messenger of morn:
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so,-
What says my love? let's talk, 'tis not yet day."

Jul. It is, it is; hie hence, be gone, away y!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords, and unpleasing sharps.
Some say, the lark makes sweet division;"
This doth not so, for she divideth us:

say,

8

Some the lark and loathed toad chang'd eyes;
O! now I would they had chang'd voices too,
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunts-up to the day."
O! now be gone: more light and light it grows.
Rom. More light and light? more dark and dark

our woes.

Enter the Nurse.

Nurse. Madam!

Jul. Nurse.

Nurse. Your lady mother's coming to your cham

ber:

The day is broke; be wary, look about.

[Exit.

Jul. Then, window, let day in, and let life out. Rom. Farewell, farewell! one kiss, and I'll de[ROMEO descends.

scend.

7 A division, in music, is a variation upon some fundamental air.

8 The toad having very fine eyes and the lark very ugly ones, was the occasion of a common saying that the toad and the lark had changed eyes. The croak of the toad would have been no indication of the appearance of day, and consequently no signal for her lover's departure.

9 The hunt's up was originally a tune played to wake sportsmen, and call them together. It was a common burthen of hunting ballads. Puttenham says that one Gray grew into good estimation with the Duke of Somerset for making certain merry ballads, whereof one chiefly was the hunte is up, the hunte is up. According to Cotgrave the Reveille, or morning song to a new married woman, was called the hunt's up. So Drayton, in his Poly-Olbion: "But hunt's up to the morn the feather'd sylvans sing." And in his third Eclogue: "Time plays the hunt's up to thy sleepy head."

Jul. Art thou gone so ? love! lord! ay, husband,

friend!

I must hear from thee every day in the hour,
For in a minute there are many days:

O! by this count I shall be much in years,
Ere I again behold my Romeo.

Rom. Farewell! I will omit no opportunity
That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.

Jul. O! think'st thou we shall ever meet again? Rom. I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve For sweet discourses in our time to come.

10

Jul. O God! I have an ill-divining soul:
Methinks, I see thee, now thou art so low,
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.

Adieu! adieu !

[Exit.

Jul. O, fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle: If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him That is renown'd for faith? Be fickle, fortune; For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long, But send him back.

Lady C. [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? What unaccustom'd cause procures her hither?

10 This miserable prescience of futurity I have always regarded as a circumstance peculiarly 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 me,

Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

From this night's revels."

STEEVENS.