Julitha,' at Nördlingen, 1604, as 'Tragoedia von Romeo und Julia,' at Dresden, 1626, and elsewhere in Germany. The extant version is, according to Creizenach, 'obviously of the latter half of the seventeenth century, and local allusions indicate Austria. ... It was clearly not taken from the First Quarto of 1597, but from the current text; cf. esp. iii. 1.' (Die Schauspiele der englischen Comoedianten, Einl. xli.).i Composi The probability that the play underwent some Date of kind of revision between 1597 and 1599 gives us tion. little help in approaching the difficult problem of its original date. The most definite datum we have is the sonnet 'Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare' in which John Weever, probably in 1595, enumerated, among Shakespeare's famous characters Romeo, Richard, more whose names I know not, Certain straws of evidence point towards an earlier date. The Nurse's allusion to the earthquake (i. 3. 23) suggests 1591; and Daniel possibly caught a phrase or two of his description of the dead Rosamond 2 Decayed roses of discolour'd cheeks Do yet retain dear notes of former grace, from Romeo's wonderful dying hymn to Juliet; which 1 Mr. Fleay, however, knows that the German play was 'founded on Shakespeare's play of 1591' (Life and Work of Shakespeare, p. 308). 2 Complaint of Rosamond, 1592. A still clearer parallelism is Rom. and Jul. v. 3. 94:— beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not ad- with Ros. 773 And nought-respecting death.. Also Rom. and Jul. v. 3. 112, would place the play before 1592. But the arithmetic of the Nurse is an insecure trust, and if it were surer, it is very doubtful whether it has any bearing upon the date of the play. Grant that Juliet's age was to be fourteen, and that the story of her weaning and the earthquake had been independently imagined, the number of years which had passed since the earthquake would in any case be eleven or thereabouts. And though Daniel had the reputation of making undue use of others' (and notably of Shakespeare's) wit, it is to be considered that the fine trait of the lingering 'roses' in the cheeks of the dead Rosamond lay pretty near at hand for a poet prone to play choicely with his heroine's name : Rose of the world, that sweeten'd so the same. On the other hand, many indications point to a date nearer to that of Weever's sonnet. Weever himself associates it with the Lucrece and the Venus, as well as with 'Richard'—alone of all the dramas. It is in fact linked both with the poems and with Richard II., as well as with the Midsummer-Night's Dream, by the lyric style and the lyric conception of character, as well as by many striking echoes of phrase and motive.1 The characteristic speech of Romeo and Juliet is a lyric speech, exhausting the last possibilities of expression, but not yet, like the speech of Hamlet, 1 Sarrazin has compared Juliet's appeal to the Friar out of thy long-experienced time, Give me some present counsel, or, behold, 'Twixt my extremes and me this with Lucrece, l. 1840, '... by this We will revenge the death of this Where it is to be noted that opening up mysterious vistas of the unexpressed, or responsive to the finer nuances of souls. At exalted times it even assumes lyric form; and Gervinus has pointed out that the lovers exchange their first greetings in a sonnet, that Juliet utters her own epithalamium or marriage hymn (iii. 2.), and that the lyric dialogue of the lovers as they part at dawn echoes in everything but its unique splendour of poetry the 'dawn song' (alba, Tagelied) of medieval poetry.1 The evidence thus points to 1594-5 as the time at which Romeo and Juliet was substantially composed, though it is tolerably certain that some parts of our present text were written as late as 1596-8, and possible that others are as early as 1591. the Plot. The story of Romeo and Juliet, as Shakespeare Source of found it, was already a work of art, refined and elaborated by the shaping fancy of several generations. Particular features in it have far-reaching parallels: the legendary poison which produces apparent death; the love between children of hostile houses. The so-called 'Neapolitan Boccaccio,' Massuccio, in his Novellino, 1476, used the device of the poison to deliver his heroine from a peril like that which threatens Juliet; but his lovers have other names, live in Siena, and are embarrassed by no family feuds. Luigi da Porto was the first to localise the romance in Verona, to call the lovers Romeo and Giulietta, and to entangle their destinies in the conflicts of noble families.2 Da Porto's novel was widely read 1 How did Shakespeare become acquainted with this mediæval lyric form, whose home was among the Troubadours and Minnesänger? The problem has keenly exercised German scholars, and is discussed with profuse learning but without very definite result by Ludwig Fränkel in his Shakespeare und das Tage- 2 That the story is not histori- in Italy, and presently inspired more pretentious versions of the story. Gherardo Boldiero sang in an epic poem (published 1553) of 'the unhappy love of two faithful lovers Giulia and Romeo,' and the blind dramatist Groto turned it into a tragedy, Hadriana. Both these ambitious pieces, however, were of trifling importance compared with the skilfully elaborated prose version of the story published in 1554 by the novelist Bandello. Bandello added a number of dramatic traits, motives, and minor personages: Romeo's Mentor-Benvolio, the Nurse, the love at first sight, the rope-ladder, and Juliet's vision of the horrors of the vault. In Bandello's version the story first gained currency beyond the Alps and the Pyrenees.1 In France it was translated, with several significant changes, by Boaistuau in the Histoires Tragiques (1559).2 In Spain it provided Lope de Vega with the materials of a tragi-comedy Castelvines y Monteses, and somewhat later was dramatised by it as having happened there in 1303, merely took it from the novelist Bandello. The Montecchi and Cappelletti were historical families of Verona, but belonged to the same (Ghibelline) party; and as such, not as enemies, they are mentioned together in a famous line ('Vieni a veder Montecchi e Cappelletti,' Purg. vi. 106) by Dante, who lived in Verona but a few years after the alleged date of the event. But Shakespeare's 'Escalus' doubtless has his ultimate origin in Bartolommeo della Scala, the then Governor of Verona. 1 Adrian Sevin had, as early as 1542, retailed a substantially identical story, with the scene transferred to the Morea, and the names of the persons changed: the lovers, e.g., are called Halquadrich and Burglipha. 2 Thus (1) the rope-ladder, which in Bandello had served only for an interview, is put to the purpose which it serves in Brooke and Shakespeare; (2) the Italians had made Juliet die ' of grief': Boaistuau, less prone to sentiment, makes her stab herself; (3) in Bandello Juliet awakes before Romeo dies, but after he has taken the poison; Boaistuau makes Romeo die first (Schulze, Entwickelung der Sage von R. und J.-a minute comparison of all the versions; J. B. xi. 173 f.). Francesco de Rojas in Los Bandos de Verona.1 In England, Bandello's novel was reproduced in two notable versions, the metrical Romeus and Juliet of Arthur Brooke (1562),2 and the prose translation in Brooke. Painter's Palace of Pleasure (1567). Of all these forms of the story Shakespeare was probably acquainted only with the two last mentioned; and the poem of Brooke was virtually the sole source of his own work. But the fame of the story no longer depended on literature when he wrote: the pitiful history of Romeus and Julietta adorned the hangings of chambers, and Juliet figured as a tragic heroine in the sisterhood of Dido and Cleopatra. It was not for nothing that an Englishman handled the story before Shakespeare. Brooke enriched the Italian romance with a series of homely, realistic 1 Both plays have been excellently translated by F. W. Cosens. 2 Brooke speaks in his 'Address to the Reader' of having seen the same argument lately set forth on stage with more commendation than I can look for.' A trace of this has been suspected in the fragments of a Latin tragedy, Romeus et Julietta, preserved in the British Museum (Sloane MS. 1775), an edition of which is announced by Mr. Gollancz. But a madrigal in been made to prove Shakespeare indebted to Groto's Hadriana; most positively by Walker (Hist. Memoir on Ital. Tragedy, 1799) and Klein (Gesch. des Dramas, v. 436). The passage to which they attach most weight is the parting scene (iii. 5.), where Latino (Romeo) bids Hadriana listen to the nightingale. But the whole resemblance reduces itself to the nightingale, while even this is quite differently applied. In Groto it is actually the nightingale whose song is heard; in Shakespeare, Juliet would fain believe the lark to be the nightingale. Groto's play was certainly known in England shortly after; Jonson, in Volpone, iii. 2, makes Lady Politick Would-be enumerate'Cieco di Hadria vie Groto' among the Italian authors whom she has read (cf. Schulze, have Jahrbuch, xi. 197) the same hand, addressed to the author of Ignoramus (first performed 1615), and written in the midst of what is plainly the original MS. of the drama, makes it probable that Shakespeare's tragedy preceded (cf. in J. B. xxxiv. 256). 3 Repeated attempts Keller |