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Ben.

Here's much to do with hate, but more with love:

Why then, O brawling love!

1

O loving hate! 180

O any thing, of nothing first created!

O heavy lightness! serious vanity!

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!

This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?

Rom. Good heart, at what?
Ben.

No, coz, I rather weep.

185

At thy good heart's oppression.

Rom. Why, such is love's transgression.
Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,
Which thou wilt propagate to have it prest
With more of thine: this love that thou hast shown

190

Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;

Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; 195

181. created] Q, F; create Q 1, Ff 2-4, and many editors. 183. Wellseeming] Qq 4, 5, Ff. 2-4; well-seeing The rest; best seeming things Q 1. 191. it] Q, F; them Q i. 194. raised] QI and many editors; made Q, F.

179. much to do with love] Rosaline is of the Capulet family; see I. ii. 70.

180-185] This conventional characterisation of love by the identity of contradictories could be illustrated endlessly from Elizabethan sonnetteers and earlier poets English and foreign. Romeo speaks otherwise when his heart is deeply moved by Juliet.

181. created] Perhaps the rhyming create of Q I is right.

185. Still-waking] constantly waking.

189. Why... transgression] The short line is variously eked out by editors. Collier (MS.) reads, "Why such, Benvolio, is."

191. prest] The word has reference to Benvolio's word oppression, line 188. Might we read to have't oppressed? Q I, which in line 190 reads at my hart, has wouldst propagate to have them prest.

192. this love] Q I reads this griefe -probably, says Daniel, the better reading.

195. purged] love purified from the smoke. Johnson plausibly suggested

Ben.

Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears;
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
Farewell, my coz.

Soft! I will go along;
An if you leave me so, you do me wrong.
Rom. Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here;
This is not Romeo, he's some other where.
Ben. Tell me in sadness, who is that you love.
Rom. What, shall I groan and tell thee?
Ben.

But sadly tell me who.

200

Groan! why, no;

Rom. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will:
Ah, word ill urged to one that is so ill!
In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.

Ben. I aim'd so near when I supposed you loved.
Rom. A right good mark- man!

love.

205

And she's fair I

210

196. lovers'] a lovers QI; lovers Pope; loving Q, F. 200. An] Hanmer; And Q, F. 206. Bid.. make] Qq 1, 4, 5; A sicke makes Qq 2, 3, F; later Ff emend F by inserting good before sadness. 207. Ah, word] Q 1, Malone, and other editors; A word Q, F, and several editors; O, word Ff 2-4:

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long s the words were easily mistaken for each other. Allen notes that in Coriolanus, I. iv. 54, "Thou art left, Marcius," we should probably read "lost." Daniel adds that in Hamlet, III. i. 99, "their perfume lost" (Qq) is misprinted left in Ff.

203. sadness] seriousness, as often in Shakespeare. In Romeo's groan he plays upon the meaning "grief." QI reads, "whome she is you love," altered by editors to who.

203. is] Daniel, retaining from Q, F the note of interrogation after love, reads is't.

Ben. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
Rom. Well, in that hit you miss: she'll not be hit

With Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit;

And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd,

From love's weak childish bow she lives un

harm'd.

She will not stay the siege of loving terms,

Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,

Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold:

O, she is rich in beauty; only poor

215

That, when she dies, with beauty dies her

store.

220

Ben. Then she hath sworn that she will still live

chaste?

Rom. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste; For beauty, starved with her severity,

212. Well] Q, F; But Q 1. 215. unharm'd] Q 1; vncharmd Q, F. 217. bide] Q, bid F. 218. ope] Q, open F. 222. makes]Q4; make Q, F.

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"Let those whom Nature hath not made for store,

Harsh featureless and rude, barrenly
perish.'

If Rosaline dies wedded, beauty
indeed dies; but if she dies single,
beauty dies and also beauty's store.
Theobald read, "with her dies
Beauty's store"; but it is not re-
quired. Compare also Sonnets, xiv. :
"Truth and beauty shall together
thrive, If from thyself to store thou
wouldst convert," i.e. if you would
propagate children.
222. She
waste] Compare
Sonnets, i., for the same idea: "And,
tender churl, makest waste in
niggarding."

223. starved] Singer supposes sterv'd (so spelled in Q, F) to mean, as it certainly may, perished, dead.

Cuts beauty off from all posterity.

She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,

225

To merit bliss by making me despair:

She hath forsworn to love; and in that vow

Do I live dead, that live to tell it now.

Ben. Be ruled by me; forget to think of her.
Rom. O, teach me how I should forget to think.
Ben. By giving liberty unto thine eyes:

Rom.

Examine other beauties.

'Tis the way

To call hers, exquisite, in question more.

230

These happy masks that kiss fair ladies' brows,
Being black, put us in mind they hide the

fair;

2:35

He that is strucken blind cannot forget

The precious treasure of his eyesight lost:

Show me a mistress that is passing fair,

What doth her beauty serve but as a note

Where I may read who pass'd that passing fair?

Farewell: thou canst not teach me to forget. Ben. I'll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.

235. put] Q5; puts Q, F.

225. wisely too fair] Johnson accepts Hanmer's reading too wisely fair.

233. To call ... more] Exquisite in Q, F is in marks of parenthesis. The meaning seems to be, To call her beauty, which is exquisite, yet more, being challenged and put to the test. Malone, taking question to mean conversation (as it often did), explains:

240

[Exeunt.

"To make her unparalleled beauty more the subject of thought and conversation."

234. These happy masks] not (as has been suggested) masks worn by ladies at the theatre, but, generally, the masks (of our day).

242. pay that doctrine] deliver that piece of instruction.

SCENE II.-The Same. A Street.
Enter CAPULET, PARIS, and Servant.

Cap. But Montague is bound as well as I,

In penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, I think, For men so old as we to keep the peace. Par. Of honourable reckoning are you both; And pity 'tis you lived at odds so long. But now, my lord, what say you to my suit? Cap. But saying o'er what I have said before: My child is yet a stranger in the world; She hath not seen the change of fourteen years; Let two more summers wither in their pride Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride. Par. Younger than she are happy mothers made. Cap. And too soon marr'd are those so early made. The earth hath swallow'd all my hopes but she, She is the hopeful lady of my earth:

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Enter .] Rowe; Enter Capulet, Countie Paris, and the Clowne Q, F. 1. But] Q; omitted F; And Qq 4, 5. 13. made] Q, F; married Q 1. 14. The earth] Qq 4, 5; Earth Q, F; Earth up Ff 2-4.

9. fourteen years] In Brooke's poem Juliet is older: "Scarse saw she yet full xvi years"; in Paynter's prose tale she is nearly eighteen. Shakespeare's Marina, in Pericles, is fourteen; his Miranda is fifteen.

13. made] The jingle between made and marr'd occurs, as Dyce notes, in II. iv. 123, 124, in Macbeth, II. iii. 36, and elsewhere. The jingle of QI made and married occurs in All's Well, 11. iii. 315: "A young man married is a man that's marr'd,” and in other writers beside Shakespeare.

14. The earth] If earth be read with F, Q, swallowed of F, Q is perhaps a trisyllable, but it hardly mends the

verse. F 2, inserting up, shows that the line was considered defective.

15. my earth] Three explanations have been given-(1) A Gallicism, fille de terre, heiress-Steevens. (2) my body, as in II. i. 2, in Sonnets, cxlvi. "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth"; in Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy, v. 19, "This earth of mine doth tremble -Mason and Malone, with whom I agree. (3) the hopeful lady of the world for me-Ulrici. Cartwright conjectures

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hearth. The Elizabethan earth meaning ploughing suggests another possible explanation; cf. Ant. and Cleop. II. ii. 233.

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