SCENE I.-Verona. A lane by the wall of Capulet's orchard. Enter ROMEO. Rom. Can I go forward when my heart is here? Ben. Romeo! my cousin Romeo! Romeo! He is wise; And, on my life, hath stol'n him home to bed. Ben. He ran this way, and leap'd this orchard wall: Call, good Mercutio. Mer. Nay, I'll conjure too.— Speak but one rhyme and I am satisfied; Cry but " "dove"; 5 Ay me!" pronounce but "love" and A lane. .] Camb. editors. 2. He climbs Romeo! Romeo!] Q, F; Romeo Q 1. 6. Nay . Q1, Qq 4, 5; continued to Benvolio Q, Q 3, Ff. Mer. Romeo Q, Q 3, Ff; passion! lover!] passion 10. Cry] Q, Cry me F; pronounce] Q 1, Qq 4, 5; dove] Q1; day Q, F; die Qq 4, 5. .] Steevens. too] given to Mercutio 7. Romeo] Qq 4, 5; lover Q (commas in F). provaunt Q; provant F ; 7.] Singer (ed. 2) reads Humour'smadman! Passion-lover; Daniel humorous madman! passionate lover! 10. Ay me] as in Spenser, Virgil's Gnat, 353, "Ay me, that thankes so much should faile of meed." Corrupted in F 2 to ayme. Theobald and others Ah me! 10. pronounce] F 2 alters the provant of F to couply, whence Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, When King Cophetua loved the beggar-maid.— He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not; 15 I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes, By her high forehead, and her scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, 12. heir] Q1, Qq 4, 5; her Q, F. 13. Adam Cupid] Steevens (Upton conj.); Abraham: Cupid Q1, Qq 2, 3; Abraham Cupid Qq 4, 5 Ff; trim] QI; true Q, F. 16. and] Q, omitted F. Rowe's couple, adopted by many editors. 13. Adam Cupid] Upton's conjecture Adam (easily misread Abram) is generally accepted, the allusion being to the great archer, Adam Bell, famous in ballad poetry. Compare Much Ado, I. i. 260: "shoot at me; and he that hits me let him be clapped on the shoulder, and called Adam." The Abraham of Q I, Qq, Ff may be right. If the source of the Cophetua ballad were found, which may lurk in some old book on Africa, a bowman named Abraham might be discovered. An Ethiopian king (448470) was so named. If young Abraham" is named after the patriarch, the nickname must mean "father of many nations" (Genesis xvii. 5), not wholly inappropriate to Cupid. Knight supposed that cheat was meant, the allusion being to the Abraham-men of Elizabethan daysvagabonds, bare - armed and bare legged, pretending madness. In S. Rowlands' Martin Mark-all (about 1609), he gives Abram as a slang word meaning mad. In Street Robberies consider'd (about 1700) Abram is given as a cant word for naked, which would suit Cupid well, but, though clearly a relic of the Abraham-men, I have found no earlier example in this sense. Again, as Theobald observed, abraham and abram are old spellings of auburn (e.g. Coriolanus, II. iii. 21, F text); many examples might be cited. Italian poets name Cupid "Il biondo Dio," and W. Thomas, Principal Rules of the Italian Grammer, 1567, explains biondo, as "the aberne (auburn) colour, that is betwene white and yelow." White reads "auburn" here. Finally, the nickname may be an allusion to some forgotten Elizabethan contemporary, whose name (such, for example, as S[ir] Abraham] Bowerman, who wrote verses in the British Museum copy of Nash's Jack Wilton) or whose fame in archery invited a jest. 13. trim] The trim of QI preserves a word of the ballad " King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, given in Percy's Reliques: "The blinded boy that shoots so trim." In Love's Labour's Lost, I. ii. 117, the ballad is spoken of as written some three ages since." 15. stirreth] Q 3 (alone) reads striveth, And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, Of some strange nature, letting it there stand Is fair and honest, and in his mistress' name Ben. Come, he hath hid himself among these trees, To be consorted with the humorous night: 20 25 30 Mer. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit 22. An] Theobald; And Q, F. 25. there] Q, omitted F. 31. humorous] humid. Chapman and Drayton are cited by Steevens as so describing night. 36. medlars] See Halliwell's Dict. of Archaic.. Words, p. 589, for the suppressed name. 38. et cetera] Used, as here (a substitute for a suppressed unbecoming word), in Cotgrave, under Bergamasque. Ovid frequently uses cetera in an euphemistic way. See Pilgrimage to Parnassus (ed. Macray), opening lines of Act IV. (p. 13). 35 40 28. and 38. open et cetera, thou] Q 1, 38. poperin] Named from Poperingue, a town two leagues distant from Ypres; chosen here for the sake of a quibble. See Cyril Tourneur, The Atheist's Tragedie (ed. Collins, vol. i. pp. 97-99), for conceits on medlars and the poperin pear-tree. 39. truckle-bed] a small bed made to run under a larger. 40. field-bed a camp-bed, or a bed upon the ground, here used with a play on field. In Brooke's Romeus and Juliet (1562) the Nurse plays on Ben. Come, shall we go? Go, then; for 'tis in vain To seek him here that means not to be found. [Exeunt. SCENE II.—The Same. Capulet's Orchard. ROMEO advances. Rom. He jests at scars that never felt a wound.— [Juliet appears above at a window. But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks ? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief, 5 That thou her maid art far more fair than she: Her vestal livery is but sick and green, And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.— Capulet's Orchard] Globe. 8. sick] Q, F; pale Q 1. the sense camp-bed: line 897, "Loe here a fielde (she shewd a fieldbed ready dight), etc." This is an example earlier than any recorded in New Eng. Dict. Certain coarse words are called "field-bed words" by Massinger, Old Law, IV. ii. (meaning speech of the camp?). Scene II. Romeo advances] I indicate by these words that Romeo has not left the stage. He overhears Mercutio's words, and his opening line rhymes with Benvolio's last. Grant White ΙΟ argues that Scene i. is in the orchard, and he here continues the scene. 1. He jests] Referring to Mercutio. 6. her maid] A votary of the virgin Diana. 8. şick and green] Collier pleads for his "old corrector's" white and green on the ground that these were the colours of the fool's livery under Henry VIII. Probably the word green-sickness suggested the epithets. See III. v. 156. 10. It is] Grant White supposes that at this point Juliet steps out upon the balcony; previously only the light from her window was visible. O, that she knew she were ! She speaks, yet she says nothing: what of that? 15 I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks: 20 As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven O, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek! Jul. Ay me! Rom. She speaks: 25 O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him 30 When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds Jul. O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? 16. do] F, to Q. 20. eyes] Q 1; eye Q, F. 23. how] Q, F; now Q I, Daniel. 25. touch] Q, F; kisse, Q 1. 31. lazy-pacing] QI (hyphen Pope); lazie puffing Q, F ; lazy passing Collier (MS.).” 21. region] strictly a division of the sky; see note on Hamlet, II. ii. 518 (ed. Dowden). 27. night] Theobald, followed by several editors, reads sight, as agreeing better with line 29. 29. white-upturned] The hyphen is Theobald's. |