Where, and what time, thou wilt perform the rite; And follow thee my lord throughout the world: Jul. I come anon:-But if thou mean'st not well, I do beseech thee, Nurse. [Within.] Madam. Jul. By and by, I come: To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief: Rom. So thrive my soul,Jul. A thousand times good night! Rom. A thousand times the worse, to want thy light. [Exit. Love goes toward love, as school-boys from their books; But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. [Retiring slowly. Re-enter JULIET, above. Jul. Hist! Romeo, hist!-O, for a falconer's voice, To lure this tassel-gentle 15 back again! Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud; Else would I tear the cave 16 where echo lies, And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine With repetition of my Romeo's name. Rom. It is my soul, that calls upon my name; 15 The tassel, or tiercel (for so it should be spelt), is the male of the gosshawk, and is said to be so called because it is a tierce or third less than the female. This is equally true of all birds of prey. This species of hawk had the epithet of gentle annexed to it, from the ease with which it was tamed, and its attachment to man. Tardif, in his book of Falconry, says that the tiercel has its name from being one of three birds usually found in the aerie of a falcon, two of which are females, and the third a male; hence called tiercelet, or the third. According to the old books of sport the falcon gentle and tiercel gentle are birds for a prince. 16 This strong expression is more suitably employed by Mil ton: A shout that tore hell's concave--.' How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, Like softest musick to attending ears! Rom. Jul. I will not fail; At what o'clock to-morrow At the hour of nine. 'tis twenty years till then. I have forgot why I did call thee back. Rom. Let me stand here till thou remember it. Jul. I shall forget, to have thee still stand there, Rememb'ring how I love thy company. Rom. And I'll still stay, to have thee still forget, Forgetting any other home but this. Jul. 'Tis almost morning, I would have thee gone; And yet no further than a wanton's bird; Who lets it hop a little from her hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, And with a silk thread plucks it back again, So loving-jealous of his liberty. Rom. I would, I were thy bird. Jul. Sweet, so would I; Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night, till it be morrow. [Exit. Rom. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast! 'Would, I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest! Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell; His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell. [Exit. 6 17 The quarto of 1597 puts the cold, distant, and formal appellation Madam into the mouth of Romeo. The two subsequent quartos and the folio have my niece,' which is a palpable corruption; but it is difficult to say what word was intended. 'My sweet' is the reading of the second folio. SCENE III. Friar Laurence's Cell. Enter FRIAR LAURENCE, with a Basket. Fri. The gray-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night1, Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light; Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye, With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers *, 1 In the folio and the three later quartos these four lines are printed twice over, and given once to Romeo and once to the Friar. 2 Flecked is spotted, dappled, streaked, or variegated. Lord Surrey uses the word in his translation of the fourth Æneid :Her quivering cheekes flecked with deadly stain.' So in the old play of The Four Prentices : 'We'll fleck our white steeds in your Christian blood.' 3 This is the reading of the second folio. The quarto of 1597 reads : 'From forth day's path and Titan's firy wheels.' The quarto of 1599 and the folio have burning wheels.' 4 So Drayton, in the eighteenth Song of his Polyolbion, speaking of a hermit : - 'His happy time he spends the works of God to see, In those so sundry herbs which there in plenty grow, Whose sundry strange effects he only seeks to know. And in a little maund, being made of oziers small, Which serveth him to do full many a thing withal, He very choicely sorts his simples got abroad.' Shakspeare has very artificially prepared us for the part Friar Lawrence is afterwards to sustain. Having thus early discovered him to be a chemist, we are not surprised when we find him furnishing the draught which produces the catastrophe of the piece. The passage was, however, suggested by Arthur Brooke's poem. VOL. X. G The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb 5; None but for some, and yet all different. 8 Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum.' The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave.' Lucretius. Milton. Time's the king of men, For he's their parent, and he is their grave.' Pericles. 6 Efficacious virtue. 7 i. e. with its odour. Not, as Malone says, 'with the olfactory nerves, the part that smells.' 8 So in Shakspeare's Lover's Complaint : terror and dear modesty Encamp'd in hearts, but fighting outwardly.' Our poet has more than once alluded to these opposed foes. So in Othello: 'Yea, curse his better angel from his side.' See also his forty-fourth Sonnet. He may have remembered a passage in the old play of King Arthur, 1587 : 'Peace hath three foes encamped in our breasts, 1 And, where the worser is predominant, Enter ROMEO. Rom. Good morrow, father! Fri. that plant. Benedicite! What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?—.. Therefore thy earliness doth me assure, Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night. Rom. That last is true, the sweeter rest was mine. Rom. I'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again. 9 This apparent false concord occurs in many places, not only of Shakspeare, but of all old English writers. It is sufficient to observe that in the Anglo Saxon and very old English the third person plural of the present tense ends in eth, and often familiarly in es, as might be exemplified from Chaucer and others. This idiom was not worn out in Shakspeare's time, who must not therefore be tried by rules which were invented after his |