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Thou wilt fall backward, when thou hast more wit;
Wilt thou not, Jule? and, by my holy dam,
The pretty wretch left crying, and said—Ay:
To see now, how a jest shall come about!
.I warrant, an I should live a thousand years,

I never should forget it; Wilt thou not, Jule? quoth he:
And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said-Ay.

LA. CAP. Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy peace.
NURSE. Yes, madam; yet I cannot choose but laugh,
To think it should leave crying, and say-Ay:

And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow
A bump as big as a young cockrel's stone;
A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly.
Yea, quoth my husband, fall'st upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward, when thou com'st to age;
Wilt thou not, Jule? it stinted, and said-Ay.
JUL. And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I.
NURSE. Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace!
Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nurs'd:
An I might live to see thee married once,
I have my wish.

LA. CAP. Marry, that marry is the very theme

I came to talk of :-Tell me, daughter Juliet,
How stands your disposition to be married?
JUL. It is an honour that I dream not of.
NURSE. An honour ! were not I thine only nurse,

I'd say, thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat.

LA. CAP. Well, think of marriage now; younger than you,
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,

Are made already mothers: by my count,

I was a mother much upon these years

That you are now a maid. Thus, then, in brief;—

The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.

NURSE. A man, young lady! lady, such a man,

It stinted-it stopped. Thus Gascoigne,—

"Then stinted she as if her song were done."

To stint is used in an active signification for to stop. Thus in those fine lines in Titus Andronicus,' which it is difficult to believe any other than Shakspere wrote,

"The eagle suffers little birds to sing,

And is not careful what they mean thereby,
Knowing that with the shadow of his wing
He can at pleasure stint their melody."

What a picture of a despot in his intervals of self-satisfying forbearance!

Parlous. A corruption of the word perilous, which word is given in the folio. The parlous

of the earlier copies is more in the Nurse's manner.

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So (4). The folio and (C) have hour, both in Juliet's and the Nurse's speeches.

As all the world-Why, he 's a man of wax.
LA. CAP. Verona's summer hath not such a flower.
NURSE. Nay, he 's a flower; in faith, a very flower.

a

LA. CAP. What say you? can you love the gentleman ?
This night you shall behold him at our feast:
Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face 13,
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every several lineament,

And see how one another lends content;
And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies,
Find written in the margin of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover:

The fish lives in the sea; and 't is much pride,
For fair without the fair within to hide :
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him, making yourself no less.
NURSE. No less? nay, bigger; women grow by men.
LA. CAP. Speak briefly, can you like of Paris' love?
JUL. I'll look to like, if looking liking move:

But no more deep will I endart mine eye,

Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.

Enter a Servant.

SERV. Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in extremity.

I must hence to wait; I beseech you, follow straight.

LA. CAP. We follow thee.-Juliet, the county stays.
NURSE. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.-A Street.

Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with Five or Six Maskers, Torchbearers, and others.

ROM. What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse;

Or shall we on without apology?

BEN. The date is out of such prolixity:

"The next seventeen lines are wanting in (A).

(B), married; which reading has been adopted by Steevens and Malone, in preference to several in the folio and (C).

TRAGEDIES.-VOL. I.

B

We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf 14,
Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
After the prompter, for our entrance a :
But, let them measure us by what they will,

We'll measure them a measure 15, and be gone.
ROM. Give me a torch 16,-I am not for this ambling;
Being but heavy I will bear the light.
MER. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you
ROM. Not I, believe me: you have dancing shoes,

dance.

With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead,
So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
MER. You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,
And soar with them above a common bound.
ROM. I am too sore enpierced with his shaft,

To soar with his light feathers; and to bound-
I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe:
Under love's heavy burthen do I sink.
MER. And, to sink in it, should you burthen love :
Too great oppression for a tender thing.
ROM. Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,

Too rude, too boist'rous; and it pricks like thorn.
MER. If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.-
Give me a case to put my visage in:

A visor for a visor!-what care I,

What curious eye doth quote deformities?
Here are the beetle-brows shall blush for me.
BEN. Come, knock, and enter; and no sooner in,
But every man betake him to his legs.

ROM. A torch for me: let wantons, light of heart,
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels "';
For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase,--
I'll be a candle-holder, and look on,—
The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done.

MER. Tut! dun 's the mouse 18, the constable's own word:
If thou art dun, we 'll draw thee from the mire

Of this, sir reverence 19, loved, wherein thou stick'st
Up to the ears.-Come, we burn daylight, ho.

ROM. Nay, that's not so.

[Putting on a mask.

These two lines in (A) are omitted in the subsequent old editions.
To bound, in folio; so bound, in (C).

• Quote-observe.

₫ Thus (A).

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We waste our lights in vain, lights, lights, by day a.
Take our good meaning; for our judgment sits
Five times in that, ere once in our five wits.
ROM. And we mean well in going to this mask ;`
But 't is no wit to go.

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ROM. In bed, asleep, while they do dream things true.
MER. O, then, I see, queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep :
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers;
Her traces of the smallest spider's web;
Her collars of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film:
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maide:
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love:
On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight:
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees:
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream;
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit:
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,

Then dreams he of another benefice:

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A suit. A court solicitation was called a suit;-a process, a suit at law.

Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ears; at which he starts, and wakes;
And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night20;
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them, and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.

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Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air;
And more inconstant than the wind who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face a to the dew-dropping south.
BEN. This wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves;
Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
ROM. I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

With this night's revels; and expire the term
Of a despised life, clos'd in my breast,

By some vile forfeit of untimely death:

But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail!-On, lusty gentlemen.
BEN. Strike drum.

[Exeunt.

SCENE V.-A Hall in Capulet's House.

Musicians waiting. Enter Servants.

1 SERV. Where's Potpan, that he helps not to take away? he shift a trencher!

he scrape a trencher!

* Thus (A). (C) and the folio, side.

b Thus (4). (C) and the folio, suit.

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