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And flecked1 darkness like a drunkard reels 2
From forth day's path-way, made by Titan's wheels:
Now ere the sun advance his burning eye,

The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry,
I must fill up this osier cage of ours,

5

With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb:6
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find;7
Many for many virtues excellent,

9

None but for some, and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace, that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought 10 so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth 11 some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling12 on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometime 's by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence, and med'cine power:

For this, being smelt, with that part13 cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed foes encamp them still

In man as well as herbs, grace, and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,

Full 14 soon the canker death eats up that plant.

1) Spotted, streaked.

2) To stagger.

3) Damp, moist, humid.

4) Osier-basket, willow-basket. 5) Pernicious, poisonous. Shakspeare, on his introduction of Friar Laurence, has very artificially prepared us for the part he has 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. Steevens.

6) Translate, lap; Schooss. Steevens quotes this line of Lucretius: "Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum."

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ROм. Good morrow, father!

Enter ROMEO.

Benedicite!

FRI.
What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?
Young son, it argues a distemper'd head,
So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed:
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;
But where unbruised1 youth with unstuff'd brain2
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign;
Therefore thy earliness doth me assure,

Thou art up-rous'd by some distemp'rature; 3
Or if not so, then here I hit it right

Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.
ROM. That last is true.

FRI.

Wast thou with Rosaline?

ROM. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? no;

I have forgot that name, and that name's woe.

FRI. That's my good son: But where hast thou been

then?

ROм. I'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again.

I have been feasting with mine enemy;
Where, on a sudden, one hath wounded me,
That's by me wounded; both our remedies
Within thy help and holy physick lies: 4
I bear no hatred, blessed man: for, lo!
My intercession likewise steads my foe."

FRI. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.

ROM. Then plainly know, my heart's dear love is set

On the fair daughter of rich Capulet:

As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;

And all combin'd, save what thou must combine

By holy marriage: When, and where, and how,

We met, we woo'd, and made exchange of vow,
I'll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,
That thou consent to marry us this day.

strengthen their signification; as, full which Shakspeare has sacrificed grammar to rhyme.

sad.

1) Unhurt, not harmed.

2) Not filled with anxious cares. 3) Perturbation of mind.

This is one of the passages in

5) He calls his entreaty intercession, because it will be a mediation between the two parties at variance, with a view to reconciliation.

FRI. Holy saint Francis! what a change is here?
Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,
So soon forsaken? young men's love then lies
Not truly in their hearts but in their eyes.
O, Romeo, what a deal of sorrow's brine1
Hath wash'd thy sallow 2 cheeks for Rosaline!
How much salt water thrown away in waste,
To season love, that of it doth not taste!
The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears, 3
Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears;
Lo! here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
Of an old tear that is not wash'd off yet:.
If e'er thou wast thyself, and these woes thine,
Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline;
And art thou chang'd? pronounce this sentence then
Women may fall, when there's no strength in men.
ROм. Thou chid'st me oft for loving Rosaline.
FRI. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.
ROM. And bad'st me bury love.

FRI.

4

To lay one in, another out to have.

Not in a grave,

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ROM. I pray thee, chide not: she, whom I love now, Doth grace for grace, and love for love allow;

The other did not so.

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Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell. 5
But come, young waverer, 6 come, go with me,
In one respect I'll thy assistant be;

For this alliance may so happy prove,

To turn your households' rancour to pure love.

ROM. O let us hence; I stand on sudden haste. 8
FRI. Wisely, and slow; they stumble, that run fast.

1) Brine, properly water impregnated with salt; thence figuratively,

tears.

2) Of a pale, sickly colour. 3) The sighs are thought to obscure heaven like clouds or fog. To clear is to remove.

4) To dote, usually with on or upon, to love to excess or extravagance. 5) Rote means memory of words without comprehension of the sense. Thus children learn to speak by rote;

[Exeunt

we learn to sing by rote. But he who knows how to spell, must know the rules or principles.

6) One who is unsettled in faith or opinion, who vacillates; here, of course, inconstant in love.

7) Inveterate or implacable enmity. This is the strongest term for enmity, which the English language supplies.

8) It is of the utmost consequence that I should hasten away.

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Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO.

MER. Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home to night?

BEN. Not to his father's; I spoke with his man.

MER. Ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline,

Torments him so, that he will sure run1 mad.

BEN. Tybalt, the kinsman of old Capulet, Hath sent a letter to his father's house.

MER. A challenge, on my life.

BEN. Romeo will answer it.

MER. Any man, that can write, may answer a letter. BEN. Nay, he will answer the letter's master, how he dares, being dared. 2

MER. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! stabb'd with a white wench's black eye! shot thorough the ear with a love-song: the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft; 4 And is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

BEN. Why, what is Tybalt?

MER. More than prince of cats,5 I can tell you. O, he is the courageous captain of compliments. 6 He fights as you sing, keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me his minim rest," one, two, and the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause: Ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverso! the hay!?

1) To pass from one state or condition to another; as, to run into confusion; to run distracted; here, to run mad, to fall into madness, to grow mad.

2) That he has courage, being challenged or provoked.

3) A young woman; despitefully for girl.

4) A butt-shaft was the kind of arrow used in shooting at butts. The clout or white mark at which the arrows are directed, was fastened by a black pin placed in the centre of it. To hit (to cleave) this was the highest ambition of a marksman. Malone.

5) Tybert, the name given to the|

cat, in the story-book of Reynard the Fox. Warburton.

6) A complete master of all the laws of ceremony.

7) A minim is a note of slow time in music, equal to two crotchets. Malone.

8) A gentleman of the first rank, of the first eminence among these duellists; and one who understands the whole science of quarrelling, and will tell you of the first cause, and the second cause, for which a man is to fight. The Clown, in As you like it, talks of the seventh cause in the same sense. Steevens.

9) A passado, a push or thrust. Punto reverso, a faint, a show of

BEN. The what?

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MER. The plague of1 such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents! Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire,2 that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardonnez-moys, 4 who stand so much on the new form, that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench?5 O, their bons, their bons!6

Enter Romeo.

BEN. Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo.

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MER. Without his roe, like a dried herring: - O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her: Dido, a dowdy; Cleopatra, a gipsy; Thisbé, a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bon jour! there's a French salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.

ROM. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?

MER. The slip, sir, the slip; 10 Can you not conceive?

"sit

ting with her on the form, and taken following her into the park, which, put together, is in manner and form following."

making a thrust at one part, to de- | (a bench without a back). See Love's ceive an antagonist, when the inten- Labour's Lost, Act I. sc. 1: tion is to strike another part. All the terms of the modern fencingschool were originally Italian; the rapier, or small thrusting sword, being first used in Italy. The hay is the word hai, you have it, used when a thrust reaches the antagonist. Johnson.

1) A curse upon, etc.

2) Humorously apostrophising his ancestors, whose sober times were unacquainted with the fopperies here complained of. Warburton.

3) One who studies the fashion; a fop.

4) Pardonnez-moi became the language of doubt or hesitation among men of the sword, when the point of honour was grown so delicate, that no other mode of contradiction would be endured. Johnson.

5) A quibble on the two meanings of the word form, manner and seat

6) Mercutio is here ridiculing those frenchified fantastical coxcombs whom he calls pardonnezmoi's. Besides we learn that bon jour was the common salutation of those who affected to appear fine gentlemen in our author's time.

7) He means to allow, says Malone, that Thisbé had a very fine eye: for from various passages it appears that a grey eye was thought eminently beautiful, as beautiful as what we now denominate a blue eye.

8) Trowsers or pantaloons, a French fashion in Shakspeare's time.

9) You cheated, you deceived us. 10) The slip is used equivocally in the meaning of an unexpected or secret desertion, and a counterfeit

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