The county 15 Paris, at Saint Peter's church,
Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.

Jul. Now, by Saint Peter's church, and Peter too, He shall not make me there a joyful bride. I wonder at this haste; that I must wed Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo. I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam, I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear, It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, Rather than Paris:-These are news indeed! La. Cap. Here comes your father; tell him so yourself,

And see how he will take it at your hands.

Enter CAPULET and Nurse.

Cap. When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew 16; But for the sunset of my brother's son,

It rains downright.

6

15 County, or countie, was the usual term for an earl in Shakspeare's time. Paris is in this play first styled a young earle. So Baret, a countie or an earle, comes un comte,' and a countie or earldome, comitatus.' Fairfax very frequently uses the word. See vol. i. p. 319, note 25; vol. iii. p. 291, note 3.

16 Thus the quarto 1597. The quarto 1599, and the folio, read the earth doth drizzle dew,' which is philosophically true; and so perhaps the poet wrote, for in The Rape of Lucrece he says:

:

'But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set.'

Malone.

Steevens adds:-'When our author, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, says, And when she [i. e. the moon] weeps, weeps every little flower," he only means that every little flower is moistened with dew, as if with tears; and not that the flower itself drizzles dew. This passage sufficiently explains how the earth, in the quotation from The Rape of Lucrece, may be said to weep.' That Shakspeare thought it was the air, and not the earth, that drizzled dew, is evident from many passages in his works. So in King John:

Before the dew of evening fall.'

How now, a conduit 17, girl? what, still in tears?
Ever more showering? In one little body
Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind:
For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,
Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs;
Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them,-
Without a sudden calm, will overset

Thy tempest-tossed body.-How now, wife?
Have you deliver'd to her our decree?

La. Cap. Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks.

I would, the fool were married to her grave!

Cap. Soft, take me with you, take me with you, wife.

How! will she none? doth she not give us thanks?
Is she not proud? doth she not count her bless'd,
Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought
So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom?
Jul. Not proud, you have; but thankful, that you
have;

Proud can I never be of what I hate;

But thankful even for hate, that is meant love.

Cap. How now! how now, chop-logick 18! What is this?

Proud, and, I thank you,-and, I thank you not;And yet not proud;-Mistress minion, you,

Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,

17 The same image, which was in frequent use with Shakspeare's cotemporaries, occurs in the poem of Romeus and Juliet more than once:

His sighs are stopt, and stopped in the conduit of his tears.' 18 Capulet, as Steevens observes, uses this as a nickname. The hyphen is wanting in the old copy. Choplogyk is he that whan his mayster rebuketh his servaunt for his defawtes, he will give him xx wordes for one, or elles he will bydde the devylles paternoster in scylence.'-The xxiiii Orders of Knaves, blk. 1.

But settle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next, with Paris to Saint Peter's church,

To

go

Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.

Out, you green sickness carrion! out, you baggage! You tallow face 19!

La. Cap.

Fye, fye! what, are you mad? Jul. Good father, I beseech you on my knees, Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

Cap. Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient

wretch!

I tell thee what,-get thee to church o' Thursday, Or never after look me in the face:

Speak not, reply not, do not answer me:

My fingers itch.-Wife, we scarce thought us bless'd,
That God had sent us but this only child;
But now I see this one is one too much,
And that we have a curse in having her:
Out on her, hilding 20 !

Nurse.

God in heaven bless her!

You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.

Cap. And why, my lady wisdom? hold your
tongue,

Good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go.
Nurse. I speak no treason.

Cap.

O, God ye good den!

Peace, you mumbling fool!

Nurse. May not one speak?
Cap.

19 Such was the indelicacy of the age of Shakspeare, that authors were not contented only to employ these terms of abuse in their own original performances, but even felt no reluctance to introduce them in their versions of the most chaste and elegant of the Greek or Roman poets. Stanyhurst, the translator of Virgil, in 1582, makes Dido call Æneas hedge-brat, cullion, and tar-breech, in the course of one speech. Nay, in the Interlude of The Repentance of Mary Magdalene, 1567, she says to one of her attendants :

'Horeson, I beshrewe your heart, are you here?'

20 Base woman.

Utter your gravity o'er a gossip's bowl,
For here we need it not.

La. Cap.

You are too hot.

Cap. God's bread! it makes me mad; Day, night, late, early,

At home, abroad, alone, in company,
Waking, or sleeping, still my care hath been
To have her match'd: and having now provided
A gentleman of princely parentage,

Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train❜d,
Stuff'd (as they say,) with honourable parts,
Proportion'd as one's heart could wish a man,-
And then to have a wretched puling fool,
A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender,
To answer-I'll not wed,-I cannot love 21,
I am too young,—I pray you, pardon me;-
But, an you will not wed, I'll pardon you:
Graze where you will, you shall not house with me;
Look to't, think on't, I do not use to jest.
Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise:
An you be mine, I'll give you to my friend;

An

you be not, hang, beg, starve, die i'the streets, For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee, Nor what is mine shall never do thee good: Trust to❜t, bethink you, I'll not be forsworn. [Exit. Jul. Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, That sees into the bottom of my grief? O, sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for a month, a week; Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.

21 There is a passage in the old play of Wily Beguiled, pointed out by Malone, so nearly resembling this, that one poet must have copied from the other. Wily Beguiled was on the stage before 1596, being mentioned by Nashe in his Have with You to Saffron Walden, printed in that year.

'A whining mammet,' in the preceding line, confirms the explanation of mammets given in vol. v. p. 161, note 13.

La. Cap. Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word; Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee. [Exit. Jul. O God!-0 nurse! how shall this be pre

vented?

My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven;
How shall that faith return again to earth,
Unless that husband send it me from heaven
By leaving earth?-comfort me, counsel me.—
Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems
Upon so soft a subject as myself?

What say'st thou hast thou not a word of joy?
Some comfort, nurse.

Nurse.

'Faith, here 'tis : Romeo

Is banished; and all the world to nothing,
That he dares ne'er çome back to challenge you;
Or, if he do, it needs must be by stealth.
Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,
I think it best you married with the county.
O, he's a lovely gentleman 22!

Romeo's a dishclout to him; an eagle, madam,
Hath not so green 23, so quick, so fair an eye,

22 The character of the Nurse exhibits a just picture of those whose actions have no principles for their foundation. She has been unfaithful to the trust reposed in her by Capulet, and is ready to embrace any expedient that offers, to avert the consequences of her first infidelity. The picture is not, however, an original, the nurse in the poem exhibits the same readiness to accommodate herself to the present conjuncture. Sir John Vanbrugh, in The Relapse, has copied, in this respect, the character of his nurse from Shakspeare.

23 Perhaps Chaucer has given to Emetrius, in The Knight's Tale, eyes of the same colour:

'His nose was high, his eyin bright citryn.'

i. e. of the hue of an unripe lemon or citron. Again in The Two Noble Kinsmen, by Fletcher and Shakspeare:

oh youchsafe

With that thy rare green eye,' &c.

Arthur Hall (the most ignorant and absurd of all the translators of Homer) in the fourth Iliad (4to. 1581), calls Minerva— 'The greene eide goddesse.'

The early French poets have frequent mention of yeux vers,