As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart, Your first is dead: or 'twere as good he were, As living here, and you no use of him. Jul. Speakest thou from thy heart? Or else beshrew them both. Jul. Nurse. From my soul too; Amen! To what? Jul. Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much. Go in; and tell my lady I am gone, Having displeas'd my father, to Laurence' cell, Nurse. Marry, I will; and this is wisely done. [Exit. Jul. Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend! Is it more sin-to wish me thus forsworn, Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue Which she hath prais'd him with above compare So many thousand times?-Go, counsellor; Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.I'll to the friar, to know his remedy; If all else fail, myself have power to die. [Exit. which Le Grand has in vain attempted to convert into yeux vairs, or gray eyes. Plautus alludes to green eyes in his Curculio : Cum collativo ventre atque oculis herbeis.' And Lord Verulam says, 'Great eyes, with a green circle between the white and the white of the eye signify long life.'Hist. of Life and Death, p. 124. Villareal, a Portuguese, has written a treatise in praise of green eyes, and they are even said to exist now among his countrymen. See Pinkerton's Geography, vol. i. p. 556. ACT IV. SCENE I. Friar Laurence's Cell. Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and PARIS. Fri. On Thursday, sir? the time is very short. Par. My father Capulet will have it so; And I am nothing slow, to slack his haste1. Fri. You say, you do not know the lady's mind; Uneven is the course, I like it not. Par. Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt's death, And therefore have I little talk'd of love; For Venus smiles not in a house of tears. Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous, That she doth give her sorrow so much sway; And, in his wisdom, hastes our marriage, To stop the inundation of her tears; Which, too much minded by herself alone, May be put from her by society: Now do you know the reason of this haste. Fri. I would, I knew not why it should be slow'd2. [Aside. Look, sir, here comes the lady towards my cell. 1 The meaning of Paris is clear, he does not wish to restrain Capulet, or to delay his own marriage; there is nothing of slowness in me, to induce me to slacken or abate his haste: but the words the poet has given him import the reverse, and seem rather to mean I am not backward in restraining his haste. deavour to retard him as much as I can. The poet has hastily fallen into similar inadvertencies elsewhere. In the first edition the line ran :— 'And I am nothing slack to slow his haste.' I en 2 To slow and to foreslow were anciently in common use as verbs: Enter JULIET. Par. Happily met, my lady, and my wife! next. Jul. What must be shall be. Fri. That's a certain text. Par. Come you to make confession to this father? love me. Jul. I will confess to you, that I love him. Par. So will you, I am sure, that you love me. Jul. If I do so, it will be of more price, Being spoke behind your back, than to your face. Par. Poor soul, thy face is much abus'd with tears. Jul. The tears have got small victory by that; For it was bad enough before their spite. Par. Thou wrong'st it, more than tears, with that report. Jul. That is no slander, sir, that is a truth; And what I spake, I spake it to my face. Par. Thy face is mine, and thou hast slander'd it. Are you at leisure, holy father, now; Fri. My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now: My lord, we must entreat the time alone. Par. God shield, I should disturb devotion :— Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse you: Till then, adieu! and keep this holy kiss. [Exit PARIS. Juliet means vespers, there is no such thing as evening mass Masses (as Fynes Moryson observes) are only sung in the morn ing, and when the priests are fasting. Jul. O, shut the door! and when thou hast done so, God join'd my heart and Romeo's, thou our hands; Or my true heart with treacherous revolt Fri. Hold, daughter; I do spy a kind of hope, Which craves as desperate an execution As that is desperate which we would prevent, 4 The seals of deeds formerly were appended on distinct slips or labels affixed to the deed. Hence in King Richard II. the Duke of York discovers a covenant which his son the Duke of Aumerle had entered into by the depending seal. 5 i. e. shall decide the struggle between me and my distress. 6 Commission may be here used for authority: but it is more probable that commixtion is the word intended. A thing like death to chide away this shame, Jul. O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, O'er cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones, With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless-sculls; Or bid me go into a new made grave, And hide me with a dead man in his shroud; Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble; And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love3. 7 The quarto 1597 reads 'Or chain me to some steepy mountain's top, In the text the 4to of 1599 is followed, except that it has or hide me nightly.' 8 Thus the 4to 1599 and the folio: the 4to 1597 reads, I think, with more spirit : To keep myself a faithful unstain'd wife Boswell. |