Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams,
Driving back shadows over louring hills:
Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw love,
And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.
Now is the sun upon the highmost hill

Of this day's journey; and from nine till twelve
Is three long hours,-yet she is not come.
Had she affections, and warm youthful blood,
She'd be as swift in motion as a ball;

My words would bandy her to my sweet love,
And his to me :

But old folks, many feign as they were dead;
Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.

Enter Nurse and PETER.

O God, she comes!-O honey nurse, what news?
Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.
Nurse. Peter, stay at the gate. [Exit PETER.
Jul. Now, good sweet nurse,-O lord! why
look'st thou sad?

Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily;
If good, thou sham'st the musick of sweet news
By playing it to me with so sour a face.

Nurse. I am weary, give me leave awhile ;-
Fye, how my bones ache! What a jaunt have I had!
Jul. I would, thou hadst my bones, and I thy news:
Nay, come, I pray thee, speak ;-good, good nurse,
speak.

Do

Nurse. Jesu, what haste? can you not stay awhile?

you not see, that I am out of breath?

edition. Shakspeare, however, seems to have thought one of the ideas comprised in the foregoing quotation from the earliest quarto too valuable to be lost. He has, therefore, inserted it in Romeo's first speech to the Apothecary, in Act v.:—

'As violently as hasty powder fir'd

Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.'

Jul. How art thou out of breath, when thou hast

breath

Το say to me that thou art out of breath?
The excuse, that thou dost make in this delay,
Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse.
Is thy news good, or bad? answer to that;
Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance:
Let me be satisfied, Is't good or bad?

Nurse. Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose a man: Romeo! no, not he; though his face be better than any man's, yet his leg excels all men's; and for a hand, and a foot, and a body,-though they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare: He is not the flower of courtesy, but, I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb.-Go thy ways, wench; serve God.— What, have you dined at home?

Jul. No, no: But all this did I know before; What says he of our marriage? what of that? Nurse. Lord, how my head akes! what a head have I?

It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.

My back o' t'other side,-O, my back, my back!-
Beshrew your heart, for sending me about,
To catch my death with jaunting up and down!

Jul. I'faith, I am sorry that thou art not well: Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?

Nurse. Your love says like an honest gentleman, And a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, And, I warrant, a virtuous:-Where is your mother?

Jul. Where is my mother?-why, she is within ; Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest? Your love says like an honest gentleman,

Where is your mother?

Nurse.

O, god's lady dear!

Are you so hot? Marry, come up, I trow;
Is this the poultice for my aking bones?
Henceforward do your messages yourself.

Jul. Here's such a coil,-come, what says Romeo? Nurse. Have you got leave to go to shrift to-day? Jul. I have.

Nurse. Then hie you hence to friar Laurence' cell, There stays a husband to make you a wife: Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks, They'll be in scarlet straight at any news. Hie you to church; I must another way, To fetch a ladder, by the which your love Must climb a bird's nest soon, when it is dark : I am the drudge, and toil in your delight; But you shall bear the burden soon at night. Go, I'll to dinner; hie you to the cell.

Jul. Hie to high fortune !—honest nurse, farewell.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VI. Friar Laurence's Cell.

Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and ROMEO1.

Fri. So smile the heavens upon this holy act, That after-hours with sorrow chide us not!

Rom. Amen, amen! but come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight: Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare, It is enough I may but call her mine.

Fri. These violent delights have violent ends2,

1 This scene is exhibited in quite another form in the first quarto, 1597. But it is hardly worth exhibiting here in its original state. The reader may see it in the variorum Shakspeare, or in the play as published by Steevens among the twenty quartos. 2 So in Shakspeare's Rape of Lucrece :

These violent vanities can never last.'

And in their triumph die! like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume: The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,

And in the taste confounds the appetite:
Therefore, love moderately: long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow3.

Enter JULIET.

Here comes the lady :-O, so light a foot
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint*:
A lover may bestride the gossomers 5
That idle in the wanton summer air,
And yet not fall; so light is vanity.

Jul. Good even to my ghostly confessor.

Fri. Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both. Jul. As much to him, else are his thanks too much. Rom. Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy Be heap'd like mine, and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour air, and let rich musick's tongue Unfold the imagin'd happiness that both Receive in either by this dear encounter.

3 He that travels too fast is as long before he comes to the end of his journey as he that travels slow. Precipitation produces mishap.'-Johnson.

This passage originally stood thus:

'Youth's love is quick, swifter than swiftest speed,
See where she comes !-

So light a foot ne'er hurts the trodden flower;

Of love and joy, see, see, the sovereign power!'

However the poet might think the alteration of this scene on the whole to be necessary, I am afraid (says Steevens) in respect of the passage before us, he has not been very successful. The violent hyperbole of never wearing out the everlasting flint, appears not only more reprehensible, but even less beautiful than the lines as they were originally written, where the lightness of Juliet's motion is accounted for from the cheerful effects the passion of love produced in her mind.

5 See King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 6, note 9.

Jul. Conceito, more rich in matter than in words, Brags of his substance, not of ornament:

They are but beggars that can count their worth7;
But my true love is grown to such excess,
I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth.

Fri. Come, come with me, and we will make short work;

For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone,
Till holy church incorporate two in one. [Exeunt.

ACT III.

SCENE I. A public Place.

Enter MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, Page, and
Servants.

Ben. I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire;
The day is hot1, the Capulets abroad,

And, if we meet, we shall not 'scape a brawl;
For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.

Mer. Thou art like one of those fellows, that when he enters the confines of a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table, and says, God send me no need of thee! and, by the operation of the second

6 Conceit here means imagination. Vide Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4, note; and vol. iii. p. 201, note 5.

7 So in Antony and Cleopatra :—

'There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.' 'It is observed, that, in Italy, almost all assassinations are committed during the heat of summer. In Sir Thomas Smith's Commonwealth of England, 1583, b. ii. c. xix. p. 70, it is said :And commonly every yeere, or each second yeere, in the beginning of sommer or afterwards (for in the warme time the people for the most part be more unruly) even in the calme time of peace, the prince with his council chooseth out,' &c.