Upon a rapier's point:-Stay, Tybalt, stay!- [She throws herself on the Bed. SCENE IV. Capulet's Hall. Enter Lady CAPULET and Nurse. LA. CAP. Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse. NURSE. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.' Enter CAPULET. CAP. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow'd, The curfeu bell2 hath rung, 'tis three o'clock: 9 Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.] So the first quarto, 1597. The subsequent ancient copies read: 1 Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, here's drink, I drink to thee. MALONE. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.] i. e. in the room where paste was made. So laundry, spicery, &c. See Vol. V. p. 321, n. 5. MALONE. On the books of the Stationers' Company, in the year 1560, are the following entries: "Item payd for iiii pound of dates iiii s. "Item payd for xxiiii pounde of prunys iii. s. viii d." STEEVENS. 2 The curfeu bell-] I know not that the morning-bell, is called the curfeu in any other place. JOHNSON. Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica :3 NURSE. Go, go, you cot-quean, go, Get you to bed; 'faith, you'll be sick to-morrow For this night's watching. CAP. No, not a whit; What! I have watch'd ere now All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick. LA. CAP. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time; The curfew bell was rung at nine in the evening, as appears from a passage in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608: well 'tis nine o'clock, 'tis time to ring curfew." 66 STEEVENS. The curfew bell is universally rung at eight or nine o'clock at night; generally according to the season. The term is here used with peculiar impropriety, as it is not believed that any bell was ever rung so early as three in the morning. The derivation of curfeu is well known, but it is a mere vulgar error that the institution was a badge of slavery imposed by the Norman Conqueror. To put out the fire became necessary only because it was time to go to bed: And if the curfeu commanded all fires to be extinguished, the morning bell ordered them to be lighted again. In short, the ringing of those two bells was a manifest and essential service to people who had scarcely any other means of measuring their time. RITSON. 3 Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica:] Shakspeare has here imputed to an Italian nobleman and his lady all the petty solicitudes of a private house concerning a provincial entertainment. To such a bustle our author might have been witness at home; but the like anxieties could not well have occurred in the family of Capulet, whose wife, if Angelica be her name, is here directed to perform the office of a housekeeper. STEEVENS. 4-a mouse-hunt in your time;] In my original attempt to explain this passage, I was completely wrong, for want of knowing that in Norfolk, and many other parts of England, the cant term for a weasel is-a mouse-hunt. The intrigues of this animal, like those of the cat kind, are usually carried on during the night. This circumstance will account for the appellation But I will watch you from such watching now. [Exeunt Lady CAPULET and Nurse. CAP. A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!-Now, fellow, What's there? Enter Servants, with Spits, Logs, and Baskets. 1 SERV. Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what. CAP. Make haste, make haste. [Exit 1 Serv.]Sirrah, fetch drier logs; Call Peter, he will show thee where they are. 2 SERV. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs, And never trouble Peter for the matter. [Exit. CAP. 'Mass, and well said; A merry whoreson ! ha, Thou shalt be logger-head.-Good faith, 'tis day: The county will be here with musick straight, [Musick within. For so he said he would. I hear him near :Nurse!-Wife!-what, ho!-what, nurse, I say! Enter Nurse. Go, waken Juliet, go, and trim her up; I'll [Exeunt. which Lady Capulet allows her husband to have formerly deserved. STEEVENS. The animal called the mouse-hunt, is the martin. HENLEY. Cat after kinde, good mouse hunt, is a proverb in Heywood's Dialogue, 1598, 1st. pt. c. 2. HOLT WHITE. SCENE V. Juliet's Chamber; JULIET on the Bed. Enter Nurse. NURSE. Mistress!-what, mistress!-Juliet!fast, I warrant her, she: Why, lamb!-why, lady!-fye, you slug-a-bed!Why, love, I say!-madam! sweet-heart!-why, bride! What, not a word?-you take your pennyworths now; Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant, The county Paris hath set up his rest, 5 5 set up his rest,] This expression, which is frequently employed by the old dramatick writers, is taken from the manner of firing the harquebuss. This was so heavy a gun, that the soldiers were obliged to carry a supporter called a rest, which they fixed in the ground before they levelled to take aim. Decker uses it in his comedy of Old Fortunatus, 1600: your heart at rest, for I have set up my rest, that unless you can run swifter than a hart, home you go not.' The same expression occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's Elder Brother: "-set See Montfaucon's Monarchie Françoise, Tom. V. plate 48. STEEVENS. The origin of this phrase has certainly been rightly explained, but the good Nurse was here thinking of other matters. T. C. The above expression may probably be sometimes used in the sense already explained; it is, however, oftener employed with a reference to the game at primero, in which it was one of the terms then in use. In the second instance above quoted it is certainly so. To avoid loading the page with examples, I shall refer That you shall rest but little.-God forgive me, 6 He'll fright you up, i'faith.-Will it not be? to Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays, Vol. X. p. 364, edit. 1780, where several are brought together. REED. To set up one's rest, is, in fact, a gambling expression, and means that the gamester has determined what stake he should play for. In the passage quoted by Steevens from Fletcher's Elder Brother, when Eustace says: My rest is up, and I will go no less." he means to say, my stake is laid, and I will not play for a smaller. The same phrase very frequently occurs in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is also used by Lord Clarendon, in his History, as well as in the old comedy of Supposes, published in the year 1587. M. MASON. 6 why lady!fye, you slug-a-bed! Ay, let the county take you in your bed;] So, in The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet: First softly did she call, then louder did she cry, "Lady, you sleep too long, the earl will raise you by and by." MALONE. |