Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud; ROM. It is my soul, that calls upon my name: How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, Like softest musick to attending ears! "A tiercel-gentle." Taylor the water poet uses the same expression : -By casting out the lure, she makes the tassel-gentle come to her fist." Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. III. c. iv: "Having far off espyde a tassel-gent, "Which after her his nimble wings doth straine." Again, in Decker's Match me in London, 1631: "Your tassel-gentle, she's lured off and gone." This species of hawk had the epithet of gentle annexed to it, from the ease with which it was tamed, and its attachment to man. STEEVENS. It appears from the old books on this subject that certain hawks were considered as appropriated to certain ranks. The tercelgentle was appropriated to the prince; and thence, we may suppose, was chosen by Juliet as an appellation for her beloved Romeo. In an ancient treatise entitled Hawking, Hunting, and Fishing, with the true Measures of Blowing, is the following passage: "The names of all manner of hawkes, and to whom they belong: FOR A PRINCE. There is a falcon gentle, and a tercel gentle; and these are for a prince." MALONE. tear the cave-] This strong expression is more suitably employed by Milton: A shout that tore hell's concave -." STEEVENS. My sweet!] Mr. Malone reads-Madam, and justifies his choice by the following note. STEEvens. JUL. I will not fail; 'tis twenty years till then. I have forgot why I did call thee back. ROM. Let me stand here till thou remember it. JUL. I shall forget, to have thee still stand there, Rememb'ring how I love thy company. ROM. And I'll still stay, to have thee still forget, Forgetting any other home but this. JUL. 'Tis almost morning, I would have thee gone: And yet no further than a wanton's bird; ROM. I would, I were thy bird. JUL. Sweet, so would I: Thus the original copy of 1597. In the two subsequent copies and the folio we have-My niece. What word was intended it is difficult to say. The editor of the second folio substituted My sweet. I have already shown, that all the alterations in that copy were made at random; and have therefore preserved the original word, though less tender than that which was arbitrarily substituted in its place. MALONE. As I shall always suppose the second folio to have been corrected, in many places, by the aid of better copies than fell into the hands of the editors of the preceding volume, I have in the present instance, as well as many others, followed the authority rejected by Mr. Malone. I must add, that the cold, distant, and formal appellationMadam, which has been already put into the mouth of the Nurse, would but ill accord with the more familiar feelings of the ardent Romeo, to whom Juliet has just promised every gratification that youth and beauty could bestow, STEEvens. Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say-good night, till it be morrow. [Exit. ROM. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast! 'Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest! Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell; His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell.2 [Exit. SCENE III. Friar Laurence's Cell. Enter Friar LAURENCE, with a Basket. FRI. The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night,3 Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light: Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell; His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell.] Thus the quarto, 1597, except that it has good instead of dear. That of 1599, and the folio, read : Hence will I to my ghostly frier's close cell, His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell. MALONE. The grey-ey'd morn &c.] These four lines are here replaced, conformable to the first edition, where such a description is much more proper than in the mouth of Romeo just before, when he was full of nothing but the thoughts of his mistress. POPE. In the folio these lines are printed twice over, and given once to Romeo, and once to the Friar. JOHNSON. The same mistake has likewise happened in the quartos, 1599, 1609, and 1637. STEEVENS. And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels ↑ And flecked darkness-] Flecked is spotted, dappled, streaked, or variegated. In this sense it is used by Churchyard, in his Legend of Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. Mowbray, speaking of the Germans, says: 66 "All jagg'd and frounc'd, with divers colours deck'd, They swear, they curse, and drink till they be fleck'd." Lord Surrey uses the same word in his translation of the fourth Æneid: "Her quivering cheekes flecked with deadly staine." The same image occurs also in Much Ado about Nothing, Act V. sc. iii: "Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey." STEEVENS. The word is still used in Scotland, where "a flecked cow" is a common expression. See the Glossary to Gawin Douglas's. translation of Virgil, in v. fleckit. MALONE. From forth day's path-way, made by Titan's wheels:] So, in Jocasta's address to the sun in the POINIZZAI of Euripides: σε Ω τὴν ἐν αστροις ἐρανᾶ ΤΕΜΝΩΝ ΟΔΟΝ.” Mr. Malone reads From forth day's path, and Titan's fiery wheels. STEEVENS. Thus the quarto, 1597. That of 1599, and the folio, have→→ burning wheels. The modern editions read corruptly, after the second folio: From forth day's path-way made by Titan's wheels. MALONE. Here again I have followed this reprobated second folio. It is easy to understand how darkness might reel "from forth day's path-way," &c. but what is meant by-forth "Titan's fiery wheels?" A man may stagger out of a path, but not out of a wheel. STEEVENS. These lines are thus quoted in England's Parnassus, or the choysest Flowers of our modern Poets, &c. 1600: 66 The gray-eyde morne smiles on the frowning night, Cheering the easterne cloudes with streames of light; "And darknesse flected, like a drunkard reeles "From forth daye's path-way made by Titan's wheels." So that the various reading in the last line does not originate in an arbitrary alteration by the editor of the second folio, as the ingenious commentator supposes. HOLT WHITE. VOL. XX. H Now ere the sun advance his burning eye, With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers." • I must up-fill this osier cage of ours, &c.] So, in the 13th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion: "His happy time he spends the works of God to see, "In those so sundry herbs which there in plenty grow, "Whose sundry strange effects he only seeks to know. "And in a little maund, being made of oziers small, "Which serveth him to do full many a thing withal, "He very choicely sorts his simples got abroad." Drayton is speaking of a hermit. STEEVENS. 7- and precious-juiced flowers.] Shakspeare, on his introduction of Friar Laurence, has very artificially prepared us for the part he is afterwards to sustain. Having thus early discovered him to be a chemist, we are not surprized when we find him furnishing the draught which produces the catastrophe of the piece. I owe this remark to Dr. Farmer. STEEVENS. In the passage before us Shakspeare had the poem in his thoughts: "But not in vain, my child, hath all my wand'ring been; "What force the stones, the plants, and metals, have to work, "And divers other thinges that in the bowels of earth do lurk, "With care I have sought out, with pain I did them prove." MAlone. • The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb;] 66 Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum." Lucretius. "The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave." Milton. STEEVENS. So, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1609: |