Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs;
Being urg'd 15, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
Farewell, my coz.

[Going.

Ben. Soft, I will go along; An if you leave me so, you do me wrong. Rom. Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here; This is not Romeo, he's some other where. Ben. Tell me in sadness 16, whom she is

you

Rom. What, shall I groan, and tell thee?
Ben.

But sadly tell me who.

love.

Groan? why, no;

Rom. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will:Ah, word ill urg'd to one that is so ill!

In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.

Ben. I aim'd so near, when I suppos'd you lov'd.
Rom. A right good marksman!—And she's fair
I love.

Ben. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
Rom. Well, in that hit, you miss: she'll not be hit
With Cupid's arrow, she hath Dian's wit;
And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd 17,
From love's weak childish bow she lives unharm'd.

15 The old copy reads, 'Being purg'd a fire,' &c. The emendation I have admitted into the text was suggested by Dr. JohnTo urge the fire is to kindle or excite it. So in Chapman's version of the twenty-first Iliad :——

son.

And as a cauldron, under put with store of fire,
Bavins of sere-wood urging it,' &c.

So Akenside in his Hymn to Cheerfulness:-
'Haste, light the tapers, urge the fire,
And bid the joyless day retire.'

16 i. e. tell me gravely, in seriousness.

17 As this play was written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, these speeches of Romeo may be regarded as an oblique compliment to her majesty, who was not liable to be displeased at hearing her chastity praised after she was suspected to have lost

She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold:
O, she is rich in beauty; only poor,

That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store 18. Ben. Then she hath sworn, that she will still live chaste?

Rom. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge

waste;

For beauty, starv'd with her severity,
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.

She is too fair, too wise; wisely too fair,
To merit bliss by making me despair:
She hath forsworn to love; and, in that vow,
Do I live dead, that live to tell it now.

Ben. Be rul'd by me, forget to think of her. Rom. O, teach me how I should forget to think. Ben. By giving liberty unto thine eyes; Examine other beauties.

Rom.

"Tis the way

:

To call hers, exquisite, in question more 19
These happy masks 20, that kiss fair ladies' brows,

it, or her beauty commended in the sixty-seventh year of her age, though she never possessed any when young. Her declaration that she would continue unmarried increases the probability of the present supposition.'-Steevens.

18 The meaning appears to be, as Mason gives it, 'She is poor only, because she leaves no part of her store behind her, as with her all beauty will die :

For beauty starved with her severity

Cuts beauty off from all posterity.'

19 i. e. to call her exquisite beauty more into my mind, and make it more the subject of conversation. Question is used frequently with this sense by Shakspeare.

20 This is probably an allusion to the masks worn by the female spectators of the play; unless we suppose that these means no more than the. See vol. ii. p. 44, note 12:

Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder

Than beauty could displayed.'

Being black, put us in mind they hide the fair;
He, that is strucken blind, cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost;
Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
What doth her beauty serve, but as a note
Where I may read, who pass'd that passing fair?
Farewell; thou canst not teach me to forget.
Ben. I'll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.

SCENE II. A Street.

[Exeunt.

Enter CAPULET, PARIS, and Servant. Cap. And Montague is bound as well as I, In penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, I think, For men so old as we to keep the peace.

Par. Of honourable reckoning are you both; And pity 'tis, you liv'd at odds so long. But now, my lord, what say you to my suit? Cap. By saying o'er what I have said before: My child is yet a stranger in the world, She hath not seen the change of fourteen years; Let two more summers wither in their pride, Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.

Par. Younger than she are happy mothers made. Cap. And too soon marr'd are those so early made1.

The earth hath swallow'd all my hopes but she,

1 The quarto of 1597 reads:-

'And too soon marr'd are those so early married.' Puttenham, in his Arte of Poesy, 1589, uses this expression, which seems to be proverbial, as an instance of a figure which he calls the Rebound:

'The maid that soon married is, soon marred is.'

The jingle between marr'd and made is likewise frequent among the old writers. So Sidney:

'Oh! he is marr'd, that is for others made!' Spenser introduces it very often in his different poems.

She is the hopeful lady of my earth?:
But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart,
My will to her consent is but a part 3;
An she agree, within her scope of choice
Lies my consent and fair according voice.
This night I hold an old accustom'd feast,
Whereto I have invited many a guest,
Such as I love; and you, among the store,
One more, most welcome, makes my number more.
At my poor house, look to behold this night
Earth-treading stars, that make dark heaven light:
Such comfort, as do lusty young men feel

4

2 Fille de terre is the old French phrase for an heiress. Earth is likewise put for lands, i. e. landed estate, in other old plays. But Mason suggests that earth may here mean corporal part, as in a future passage of this play :

'Can I go forward when my heart is here?

Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.'

So in Shakspeare's 146th Sonnet:—

'Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth.'

3 i. e. in comparison to. See vol. iv. p. 272, note 9.

For lusty young men' Johnson would read 'lusty yeomen.' Ritson has clearly shown that young men was used for yeomen in our elder language. And the reader may convince himself by turning to Spelman's Glossary in the words juniores and yeoman. Cotgrave also translates Franc-gontier, a good rich yeoman; substantial yonker.' He also renders 'Vergaland, a lustie yonker.' As in another part of this play,' young trees' and young tree,' is printed in the old copy for yew trees' and yew tree,' this may be also a misprint for yeomen. You shall feel from the sight and conversation of these ladies such comfort as the farmer receives at the coming of spring;' which is (as Baret says) 'the lustyest and most busie time to husbandemen.'

Steevens supports the present reading: To tell Paris (says he) that he should feel the same sort of pleasure in an assembly of beauties which young folk feel in that season when they are most gay and amorous, was surely as much as the old man ought to say.

ubi subdita flamma medullis,
Vere magis (quia vere calor redit ossibus).'
Virgil. Georg. iii.

Malone adds, from Shakspeare's 99th Sonnet :-
'When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing.'

When well apparell'd April on the heel
Of limping winter treads, even such delight
Among fresh female buds shall you this night
Inherit5 at my house; hear all, all see,

And like her most, whose merit most shall be:
Which, on more view of many, mine being one,
May stand in number, though in reckoning none.
Come, go with me;-Go, sirrah, trudge about
Through fair Verona; find those persons out,
Whose names are written there [gives a Paper], and
to them say,

My house and welcome on their pleasure stay.

[Exeunt CAPULET and PARIS.

Serv. Find them out, whose names are written here? It is written-that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard,—and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his pencil, and the painter with his 5 To inherit, in the language of Shakspeare, is to possess.

By a perverse adherence to the first quarto copy of 1597, which reads, Such amongst view of many,' &c. this passage has been made unintelligible. The subsequent quartos and the folio read, 'Which one [on] more,' &c.; evidently meaning, 'Hear all, see all, and like her most who has the most merit; her, which, after regarding attentively the many, my daughter being one, may stand unique in merit, though she may be reckoned nothing, or held in no estimation. The allusion, as Malone has shown, is to the old proverbial expression, One is no number,' thus adverted to in Decker's Honest Whore:

to fall to one

is to fall to none,

For one no number is.'

And in Shakspeare's 136th Sonnet:—

Among a number one is reckon'd

none,

Then in the number let me pass untold.'

It will be unnecessary to inform the reader that which is here used for who, a substitution frequent in Shakspeare, as in all the writers of his time. One of the later quartos has corrected the error of the others, and reads, as in the present text :'Which on more view,' &c.

7 The quarto of 1597 adds, And yet I know not who are written here: I must to the learned to learn of them: that's as much as to say, the tailor,' &c.