Chapter CIX: Act III

SC. 1. "Or reason calmly of your grievances."

'Or' for _and_, as Capell also saw.

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"Will you pluck your sword out of his pilcher by the ears?"

Singer reads _pitcher_. I think the right word is _pilche_, a leathern coat. In v. 1 the sheath of a dagger is termed its _house_.

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"This day's black fate on more days doth depend."

We should perhaps transpose, and read "On this day's," etc.

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"O prince! O [cousin] husband! O, the blood is spilled."

So Mr. Dyce also reads.

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SC. 2. "Spread thy close curtain, love-performing Night!
That runaway's eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen."

Of 'runaway,' which cannot possibly be right, the Cambridge edition enumerates no less than twenty-nine various corrections! Warburton understood by it the sun; Steevens, the night; Douce, Juliet; and a Mr. Halpen, Cupid. Jackson, followed by Collier, read _unawares_. Mr. Dyce conjectured _roving_, _soon day's_, and _rude day's_, which last he has placed in the text, but which seems to me to be too young-ladyish for the ardent and _naïve_ Juliet; and moreover she had already called for the winking of day's eye, _i.e._ for sunset. Some sense might also be made of _runagates_, as persons wandering about by night, and still better of _runabouts_, a word used by Marston (What you Will, iii. 1), and which I have placed in the text, as making tolerable sense and bearing resemblance to 'runaways.' Mr. Singer read _rumourers_, against which little objection can be made. My own opinion--to which I was led by Singer's reading, and in which I find I had been anticipated by Heath and Mr. Grant White--is, that the poet's word may have been _Rumour's_. In the poem on which this play is founded, Juliet, when pondering, before her marriage, on what might be the consequence of admitting Romeo to a lover's privilege, says:--

"So, I defil'd, _Report_ shall take her trump of black defame,
Whence she, with puffed cheek, shall blow a blast so shrill
Of my dispraise, that with the noise Verona she shall fill."

Now Shakespeare may have wished to preserve this imagery, and have substituted _Rumour_ for _Report_ for euphony's sake and other causes. Rumour in effect seems to have been the same as the classic Fame. In Sir Clyomen and Sir Clamydes, a piece with which he was probably well acquainted, we meet "Enter Rumour running," and this may have been in his mind when he was writing the Induction to 2 Hen. IV. In his other plays also he personifies both _rumour_ and _report_, as in

"That pitiful Rumour may report my flight,
To consolate thine ear. Come night, end day;
For with the dark, poor thief, I'll steal away."
All's Well, iii. 2.

He may also have had these lines of Phaer's Virgil in his mind:--

"At night she [Fame] walks, nor slumber sweet doth take nor never
sleeps,
By day on houses' tops she sits, and gates or towers she keeps,
On watching-towers she climbs, and cities great she makes aghast,
Both truth and falsehood forth she tells, and lies abroad doth cast."

We may, then, fancy Juliet to suppose that Rumour was on the watch to detect and expose her, and she wishes that the gloom may be so intense that her eyes must wink perforce, and so Romeo may leap to her arms unseen, and their union remain undivulged. There may also have been intended a play on the names Rumour and Romeo, like "My conceal'd lady to our cancell'd love" (iii. 3). As Shakespeare undoubtedly knew French, he may have had these lines of Marot in his mind:--

"Car noire Nuict, qui des amants prend cure,
Les couvrira de sa grand robbe obscure;
Et si rendra cependant endormis
Ceux qui d'Amour sont mortelz ennemis."
Eleg. xi.

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"Till strange Love grow bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty."

Rowe, who has been followed by all, reads 'grow_n_,' and he probably was right. Still, when we consider the joyous perturbation of Juliet's mind, there may be an asyndeton, and she may be speaking _allo staccato_. I have therefore, in my Edition, left the text unaltered.

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SC. 3. "A gentler judgement vanish'd from his lips."

I have never met with any sense of 'vanish' but its ordinary one, which certainly will not suit here. We should therefore, I think, read _issued_, or some word of similar meaning. It is curious that Massinger seems to have taken 'vanish'd' on Shakespeare's authority. "Upon those lips from which those sweet words _vanish'd_" (Reneg. v. 5). We have, however, in Lucrece:--

"To make more vent for passage of her breath,
Which thronging through her lips, so _vanisheth_
As smoke from Ætna, that in air consumes."

But the breath is material.

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"Taking thy part he rush'd aside the law."

Would not _push'd_ be better? as in

"But that the scambling and unquiet time
Did _push_ it out of further question."
Hen. V. i. 1.

* * * * *

"But Romeo may not: he is banished.
This may flies do, while I from this must fly;
And sayest thou yet that exile is not death?"

The folio, which gives the best text here, erroneously puts the first of these lines after the third. The 4tos of 1599 and 1609 add most unnecessarily:--

"Flies may do this, but I from this must fly;
They are free men, but I am banished,"

which seems to have been an earlier form of the two preceding lines. See on L. L. L. iv. 3.

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SC. 5. "Art thou gone so? my lord, my love, my friend."

So the first 4to, which, with Mr. Dyce, I follow. The other editions read:--

"Art thou gone so? love, lord, ay husband, friend."

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"Which you _do_ weep for.--Feeling so the loss."

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"Villain and he be many miles asunder!
God pardon _him_! I do with all my heart."

I have placed a (!) at the end of the first line; for Juliet is evidently speaking here in the ambiguous manner of her subsequent speeches. She means an indicative, but wishes her mother to understand her in the optative mood. The editors of the last century, not understanding this, have without any authority changed 'be' to _are_. In the next line _him_ was added in the 2nd folio. I should be inclined to make an _Aside_ of 'I do with all my heart,' as she pretends to plan his death. In the Globe Shakespeare the first line is made an _Aside_.

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"My poor heart is so for a kinsman vex'd."

Both 4tos and folio--followed by all the editors--read 'Is my poor heart,' connecting it with the preceding 'dead.' It is manifest they did not understand the ambiguous language of Juliet.

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"To wreak the love I bore my cousin _Tybalt_."

The necessary addition was made in the 2nd folio.

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"When the sun sets the earth doth drizzle dew."

The undated 4to reads _air_, and to talk of the earth drizzling dew appears no doubt to be absurd; but expressions as incongruous occur in these plays, and we have in Lucrece "But as the _earth_ doth _weep_, the _sun being set_."

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"But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next."

I cannot conceive why the editors all read _settle_; for 'fettle,' _i.e._ prepare, make ready, is the reading of the 4tos and folio.

"But sells his team, and _fettleth_ to the war."
Hall, Sat. iv. 6.

"They to their long hard journey _fettling_ them."
Silvester, Maiden's Blush.

* * * * *

"God's bread! it makes me mad; day, night, hour, tide [time],
Work, play, alone, in company, still my care
Hath been to have her match'd, and having now provided
A gentleman of noble parentage."

So I arrange this passage, in accordance with the old editions, except the first 4to, the reading of which is different, and is not verse at all. I omit 'time' as injurious to the symmetry of the language; for the words in the first two lines run, as will be seen, pairwise. It may have been a marginal note explanatory of 'tide.' As to the last line but one being of six feet, three such have already occurred in this scene.

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"Oh! he's a lovely gentleman, _in sooth_."

* * * * *

"Or else beshrew them both.--Amen!--What to?"