free from them, and suspects not but that beneath her petulant, vulgar loquacity she has a vein of womanly honour and sensibility. For she has, in her way, a real affection for Juliet; whatsoever would give pleasure to herself, that she will do any thing to compass for her young mistress; and, until love and marriage become the question, there has never been any thing to disclose the essential oppugnancy of their natures. When, however, in her noble agony, Juliet appeals to the Nurse for counsel, and is met with the advice to marry Paris, she sees at once what her soul is made of; that her former praises of Romeo were but the offspring of a sensual pruriency easing itself with talk; that in her long life she has gained only that sort of experience which works the debasement of its possessor; and that she knows less than nothing of love and marriage, because she has worn their prerogatives without any feeling of their sacredness. Mercutio is one of the instances which strikingly show the excess of Shakespeare's powers above his performances. Though giving us more than any other man, he still seems to have given but a small part of himself; for we see not but he could have gone on indefinitely revelling in the same "exquisite ebullience and overflow" of life and wit which he has started in Mercutio. As seeking rather to instruct us with character than to entertain us with talk, he lets off just enough of the latter to disclose the former, and then stops, leaving the impression of an inexhaustible abun dance withheld to give scope for something better. From the na ture of the subject, he had to leave unsatisfied the desire which in Mercutio is excited. Delightful as Mercutio is, the Poet valued and makes us value his room more than his company. It has been said that he was obliged to kill Mercutio, lest Mercutio should kill him. And certainly it is not easy to see how he could have kept Mercutio and Tybalt in the play without spoiling it, nor how he could have kept them out of it without killing them for, so long as they live, they seem bound to have a chief hand in whatsoever is going on about them; and they cannot well have a hand in any thing without turuing it, the one into a comedy, the other into a butchery. The Poet, however, so manages them and their fate as to aid rather than interrupt the proper interest of the piece; the impression of their death, strong as it is, being overcome by the sympathy awakened in us with the living. Mercutio is a perfect embodiment of animal spirits acting in and through the brain. So long as the life is in him his blood must dance, and so long as the blood dances the brain and tongue must play. His veins seem filled with sparkling champagne. Always revelling in the conscious fulness of his resources, he pours out and pours out, heedless whether he speaks sense or nonsense nay, his very stumblings seem designed as triumphs of agility; be studies, apparently, for failures, as giving occasion for further trials, and thus serving at once to provoke his skill and to set it , off. Full of the most companionable qualities, he often talks loosely indeed, but not profanely; and even in his loosest talk there is a subtilty and refinement both of nature and of breeding, that mark him for the prince of good fellows. Nothing could more finely evince the essential frolicsomeness of his composition, than that, with his ruling passion strong in death, he should play the wag in the face of his grim enemy, as if to live and to jest were the same thing with him. Of Mercutio's wit it were vain to attempt an analysis. From a fancy as quick and aerial as the Aurora Borealis, the most unique and graceful combinations come forth with almost inconceivable facility and felicity. If wit consists in a peculiar briskness, airiness, and apprehensiveness of spirit, catching, as by instinct, the most remote and delicate affinities, and putting things together most unexpectedly and at the same time most appropriately, it can hardly be denied that Mercutio is the prince of wits, as well as of good fellows. We have always felt a special comfort in the part of Friar Lau rence. How finely his tranquillity contrasts with the surrounding agitation! And how natural it seems that he should draw lessons of tranquillity from that very agitation! Calm, thoughtful, benevolent, withdrawing from the world, that he may benefit society the more for being out of it, his presence and counsel in the play are as oil poured, yet poured in vain, on troubled waters. Sympathising quietly yet deeply with the very feelings in others which in the stillness of thought he has subdued in himself, the storms that waste society only kindle in him the sentiments that raise him above them; while his voice, issuing from the heart of humanity, speaks peace, but cannot give it, to the passions that are raging around him. acter. 66 Schlegel has remarked with his usual discernment on the skill with which the Poet manages to alleviate the miracle of the sleeping-potion; and how, by throwing an air of mysterious wisdom round the Friar, he renders us the more apt to believe strange things concerning him; representing him as so conjunctive and private with nature, that incredulity touching what he does is in a great measure forestalled by impressions of reverence for his charHow," says he, "does the Poet dispose us to believe that Father Laurence possesses such a secret? He exhibits him at first in a garden, collecting herbs, and descanting on their wonderful virtues. The discourse of the pious old man is full of deep meaning he sees everywhere in nature emblems of the moral world; the same wisdom with which he looks through her has also made him master of the human heart. In this way, what would else have an ungrateful appearance, becomes the source of a great beauty." Much fault has been found with the winding-up of this play, that it does not stop with the death of Juliet. Looking merely to the ases of the stage, it might indeed be better so; but Shakespeare wrote for humanity as well as, yea, rather than, for the stage. And as the evil fate of the lovers springs from the bitter feud of their houses and from a general stifling of nature under a hard crust of artificial manners, he wisely represents it as reacting upon and removing the cause. We are thus given to see and feel that they have not suffered in vain; and the heart has something to mitigate and humanise its over-pressure of grief. The absorbing, devouring selfishness of society generates the fiercest rancour between its leading families, and that rancour issues in the death of the very members through whom they had thought most to advance their rival pretensions; earth's best and noblest creatures are snatched away, because, by reason of their virtue, they can best afford to die, and because, for the same reason, their death will be most bitterly deplored. The good old Friar indeed thought that by the marriage of the lovers the rancour of their houses would be healed. But a Wiser than he knew that the deepest touch of sorrow was required to awe and melt their proud, selfish hearts; that nothing short of the most afflicting bereavement, together with the feeling that themselves had both caused it and deserved it, could teach them rightly to "prize the breath they share with human kind," and remand them to the impassioned attachments of nature. Accordingly, the hatred that seemed immortal is buried in the tomb of the faithful lovers; families are reconciled, society renovated, by the storm that has passed upon them; the tyranny of selfish custom is rebuked and broken up by the insurrection of nature which itself has provoked; tears flow, hearts are softened hands joined, truth, tenderness, and piety inspired, by the noble example of devotion and self-sacrifice which stands before them. Such is the sad but wholesome lesson to be gathered from the heart-reuding story of "Juliet and her Romeo." PERSONS REPRESENTED. ESCALUS, Prince of Verona. PARIS, a young Nobleman, his Kinsman. MONTAGUE, CAPULET, Heads of two hostile Houses. An old Man, Uncle to Capulet. GREGORY, Servants to Capulet. PETER, another Servant to Capulet. An Apothecary. Three Musicians. Friends to Romeo Chorus. A Boy, Page to Paris. An Ofhcer. LADY MONTAGUE, Wife to Montague. LADY CAPULET, Wife to Capulet. JULIET, Daughter to Capulet. Nurse to Juliet. Citizens of Verona; male and female Relations to both Houses; Maskers, Guards, Watchmen, and Attendants. SCENE, during the greater Part of the Play, in Verona ; once, in the fifth Act, at Mantua. THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET. PROLOGUE.' Chorus. Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows Do, with their death, bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could re move, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, 1 This Prologue is in all the quartos, though with considerable variations in that of 1597. It was omitted in the folio, for reasons unknown. The old copies represent it as spoken by Chorus ; which means, no doubt, that it fell to the same performer as the Chorus at the end of Act i. H. |