Enter BALTHASAR. News from Verona!—How now, Balthasar? Bal. Then she is well, and nothing can be ill; Rom. Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!Thou know'st my lodging: get me ink and paper, And hire post-horses; I will hence to-night. Bal. Pardon me, sir, I will not leave you Your looks are pale and wild, and do import Some misadventure. Rom. Tush, thou art deceiv'd; Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do: Hast thou no letters to me from the friar? Bal. No, my good lord. thus: Rom. And hire those horses; I'll be with thee straight. No matter: get thee gone, [Exit BALTHASAR. Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. Let's see for means:-O, mischief! thou art swift And hereabouts he dwells,-whom late I noted 4 Shakspeare found Capel and Capulet used indiscriminately in the poem which was the groundwork of this tragedy. Sharp misery had worn him to the bones 5: Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, Ap. Enter Apothecary. Who calls so loud? Rom. Come hither, man.-I see, that thou art poor; Hold, there is forty ducats; let me have 5 See Sackville's description of misery in the Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates : 'His face was leane and some deal pinde away, And eke his hands consumed to the bones.' 6 We learn from Nashe's Have with You to Saffron Walden, 1596, that a stuffed aligator then made part of the furniture of an apothecary's shop: He made an anatomie of a rat, and after hanged her over his head, instead of an apothecary's crocodile or dried alligator.' Steevens was informed that formerly when an apothecary first engaged with his druggist, he was gratuitously furnished by him with these articles of show, which were then imported for that use only; and had met with the alligator, tortoise, &c. hanging up in the shop of an ancient apothecary at Limehouse, as well as in places more remote from the metropolis. See Hogarth's Marriage à la Mode, plate iii. It seems that the apothecaries dismissed their alligators, &c. sometime before the physicians parted with their amber-headed canes and solemn periwigs. ་ A dram of poison; such soon-speeding geer Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb. Ap. Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law Is death, to any he that utters them. Rom. Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness, The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law: 7 The quarto of 1597 reads: Upon thy back hangs ragged miserie, And starved famine dwelleth in thy cheeks.' The quartos of 1599 and 1609: Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes.' Otway exhibited the line as it is in the text in his Caius Marius, and the alteration is so slight that it well merits adoption. Ritson has justly observed that need and oppression could not properly be said to starve in the eyes of the Apothecary, though they may be supposed to be manifest in his haggard looks. To avoid the grammatical error Pope reads:- Need and oppression stare within thy eyes.' The later quartos and the folio read : 'Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back.' 8 Steevens thinks that Shakspeare may have remembered the following passage in The Pardonere's Tale of Chaucer, v. 12794: The Potecary answered, thou shalt have A thing, as wisly God my soule save, Rom. There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murders in this loathsome world, [Exeunt. SCENE II. Friar Laurence's Cell. Enter FRIAR JOHN. John. Holy Franciscan friar! brother, ho! Enter FRIAR LAURENCE. Lau. This same should be the voice of Friar Welcome from Mantua; What says Romeo? And finding him, the searchers of the town, Not but the mountance of a corne of whete, 1 Each friar had always a companion assigned him by the superior, when he asked leave to go out. In the Visitatio Notabilis de Seleborne, a curious record printed in White's Natural History of Selborne, Wykeham enjoins the canons not to go abroad without leave from the prior, who is ordered on such occasions to assign the brother a companion, ne suspicio sinistra vel scandalum oriatur.' There is a similar regulation in the Seal'd Lau. Who bare my letter then to Romeo? Lau. Unhappy fortune! by my brotherhood, May do much danger: Friar John, go hence; Unto my cell. John. Brother, I'll go and bring it thee. [Exit. And keep her at my cell till Romeo come: [Exit. statutes of Trinity College, Cambridge. So in The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet, 1562:- And, for because in Italy it is a wonted guise That friars in the town should seldom walk alone, But of their convent aye should be accompanied with one Of his profession, straight a house he findeth out, In mind to take some friar with him to walk the town about.' Shakspeare, having occasion for Friar John, has departed from the poem, and supposed the pestilence to rage at Verona instead of Mantua. 2 i. e. was not wantonly written on a trivial or idle matter, but on a subject of importance. See Act iii. Sc. 1, note 1. 3 Instead of this line and the concluding part of the speech, the first quarto reads only: Lest that the lady should before I come Be wak'd from sleep, I will hye To free her from that tomb of miserie.' |