Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me, of this direful murder;
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned and myself excus'd.

PRINCE. Then say at once what thou dost know in this.

FRI. I will be brief 5, for my short date of breath Is not so long as is a tedious tale.

Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet ;
And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife :
I married them; and their stolen marriage-day
Was Tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely death
Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from this city;
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin'd.
You-to remove that siege of grief from her,-
Betroth'd, and would have married her perforce,
To county Paris :-Then comes she to me ;
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some means
To rid her from this second marriage,

Or, in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her

The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.

5 I will be brief,] It is much to be lamented, that the poet did not conclude the dialogue with the action, and avoid a narrative of events which the audience already knew. JOHNSON.

Shakspeare was led into this uninteresting narrative by following too closely The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet. MALONE.

In this poem (which is subjoined to the present edition of the play) the bodies of the dead are removed to a publick scaffold, and from that elevation is the Friar's narrative delivered. The same circumstance, as I have already observed, is introduced in Hamlet, near the conclusion. STEEVENS.

But he which bore my letter, friar John,
Was staid by accident; and yesternight
Return'd my letter back: Then all alone,
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But, when I came, (some minute ere the time
Of her awakening,) here untimely lay
The noble Paris, and true Romeo, dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
And bear this work of heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But (as it seems,) did violence on herself.
All this I know; and to the marriage
Her nurse is privy: And, if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrific'd, some hour before his time,
Unto the rigour of severest law.

PRINCE. We still have known thee for a holy

man.

Where's Romeo's man? what can he say in this?
BAL. I brought my master news of Juliet's death;
And then in post he came from Mantua,
To this same place, to this same monument.
This letter he early bid me give his father;
And threaten'd me with death, going in the vault,
If I departed not, and left him there.

PRINCE. Give me the letter, I will look on it.-
Where is the county's page, that rais'd the watch?—
Sirrah, what made your master in this place?
PAGE. He came with flowers to strew his lady's

grave;

And bid me stand aloof, and so I did:

Anon, comes one with light to ope the tomb ;
And, by and by, my master drew on him;

And then I ran away to call the watch.

PRINCE. This letter doth make good the friar's words,

Their course of love, the tidings of her death:
And here he writes-that he did buy a poison
Of a poor 'pothecary, and therewithal

Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.-
Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!-
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!
And I, for winking at your discords too,
Have lost a brace of kinsmen 7:-all are punish'd.
CAP. O, brother Montague, give me thy hand :
This is my daughter's jointure, for no more
Can I demand.

MON.

But I can give thee more:
For I will raise her statue in pure gold;
That, while Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at such rate be set,
As that of true and faithful Juliet.

CAP. As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie;
Poor sacrifices of our enmity!

8

PRINCE. A glooming peace this morning with it

brings;

7 Have lost a brace of kinsmen :] Mercutio and Paris: Mercutio is expressly called the prince's kinsman in Act III. Sc. IV. and that Paris also was the prince's kinsman, may be inferred from the following passages. Capulet, speaking of the count in the fourth Act, describes him as " a gentleman of princely parentage," and after he is killed, Romeo says:

"Mercutio's kinsman, noble county Paris." MALONE. "A brace of kinsmen." The sportsman's term-brace, which on the present occasion is seriously employed, is in general applied to men in contempt. Thus, Prospero in The Tempest, addressing himself to Sebastian and Antonio, says :-

"But you, my brace of lords, were I so minded,

"I here," &c.- STEEVENS.

* A GLOOMING peace, &c.] The modern editions read-gloomy;

The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished":

but glooming, which is an old reading, may be the true one. So, in The Spanish Tragedy, 1603:

"Through dreadful shades of ever-glooming night." To gloom is an ancient verb used by Spenser; and I meet with it likewise in the play of Tom Tyler and his Wife, 1661 :

"If either he gaspeth or gloometh." STEEVENS. Gloomy is the reading of the old copy in 1597; for which glooming was substituted in that of 1599. MALONE.

9 Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:] This seems to be not a resolution in the prince, but a reflection on the various dispensations of Providence; for who was there that could justly be punished by any human law? EDWARDS'S MSS.

This line has reference to the novel from which the fable is taken. Here we read that Juliet's female attendant was banished for concealing the marriage; Romeo's servant set at liberty because he had only acted in obedience to his master's orders; the apothecary taken, tortured, condemned, and hanged; while friar Laurence was permitted to retire to a hermitage in the neighbourhood of Verona, where he ended his life in penitence and tranquillity. STEEVENS.

The same particulars are found in the old poem :

66 The wyser sort, to counsell called by Escalus,

Here geven advice, and Escalus sagely decreeth thus:

"The nurse of Juliet is banisht in her age,

"Because that from the parentes she dyd hyde the mariage, "Which might have wrought much good had it in time been

knowne,

"Where now by her concealing it a mischeefe great is growne; "And Peter, for he dyd obey his masters hest,

"In woonted freedome had good leave to lead his lyfe in rest:

Thapothecary high is hanged by the throte,

And, for the paynes he tooke with him, the hangman had his cote. "But now what shall betyde of this gray-bearded syre,

*" Of fryer Laurence thus araynde, that good barefooted fryre?

"Because that many time he woorthily did serve

"The common welth, and in his lyfe was never found to swerve, "He was discharged quyte, and no mark of defame

"Did seem to blot or touch at all the honour of his name.

"But of himselfe he went into an hermitage,

"Two miles from Veron towne, where he in prayers past forth

his age;

For never was a story of more woe,
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo 1.

66

[Exeunt 2.

"Till that from earth to heaven his heavenly sprite did flye: 'Fyve years he lived an hermite, and an hermite dyd he dye." BOSWELL.

I

Juliet and her Romeo.] Shakspeare has not effected the alteration of this play by introducing any new incidents, but merely by adding to the length of the scenes.

The piece appears to have been always a very popular onę. Marston, in his Satires, 1598, says:

"Luscus, what's play'd to-day?-faith, now I know

"I set thy lips abroach, from whence doth flow

66

Nought but

pure Juliet and Romeo." STEEVENS.

"For never was a story of more woe,

"Than this of Juliet and her Romeo." These lines seem to have been formed on the concluding couplet of the poem of Romeus and Juliet:

66

among the monuments that in Verona been, "There is no monument more worthy of the sight, "Then is the tombe of Juliet and Romeus her knight." MALONE.

2 Exeunt.] This play is one of the most pleasing of our author's performances. The scenes are busy and various, the incidents numerous and important, the catastrophe irresistibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires.

Here is one of the few attempts of Shakspeare to exhibit the conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of juvenile elegance. Mr. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakspeare, that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third Act, lest he should have been killed by him. Yet he thinks him no such formidable person, but that he might have lived through the play, and died in his bed, without danger to the poet. Dryden well knew, had he been in quest of truth, in a pointed sentence, that more regard is commonly had to the words than the thought, and that it is very seldom to be rigorously understood. Mercutio's wit, gaiety, and courage, will always procure him friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated, he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakspeare to have continued his existence, though some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime.