writing the passage instead of the period of Juliet's being weaned :-" Then she could stand alone." But, according to the Nurse's chronology, Juliet had not arrived at that epoch in the lives of children till she was three years old. The very contradiction shows that Shakspere had another object in view than that of making the Nurse's chronology tally with the age of her nursling. Had he written

"'Tis since the earthquake now just thirteen years,"

we should not have been so ready to believe that Romeo and Juliet was written in 1593; but as he has written

"'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years,"

in defiance of a very obvious calculation on the part of the Nurse, we have no doubt that he wrote the passage eleven years after the earthquake of 1580, and that the passage being also meant to fix the attention of an audience, the play was produced, as well as written, in 1591.

Reasoning such as this would, we acknowledge, be very weak if it were unsupported by evidence deduced from the general character of the performance, with reference to the maturity of the author's powers. But, taken in connexion with that evidence, it becomes important. Now, we have no hesitation in believing, although it would be exceedingly difficult to communicate the grounds of our belief fully to our readers, that the alterations made by Shakspere upon his first copy of Romeo and Juliet, as printed in 1597 (which alterations are shown in his second copy as printed in 1599), exhibit differences as to the quality of his mind-differences in judgment-differences in the cast of thought -differences in poetical power-which cannot be accounted for by the growth of his mind during two years only. If the first Romeo and Juliet were produced in 1591, and the second in 1599, we have an interval of eight years, in which some of his most finished works had been given to the world. During this period his richness, as well as his sweetness, had been developed; and it is this development which is so remarkable in the superadded passages in Romeo and Juliet. We almost fancy that the "Queen Mab" speech will of itself furnish an example of what we mean.

"Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,

Made by the joiner Squirrel, or old Grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers."

These lines are not in the first copy; but how beautifully they fit in after the description of the spokes-the cover—the traces—the collars-the whip-and the waggoner; while, in their peculiarly rich and picturesque effect, they stand out before all the rest of the passage. Then, the "I have seen the day*** 't is gone, 't is gone, 't is gone," of old Capulet, seems to speak more of the middleaged than of the youthful poet, of whom all the passages by which it is surrounded are characteristic. Again, the lines in the friar's soliloquy, beginning

"The earth, that 's nature's mother, is her tomb,"

look like the work of one who had been reading and thinking more deeply of nature's mysteries than in his first delineation of the benevolent philosophy of this good old man. But, as we advance in the play, the development of the writer's powers is more and more displayed in his additions. The examples are far too numerous for us to particularize many of them. The critical reader may trace what has been added by our foot-notes. We would especially direct attention to the soliloquy of Juliet in the fifth Scene of Act II.;-to her soliloquy, also, in the second Scene of Act III.;-and to her great soliloquy, before taking the draught, in the fourth Act. We have given this last passage as it stood in the original copy; and we confidently believe that whoever peruses it with attention will entertain little doubt that the original sketch was the work of a much younger man than the perfect composition which we now possess. The whole of the magnificent speech of Romeo in the tomb may be said to be re-written: and it produces in us precisely the same impression, that it was the work of a genius much more mature than that which is exhibited in the 'original copy.

Tieck, who, as a translator of Shakspere, and as a profound and beautiful critic, has done very much for cultivating the knowledge, built upon love, which the Germans possess of our poet, has not

been trammelled by Malone and Chalmers, but has placed Romeo and Juliet amongst Shakspere's early plays. We have no exact statements on this subject by Tieck; but, in a very delightful imaginary scene between Marlowe and Greene, he has made Marlowe describe to his brother dramatist the first performance of Romeo and Juliet to which he had been witness.* Tieck has made this imaginary conversation a vehicle for the most enthusiastic praise of this play. Marlowe describes the performance as taking place at the palace of the Lord Hunsdon He had expected, he says, that one of his own plays would have been performed; but he found that it was "that old poem, which we have all long known, worked up into a tragedy." After Marlowe has run through the general characteristics of the play, with an eloquent admiration, mingled with deep regret that he himself had been able to approach so distantly the excellence of that "out-sounding mouth, which a god-like muse has herself inspired with the sweetest of her kisses," he thus replies to Greene's inquiry as to who was the poet :-"Wilt thou believe?—one of Henslowe's common comedians, who has already served him many years on very low wages." "And now, if thy fever has passed," said Greene, "let us look on this thing in the broad light. This is merely such a passing apparition as we have seen many of before-admired, gaped at, praised without limit,—but full of faults and imperfections, and soon to be altogether forgotten." "The same thing," said Marlowe, "the same words were whispered to me by my base envy, when I observed the universal delight, the deep emotion, of every spectator. I endeavoured to comfort myself therewith, and again to recover my lost honours in this miserable manner. I fled from the company; and the house-steward, who had acted as an assistant, gave me the manuscript of the play. In my lonely chamber I sat and read the whole night, and read again,—and each time admired the more; for much that had appeared to me episodical or superfluous, acquired, on more exact examination, a significancy and needful fulness. The good house-steward gave me also another poem, which the author has not yet quite completed, Venus and Adonis, that I might read it in my nightly leisure. My friend, even here, even in this sweet narrative,—even in this soft speech and voluptuous imagery,—in this intoxicating realm, where I, till now, only looked upon likenesses of myself, I am completely, completely, beaten. O this man, this more than mortal, to him (I feel as if my life depends on it) I must become the most intimate friend or the most bitter enemy. Either I will yet find my way to him, or I will succumb to this Apollo, and he may then speak over my outstretched corpse the last words of praise or blame." Tieck has thus decidedly placed the date of its performance before 1592,-for Greene died in that year, and Marlowe in the year following. The Venus and Adonis, which is here mentioned as not quite completed, was published in 1593. Tieck built his opinion, no doubt, upon internal evidence; and upon this evidence we must be content to let the question rest.

SUPPOSED SOURCE OF THE PLOT.

When Dante reproaches the Emperor Albert for neglect of Italy,—

Thy sire and thou have suffer'd thus,
Through greediness of yonder realms detain'd,
The garden of the empire to run waste,"—

He adds,

"Come, see the Capulets and Montagues,

The Filippeschi and Monaldi, man

Who car'st for nought! those sunk in grief, and these
With dire suspicion rack'd."+

The Capulets and Montagues were amongst the fierce spirits who, according to the poet, had rendered Italy

savage and unmanageable." The Emperor Albert was murdered in 1308; and

• Dichterleben, von Tieck. Berlin, 1828, p. 128, &c.

+ Purgatory, Canto 6. Cary's translation.

the Veronese, who believe the story of Romeo and Juliet to be historically true, fix the date of this tragedy as 1303. At that period the Scalas, or Scaligers, ruled over Verona.

If the records of history tell us little of the fair Capulet and her loved Montague, whom Shakspere has made immortal, the novelists have seized upon the subject, as might be expected, from its interest and its obscurity. Massuccio, a Neapolitan, who lived about 1470, was, it is supposed, the writer who first gave a somewhat similar story the clothing of a connected fiction. He places the scene at Sienna, and, of course, there is no mention of the Montagues and Capulets. The story, too, of Massuccio varies in its catastrophe; the bride recovering from her lethargy, produced by the same means as in the case of Juliet; and the husband being executed for a murder which had caused him to flee from his country. Mr. Douce has endeavoured to trace back the groundwork of the tale to a Greek romance by Xenophon Ephesius. Luigi da Porto, of Vicenza, gave a connected form to the legend of Romeo and Juliet, in a novel, under the title of "La Giulietta," which was published after his death in 1535. Luigi, in an epistle which is prefixed to this work, states that the story was told him by "an archer of mine, whose name was Peregrino, a man about fifty years old, well practised in the military art, a pleasant companion, and, like almost all his countrymen of Verona, a great talker." Bandello, in 1554, published a novel on the same subject, the ninth of his second collection. It begins "when the Scaligers were lords of Verona," and goes on to say that these events happened "under Bartholomew Scaliger" (Bartolomeo della Scala). The various materials to be found in these sources were embodied in a French novel by Pierre Boisteau, a translation of which was published by Painter in his Palace of Pleasure, in 1567; and upon this French story was founded the English poem by Arthur Brooke, published in 1562, under the title of "The tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, written first in Italian by Bandell, and nowe in Englishe by Ar. Br." It appears highly probable that an English play upon the same subject had appeared previous to Brooke's poem; for a copy of that poem, which was in the possession of the Rev. H. White, of Lichfield, contains the following passage, in an address to the reader:-" Though I saw the same argument lately set forth on the stage with more commendation than I can look for being there much better set foorth than I have or can dooe, yet the same matter, penned as it is, may serve to lyke good effect, if the readers do brynge with them lyke good myndes, to consider it, which hath the more incouraged me to publish it, suche as it is." We thus see that Shakspere had materials enough to work upon. But, in addition to these sources, there is a play by Lope de Vega in which the incidents are very similar; and an Italian tragedy also by Luigi Groto which Mr. Walker, in his historical memoir of Italian tragedy, thinks that the English bard read with profit. Mr. Walker gives us passages in support of his assertion, such as a description of a nightingale when the lovers are parting, which appear to confirm this opinion.

To attempt to show, as many have attempted, what Shakspere took from the poem of the Romeus and Juliet, and what from Painter's Palace of Pleasure-how he was 66 wretchedly misled in his catastrophe," as Mr. Dunlop has it, because he had not read Luigi da Porto-and how he invented only one incident throughout the play, that of the death of Paris, and created only one character, that of Mercutio, according to the sagacious Mrs. Lenox-appears to us somewhat idle work.

PERIOD OF THE ACTION, AND Manners.

THE slight foundation of historical truth which can be established in the legend of Romeo and Juliet-that of the "civil broils" of the two rival houses of Verona-would place the period of the action about the time of Dante. But this one circumstance ought not, as it appears to us, very strictly to limit this period. The legend is so obscure, that we may be justified in carrying its date forward or backward, to the extent even of a century, if anything may be gained by such a freedom. In this case, we may venture to associate the story with the period which followed the times of Petrarch and Boccaccio-verging towards the close of the fourteenth century-a period full of rich associations. Then, the literary treasures of the ancient world had been rescued out of the dust

and darkness of ages,-the language of Italy had been formed, in great part, by the marvellous "Visions" of her greatest poet; painting had been revived by Giotto and Cimabue; architecture had put on a character of beauty and majesty, and the first necessities of shelter and defence had been associated with the higher demands of comfort and taste; sculpture had displayed itself in many beautiful productions, both in marble and bronze; and music had been cultivated as a science. All these were the growth of the freedom which prevailed in the Italian republics, and of the wealth which had been acquired by commercial enterprise, under the impulses of freedom. To date the period of the action of Romeo and Juliet before this revival of learning and the arts, would be to make its accessories out of harmony with the exceeding beauty of Shakspere's drama. Even if a slight portion of historical accuracy be sacrificed, his poetry must be surrounded with an appropriate atmosphere of grace and richness.

Of the Manners of this play we have occasionally spoken in our Illustrations. With the exception of a few English allusions, which are introduced for a particular object, they are thoroughly Italian. Mrs. Jameson has noticed the "sunny brilliance of effect" with which the whole of this drama is lighted up; and she adds, with equal truth and elegance, "the blue sky of Italy bends over all."

COSTUME.

ASSUMING, as we have done, that the incidents of this tragedy took place (at least traditionally) at the commencement of the fourteenth century, the costume of the personages represented would be that exhibited to us in the paintings of Giotto and his pupils or contemporaries.

From a drawing of the former, now in the British Museum (Payne Knight's Collect.), and presumed to have been executed by him at Avignon, in 1315, we give the accompanying engraving, and our readers will perceive that it interferes sadly with all popular notions of the dress of this play.

The long robes of the male personages, so magisterial or senatorial in their appearance, would, perhaps, when composed of rich materials, be not unsuitable to the gravity and station of the elder Montague and Capulet, and of the Prince, or Podesta, of Verona himself: but, for the younger and lighter characters, the love-lorn Romeo, the fiery Tybalt, the gallant gay Mercutio, &c., some very different habit would be expected by the million, and, indeed, desired by the artist. Cæsar Vecellio, in his "Habiti Antichi e Moderni," presents us with a dress of this time, which he distinctly describes as that of a young nobleman on a love-making expedition.

He assigns no particular date to it, but the pointed cowl, or hood, depending from the shoulders, the closely-set buttons down the front of the super-tunic, and up the arms of the under-garment, from the wrist to the elbow, with the peculiar lappet to the sleeve of the super-tunic, are all distinctive marks of the European costume of the early part of the fourteenth century, and to be found in any illuminated French or English MS. of the time of our Edward II., 1307-27, and still earlier, of course, in Italy, from whence the fashions travelled northward, through Paris to London. The coverings for the head were, at this time, besides the capuchon, or cowl here seen, caps and hats of various fantastic shapes, and the chaperon, or turban-shaped hood, began to make its appearance (vide second male figure in the engraving after Giotto). No plumes, however, adorned them till near the close of the century, when a single feather, generally ostrich, appears placed upright in front of the cap, or chaperon. The hose were richly fretted and embroidered with gold, and the toes of the shoes long and pointed.

The female costume of the same period consisted of a robe, or super-tunic, flowing in graceful folds to the feet, coming high up in the neck, where it was sometimes met by the wimple, or gorget, of white linen, giving a nun-like appearance to the wearer; the sleeves terminating at the elbow, in short lappets, like those of the men, and showing the sleeve of the under-garment (the kirtle, which fitted the body tightly), buttoned from the wrist to the elbow also, as in the male costume. The hair was gathered up into a sort of club behind, braided in front, and covered, wholly or partially, with a caul of golden net-work. Garlands of flowers, natural, or imitated in goldsmiths' work, and plain filets of gold, or even ribbon, were worn by very young females. We shall say no more respecting the costume of this play, as the introduction of such a masquerade as is indispensable to the plot would be inconsistent with the dressing of the other characters correctly. Artists of every description are, in our opinion, perfectly justified in clothing the dramatis person of this ragedy in the habits of the time in which it was written, by which means all serious anachronisins would be avoided.