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THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET

THE First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet appeared in 1597, printed, it is inferred from internal evidence, from copy made up on the basis of a shorthand writer's imperfect report taken at the theatre. The title-page of this edition states that "it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon his servants." This proves it to have been on the stage between July, 1596, and April, 1597, the months during which the "Lord Hunsdon's servants" were so named. Further evidence of date is purely internal, the most definite being the Nurse's reference to the earthquake of eleven years before (1. iii. 23, 35). If, as is often assumed, this refers to the earthquake of 1580, it places the play in its first form as early as 1591; but the ground of the inference is very weak. The frequency of rime, especially alternate, the lyrical quality of the poetry, and the abundance of verbal quibbling, also point to an early date; but in the absence of any external evidence, or of an authentic copy of the play in its first form, no certain statement can be made as to exact date.

The Second Quarto, published in 1599, claims to be "newly corrected, augmented, and amended," and a comparison of this text with that of the First Quarto confirms this, indicating that the play was subjected to revision and enlargement by Shakespeare about 1597-98, though not all the additional passages in the Second Quarto are due to the revision. The Third Quarto (1609) was printed from the Second, the Fourth (undated) from the Third, and the Fifth (1637) from the Fourth. The First Folio text follows the Third Quarto, so that the Second Quarto is the chief authority, and forms the basis of the present edition.

The device of escaping from an unwelcome marriage by means of a sleeping potion is found as early as the medieval Greek romance of Abrocomas and Anthia by Xenophon of Ephesus. Massuccio (1476) tells a tale having many points of similarity to the present tragedy; but the earliest known version which is an undoubted direct ancestor of Shakespeare's plot is the history of Romeo and Giulietta narrated by Luigi da Porto, and published in Venice about 1530. The progress of the story towards the Shakespearean form continues through a version in Bandello's Novelle (1554), Boisteau's translation of the same (1559), the English poem of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke (1562), and Painter's translation of Boisteau in his Palace of Pleasure (1567). In Brooke's address "To the Reader" he states that he " saw the same argument lately set forth on stage; " but no copy of the play alluded to is known to have survived in English. About 1630, however, Jacob Struijs wrote a Romeo and Juliette in Dutch hexameters; and an attempt has been made to prove that this drama is an adaptation of a lost play used by Shakespeare as a basis, and perhaps that to which Brooke refers.

The main lines of the dramatic action and of the chief characters were thus already laid down before Shakespeare worked on the story; and he borrowed also a large amount of detail, especially from the version by Brooke. The episode of the Apothecary and the order of events in the catastrophe go back to Boisteau, but to this last Shakespeare himself added the death of Paris at Juliet's tomb. The Nurse as a great comic figure is first developed by Brooke. The death of Mercutio is due to the old dramatist, but the elaboration of his character and his wit are Shakespeare's, as are also the reducing of Juliet's age from sixteen to fourteen and the opening of the action with the conflict of the factions. The genius of Shakespeare is more pervasive in the extraordinarily intense quality of the great lyric speeches, and in the representation of the growth and enriching of the lovers in passion and character.

The story was dramatized, before Shakespeare, in Italy, Spain, and France, as well as in England; and many collateral versions in narrative form exist. Shakespeare's tragedy was produced in a corrupt German version in the seventeenth century; and it has been adapted and translated by many hands and in many countries. In Shakespeare's own time the story passed from legend into "history," and the events were stated to have actually occurred in Verona in the first years of the fourteenth century.

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Citizens of Verona; several Men and Women, kinsfolk to both houses; Maskers, Guards, Watchmen, and

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Enter PRINCE, with his train.

Prin. Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel,Will they not hear? - What, ho! you men, you beasts,

That quench the fire of your pernicious rage
With purple fountains issuing from your veins,
On pain of torture, from those bloody hands
Throw your mistemper'd weapons to the
ground,

And hear the sentence of your moved prince. #
Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word,
By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,

Have thrice disturb'd the quiet of our streets,
And made Verona's ancient citizens

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Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments,
To wield old partisans, in hands as old,
Cank'red with peace, to part your cank'red
hate;

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If ever you disturb our streets again
Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.
For this time, all the rest depart away.
You, Capulet, shall go along with me;
And, Montague, come you this afternoon,
To know our farther pleasure in this case,
To old Free-town, our common judgement-
place.
Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.
[Exeunt [all but Montague, Lady
Montague, and Benvolio].
Mon. Who set this ancient quarrel new
abroach?

Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?
Ben. Here were the servants of your adver-

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220

She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.
O, she is rich in beauty, only poor
That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store.
Ben. Then she hath sworn that she will still
live chaste?

Rom. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste;

For beauty starv'd with her severity
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,
To merit bliss by making me despair.
She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
Do I live dead that live to tell it now.

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230

Ben. Be rul'd by me, forget to think of her. Rom. O, teach me how I should forget to think.

Ben. By giving liberty unto thine eyes; Examine other beauties.

Rom.

"T is the way

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To call hers, exquisite, in question more.
These happy masks that kiss fair ladies' brows

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hath here writ. I must to the learned. - In good time.

Enter BENVOLIO and ROMEO.

Ben. Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning,

One pain is less'ned by another's anguish ; Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; One desperate grief cures with another's lan guish.

Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.
Rom. Your plaintain-leaf is excellent for
that.

Ben. For what, I pray thee?
Rom.
For your broken shin.
Ben. Why, Romeo, art thou mad?
Rom. Not mad, but bound more than a mad-
man is;

Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
Whipp'd and tormented and -God-den, good

fellow.

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Rom. Ay, if I know the letters and the language.

Serv. Ye say honestly. Rest you merry!
Rom. Stay, fellow; I can read.

(Reads.) Signior Martino and his wife and daughters; County Anselme and his beauteous sisters; the lady widow of Vitruvio; Signior Placentio and his lovely nieces; Mercutio and his brother Valentine; mine uncle Capulet, his wife, and daughters; my fair niece Rosaline; Livia; Signior Valentio and his cousin Tybalt; Lucio and the lively Helena."

A fair assembly: whither should they come? Serv. Up.

Rom. Whither?

Serv. To supper; to our house. Rom. Whose house?

Serv. My master's.

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Rom. Indeed, I should have ask'd you that before.

Serv. Now I'll tell you without asking. My master is the great rich Capulet; and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray, come and crush a cup of wine. Rest you merry!

(Exit.

Ben. At this same ancient feast of Capulet's Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so loves, With all the admired beauties of Verona. Go thither; and, with unattainted eye, Compare her face with some that I shall show, And I will make thee think thy swan a crow. Rom. When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to

fires;

And these, who, often drown'd, could never die,

Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars! One fairer than my love! The all-seeing sun Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.

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