A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad;
Where,-underneath the grove of sycamore,
That westward rooteth from the city's side,-
So early walking did I see your son:

Towards him I made; but he was 'ware of me,
And stole into the covert of the wood:

I, measuring his affections by my own,

That most are busied when they are most alone,— Pursu'd my humour, not pursuing his,

And gladly shunn'd who gladly fled from me.

Mon. Many a morning hath he there been seen, With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew, Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs : But all so soon as the all-cheering sun

Should in the furthest east begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora's bed,
Away from light steals home my heavy son,
And private in his chamber pens himself;
Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out,
And makes himself an artificial night:

Black and portentous must this humour prove,
Unless good counsel may the cause remove.

Ben. My noble uncle, do you know the cause?
Mon. I neither know it, nor can learn of him.
Ben. Have you impórtun'd him by any means?
Mon. Both by myself, and many other friends:
But he, his own affections' counsellor,
Is to himself-I will not say, how true-
But to himself so secret and so close,

So far from sounding and discovery,
As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun 1o.

12 The old copy reads:

12

'Or dedicate his beauty to the same.'

The emendation is by Theobald: who states, with great plausibility, that sunne might easily be mistaken for same.

Malone

Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow, We would as willingly give cure, as know.

Enter ROMEO, at a distance.

Ben. See, where he comes: So please you, step aside;

I'll know his grievance, or be much denied.

Mon. I would, thou wert so happy by thy stay, To hear true shrift.-Come, madam, let's away. [Exeunt MONTAGUE and Lady.

Ben. Good morrow, cousin.
Rom.

Ben. But new struck nine.

Rom.

Was that

Is the day so young?

Ah me! sad hours seem long.

my father that went hence so fast?

Ben. It was:-What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?

Rom. Not having that, which having makes them

short.

Ben. In love?

Rom. Out

Ben. Of love?

Rom. Out of her favour, where I am in love. Ben. Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!

Rom. Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still, Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will 13!

observes, that Shakspeare has evidently imitated the Rosamond of Daniel in the last act of this play, and in this passage may have remembered the following lines in one of the Sonnets of the same writer, who was then extremely popular :

'And whilst thou spread'st into the rising sunne
The fairest flower that ever saw the light,

Now joy thy time before thy sweet be done.'

These lines add great support to Theobald's emendation. There are few passages in the poet where so great an improvement of language is obtained by so slight a deviation from the text of the old copy.

13 i. e. should blindly and recklessly think he can surmount all obstacles to his will.

Where shall we dine?-O me!-What fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.

Here's much to do with hate, but more with love:

14!

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate 14
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Misshapen chaos of well seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!

This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?

Ben.

No, coz, I rather weep.

Rom. Good heart, at what?

Ben.

At thy good heart's oppression. Rom. Why, such is love's transgression.— Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast; Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest With more of thine: this love, that thou hast shown, Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.

14 Every ancient sonnetteer characterised Love by contrarieties. Watson begins one of his canzonets:

Love is a sowre delight, and sugred griefe,

A living death, and ever-dying life,' &c.

Turberville makes Reason harangue against it in the same

manner :

A fierie frost, a flame that frozen is with ise!

A heavie burden light to beare! A vertue fraught with
vice!' &c.

Immediately taken from the Romaunt of the Rose:-
Love it is an hateful pees,

A free aquitaunce without relees,

An heavie burthen light to beare,' &c.

This kind of antithesis was very much in the taste of the Provençal and Italian poets. Perhaps it might be hinted by the Ode of Sappho, preserved by Longinus: Petrarch is full of it:Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra;

E temo, e spero, e ardo, e son un ghiaccio;

E volo sopra'l ciel, e giaccio in terra;

E nulla stringo, e tutto'l mondo abbraccio,' &c.

This sonnet is translated by Sir Thomas Wyatt, under the title of Description of the Contrarious Passions in a Lover.'-Farmer.

Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs;
Being urg'd 15, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
Farewell, my coz.

Ben.

[Going.

Soft, I will go along; An if you leave me so, you do me wrong. Rom. Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here; This is not Romeo, he's some other where. Ben. Tell me in sadness whom she is you

16

Rom. What, shall I groan, and tell thee?
Ben.

But sadly tell me who.

love.

Groan? why, no;

-

Rom. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will:Ah, word ill urg'd to one that is so ill!

lov'd.

In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.
Ben. I aim'd so near, when I suppos'd you
Rom. A right good marksman! And she's fair

I love.

Ben. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit. Rom. Well, in that hit, you miss: she'll not be hit With Cupid's arrow, she hath Dian's wit; And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd 17, From love's weak childish bow she lives unharm❜d.

15 The old copy reads, ' Being purg'd a fire,' &c. The emendation I have admitted into the text was suggested by Dr. JohnTo urge the fire is to kindle or excite it. So in Chapman's version of the twenty-first Iliad :

son.

And as a cauldron, under put with store of fire,
Bavins of sere-wood urging it,' &c.

So Akenside in his Hymn to Cheerfulness:-
Haste, light the tapers, urge the fire,
And bid the joyless day retire.'

16 i. e. tell me gravely, in seriousness.

17 As this play was written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, these speeches of Romeo may be regarded as an oblique compliment to her majesty, who was not liable to be displeased at hearing her chastity praised after she was suspected to have lost

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 18. 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.

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.

'Tis the way

To call hers, exquisite, in question more 19 :
These happy masks 20, that kiss fair ladies' brows,

it, or her beauty commended in the sixty-seventh year of her age, though she never possessed any when young. Her declaration that she would continue unmarried increases the probability of the present supposition.'-Steevens.

18 The meaning appears to be, as Mason gives it, 'She is poor only, because she leaves no part of her store behind her, as with her all beauty will die :

For beauty starved with her severity

Cuts beauty off from all posterity.'

19 i. e. to call her exquisite beauty more into my mind, and make it more the subject of conversation. Question is used frequently with this sense by Shakspeare.

20 This is probably an allusion to the masks worn by the female spectators of the play; unless we suppose that these means no more than the. See vol. ii. p. 44, note 12:

Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder

Than beauty could displayed.'