SCENE III. Friar Laurence's Cell.

Enter FRIAR LAURENCE, with a Basket.

Fri. The gray-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning

night',

Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light; And flecked 2 darkness like a drunkard reels

From forth day's path-way, made by Titan's wheels 3:

Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry,
I must fill up this osier cage of ours,

With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers,

In the folio and the three later quartos these four lines are printed twice over, and given once to Romeo and once to the Friar.

2 Flecked is spotted, dappled, streaked, or variegated. Lord Surrey uses the word in his translation of the fourth Æneid :'Her quivering cheekes flecked with deadly stain.'

So in the old play of The Four Prentices :

'We'll fleck our white steeds in your Christian blood.'

3 This is the reading of the second folio. The quarto of 1597 reads:

'From forth day's path and Titan's firy wheels.' The quarto of 1599 and the folio have burning wheels.'

4 So Drayton, in the eighteenth Song of his Polyolbion, speaking of a hermit:

'His happy time he spends the works of God to see, In those so sundry herbs which there in plenty grow, Whose sundry strange effects he only seeks to know. And in a little maund, being made of oziers small, Which serveth him to do full many a thing withal, He very choicely sorts his simples got abroad.' Shakspeare has very artificially prepared us for the part Friar Lawrence is afterwards to sustain. Having thus early discovered him to be a chemist, we are not surprised when we find him furnishing the draught which produces the catastrophe of the piece. The passage was, however, suggested by Arthur Brooke's poem.

The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb 5;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb:
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find;
Many for many virtues excellent,

None but for some, and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace", that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities :
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometime's by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence, and med'cine power:
For this, being smelt, with that part7 cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed foes encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace, and rude will;

56

8

Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum.'

Lucretius.

The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave.' Milton,
Time's the king of men,

For he's their parent, and he is their grave.' Pericles.

6 Efficacious virtue.

7 i. e. with its odour. Not, as Malone says, 'with the olfactory nerves, the part that smells.'

8 So in Shakspeare's Lover's Complaint :

terror and dear modesty

Encamp'd in hearts, but fighting outwardly.'

Our poet has more than once alluded to these opposed foes. So in Othello:-

Yea, curse his better angel from his side.'

See also his forty-fourth Sonnet. He may have remembered a passage in the old play of King Arthur, 1587 :

Peace hath three foes encamped in our breasts,
Ambition, wrath, and envie.'

And, where the worser is predominant,

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

Enter ROMEO.

Rom. Good morrow, father!

Benedicite!

Fri.
What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?—..
Young son, it argues a distemper'd head,
So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed:
'Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;
But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth
reign:

Therefore thy earliness doth me assure,
Thou art uprous'd by some distempʼrature;
Or if not so, then here I hit it right—
Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.

Rom. That last is true, the sweeter rest was mine.
Fri. God pardon sin! wast thou with Rosaline?
Rom. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? no;
I have forgot that name, and that name's woe.
Fri. That's my good son: But where hast thou
been then?

Rom. I'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again.

I have been feasting with mine enemy
Where on a sudden, one hath wounded me,
That's by me wounded; both our remedies
Within thy help and holy physick lies 9:

9 This apparent false concord occurs in many places, not only of Shakspeare, but of all old English writers. It is sufficient to observe that in the Anglo Saxon and very old English the third person plural of the present tense ends in eth, and often familiarly in es, as might be exemplified from Chaucer and others. This idiom was not worn out in Shakspeare's time, who must not therefore be tried by rules which were invented after his

I bear no hatred, blessed man; for, lo,
My intercession likewise steads my foe.

Fri. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift; Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.

Rom. Then plainly know, my heart's dear love is set

On the fair daughter of rich Capulet:

As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;

And all combin'd, save what thou must combine
By holy marriage: When, and where, and how,
We met, we woo'd, and made exchange of vow,
I'll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,
That thou consent to marry us this day.

Fri. Holy Saint Francis! what a change is here !
Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,
So soon forsaken? young men's love then lies
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
Jesu Maria! what a deal of brine

Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
How much salt water thrown away in waste,
To season love, that of it doth not taste !
The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,
Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears;
Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
Of an old tear that is not wash'd off yet:
If e'er thou wast thyself, and these woes thine,
Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline;

time. We have the same grammatical construction in Cymbeline:

His steeds to water at those springs

On chalic'd flowers that lies.'

And in Venus and Adonis:

She lifts the coffer lids that close his eyes
Where lo! two lamps burnt out in darkness lies.'

Again in a former scene of this play :

And bakes the elf locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled much misfortune bodes.'

And art thou chang'd? pronounce this sentence

then

Women may fall, when there's no strength in men.
Rom. Thou chid'st me oft for loving Rosaline.
Fri. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.
Rom. And bad'st me bury love.

Fri.

To lay one in, another out to have.

Not in a grave,

Rom. I pray thee, chide not: she, whom I love now,

Doth grace for grace,

and love for love allow;

O, she knew well,

The other did not so.
Fri.

Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell.
But come, young waverer, come go with me,
In one respect I'll thy assistant be;

For this alliance may so happy prove,

To turn your households' rancour to pure love. Rom. O, let us hence; I stand on sudden haste 10. Fri. Wisely, and slow; they stumble, that run fast. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV. A Street.

Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO.

Mer. Where the devil should this Romeo be?Came he not home to-night?

Ben. Not to his father's; I spoke with his man. Mer. Ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline,

Torments him so, that he will sure run mad.
Ben. Tybalt, the kinsman of old Capulet,
Hath sent a letter to his father's house.

10 It is incumbent upon me, or it is of importance to me to use extreme haste.'

So in King Richard III. :-
it stands me much upon

To stop all hopes,' &c.