With funeral praises do adorn thy tomb! [The boy whistles. [Retires. Enter Romeo and Balthazar, with a torch, mattock, &c. Rom. Give me that mattock, and the wrenching iron. Hold, take this letter; early in the morning be gone : Bal. I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you. Rom. So shalt thou show me friendship.-Take thou that: Live, and be prosperous; and farewell, good fellow. [Breaking open the door of the monument. [Advances. Stop, thy unhallow'd toil, vile Montague; Rom. I must, indeed; and therefore came I hither. Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man, Rom. Wilt thou provoke me? then have at thee, boy. [They fight. Page. O lord! they fight: I will go call the watch. [Exil Page. Par. O, I am slain! [Falls.]-If thou be mcrciful, Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. (1) i. e. Action of importance. Rom. In faith, I will:-Let me peruse this face; Mercutio's kinsman, noble county Paris :What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode ? I think, He told me, Paris should have married Juliet: Said he not so? or did I dream it so? To think it was so?-0, give me thy hand, Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, One writ with me in sour misfortune's book! I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave,A grave? O, no; a lantern, slaughter'd youth, For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd. [Laying Paris in the monument. How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry? which their keepers call A lightning before death: 0, how may Call this a lightning ?-O, my love! my wife! Death that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there.Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favour can I do to thee, Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain, To sunder his that was thine enemy? Forgive me, cousin!-Ah! dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous; And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? For fear of that, I will still stay with thee; And never from this palace of dim night Depart again; here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chambermaids; O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest; And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars Arms, take your last embrace and lips, O you [Dies. Enter at the other end of the church-yard, Friar Laurence, with a lantern, crow, and spade. Fri. Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night Have my old feet stumbled at graves?-Who's there? Who is it that consorts, so late, the dead? Bal. Here's one, a friend, and one that knows you well. Fri. Bliss be upon you! Tell me, good my friend, What torch is yond', that vainly lends his light To grubs and eyeless skulls? as I discern, It burneth in the Capels' monument. Fri. Bal. It doth so, holy sir; and there's my master, One that you love. Who is it! Bal. Romeo. Fri. How long hath he been there? [Dies. (2) I do refuse to do as thou conjurest me to do, illuminated. i. e. depart. VOL. IL 1 Watch. Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither. Bal. Full half an hour. Fri. Go with me to the vault. Bal. I dare not, sir: My master knows not, but I am gone hence; Enter another Watchman, with Friar Laurence. Fri. Stay then, I'll go alone :-Fear comes upon We took this mattock and this spade from him, me: O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing. Bal. As I did sleep under this yew-tree here, I dreamt my master and another fought, Fri. [Enters the monument. Romeo! O, pale!-Who else? what, Paris too? And steep'd in blood?-Ah, what an unkind hour Is guilty of this lamentable chance!The lady stirs. [Juliet wakes and stirs. Jul. Ó, comfortable friar! where is my lord? I do remember well where I should be, And there I am:-Where is my Romeo? [Noise within. Fri. I hear some noise.-Lady, come from that nest Jul. Go, get thee hence, for I will not away. What's here? a cup, clos'd in my true-love's hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end ;O churl! drink all? and leave no friendly drop To help me after?-I will kiss thy lips; Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them, To make me die with a restorative. Thy lips are warm! [Kisses him. I Watch. [Within.] Lead, boy:-Which way? Jul. Yea, noise?-then I'll be brief.-O happy dagger! [Snatching Romeo's dagger. This is thy sheath; [Stabs herself.] there rust, and let me die. [Falls on Romeo's body, and dies. Enter Watch, with the Page of Paris. Page. This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn. 1 Watch. The ground is bloody; Search about the church-yard: Go, some of you, whoe'er you find, attach. [Exeunt some. Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain;- Enter some of the Watch, with Balthasar. 2 Watch. Here's Romeo's man, we found him in the church-yard. (11. e. The scabbard. (2) Seat. As he was coming from this church-yard side. La. Cap. The people in the street cry-Romeo, Some-Juliet, and some-Paris; and all run, With open outcry toward our monument. Prince. What fear is this, which startles in our ears? 1 Watch. Sovereign, here lies the county Paris slain; And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before, Warm and new kill'd. Prince. Search, scek, and know how this foul murder comes. 1 Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter'd Romeo's man; With instruments upon them, fit to open Cap. O, heavens!-0, wife! look how our daughter bleeds! This dagger hath mista'en,—for lo! his house1 And is mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom. Enter Montague and others. Prince. Come, Montague; for thou art early up, To see thy son and heir more early down. Mon. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night; Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath: What further wo conspires against mine age? Prince. Look, and thou shalt see. Mon. O thou untaught! what manners is in this, To press before thy father to a grave? Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, And then will I be general of your woes, Fri. I am the greatest, able to do least, Prince. Then say at once what thou dost know in this. Fri. I will be brief, for my short date of breath Is not so long as is a tedious tale. Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet; - Betroth'd, and would have married her perforce, The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo, 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. This play is one of the most pleasing of our author's performances. The scenes are busy and various, 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 repre. sent 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. Mercu Prince. Give me the letter, I will look on it.— Where is the county's page, that rais'd the watch?-tio's wit, gaiety, and courage, will always procure Sirrah, what made your master in this place? And bid me stand aloof, and so I did: Prince. This letter doth make good the friar's words, 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. The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author delighted: he has, with great subtilty of distinction, drawn her at once loquacious and secret, obsequious and insolent, trusty and disho Their course of love, the tidings of her death: His comic scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetic strains are always polluted with some un expected depravations. His persons, however dis tressed, have a conceit left them in their misery, a miserable conceit. JOHNSON. HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK. PERSONS REPRESENTED. Claudius, king of Denmark. Francisco, a soldier. Hamlet, son to the former king, and nephew to the Reynaldo, servant to Polonius. present king. Laertes, son to Polonius. Polonius, lord chamberlain. Horatio, friend to Hamlet. Voltimand, Cornelius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Another Courtier. courtiers. Osric, a courtier. A Priest. Marcellus, officers. A Captain. An Ambassador. Fortinbras, prince of Norway. Gertrude, queen of Denmark, and mother of Hamlet. Ophelia, daughter of Polonius. Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Players, Graze diggers, Sailors, Messengers, and other tendants. Scene, Elsinore. Mar. Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy; When yon same star, that's westward from the Not a mouse stirring. Had made his course to illume that part of heaven If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, Fran. I think, I hear them.-Stand, ho! Who And liegemen to the Danc. Ilor. Friends to this ground. O, farewell, honest soldier: Who hath reliev'd you? Mar. [Exit Francisco. Holla! Bernardo! Ber. In the same figure like the king that's dead. Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Of mine own eyes. Mar. Is it not like the king? Mer. Thus, twice before, and jump at this dead hour, Vith martial stalk hath he gone by our watch. Hor. In what particular thought to work, I know not; ut, in the gross and scope of mine opinion 'his bodes some strange eruption to our state. Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, Why this same strict and most observant watch o nightly toils the subject of the land; nd why such daily cast of brazen cannon, Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Hor. That can I; t least, the whisper goes so. Our last king, id forfeit, with his life, all those his lands lad he been vanquisher; as, by the same co-mart, nd carriage of the article design'd, lis fell to Hamlet: Now, sir, young Fontinbras, funimproved mettle hot and full," lath in the skirts of Norway, here and there, hat hath a stomach in't: which is no other he source of this our watch; and the chief head Dispute. (2) Sledged. 3) Polander, an inhabitant of Poland. Just. (5) Joint bargain. 6) The covenant to confirm that bargain. But, soft; behold! lo, where it comes again. If there be any good thing to be done, If thou art privy to thy country's fate, Or, if thou hast uphoarded in thy life Ber. Hor. Mar. 'Tis gone! "Tis here! 'Tis here' [Exit Ghost. We do it wrong, being so majestical, Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock. Hor. So I have heard, and do in part believe it. But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks c'er the dew of yon high eastern hill: Break we our watch up; and, by my advice, Let us impart what we have seen to night Unto young Hamlet: for, upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him: Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, As needful in our loves, fitting our duty? Mar. Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know (7) Full of spirit without experience. (8) Picked. (9) Resolution. (10) Search. (12) Victorious. (13) The moon. (15) Wandering. (16) Proof, (11) Suit. (14) Event, |