Rom. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that8. 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 madman is: Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipp'd, and tormented, and-Good-e'en, good fellow. Serv God gi' good e'en.-I pray, sir, can you read? Rom. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery. Serv. Perhaps you have learn'd it without book: But, I pray, can you read any thing you see? 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; [ Gives back the Note]. Whither should they come? Serv. Up. Rom. Whither? Ser. To supper; to our house. Rom. Whose house? Serv. My master's. Rom. Indeed, I should have asked 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 wine9. Rest you merry. Ben. At this same ancient feast of Capulet's [Exit. 8 The plantain leaf is a blood-stancher, and was formerly ap plied to green wounds. So in Albumazar: Help, Armellina, help! I'm fallen i'the cellar: Bring a fresh plantain-leaf, I've broke my shin.' This cant expression seems to have been once common: it often occurs in old plays. We have one still in use of similar import :To crack a bottle. Sups the fair Rosaline, whom thou so lov'st; SCENE III. A Room in Capulet's House1. Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse. La Cap. Nurse, where's my daughter? call her forth to me. Nurse. Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old, 1 bade her come.-What, lamb! what, lady-bird!God forbid!-where's this girl ?—what, Juliet! 10 Heath says, Your lady's love is the love you bear to your lady, which, in our language, is commonly used for the lady herself." Perhaps we should read, Your lady love.' In all the old copies the greater part of this scene was printed as prose. Capell was the first who exhibited it as verse; the subsequent editors have followed him, but perhaps erroneously. Jul. What is your will? Madam, I am here, La. Cap. This is the matter:-Nurse, give leave awhile, We must talk in secret.-Nurse, come back again; I have remember'd me, thou shalt hear our counsel. Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age. Nurse. 'Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour. La, Cap. She's not fourteen. Nurse. I'll lay fourteen of my teeth, And yet, to my teen2 be it spoken, I have but four,She is not fourteen: How long is it now To Lammas-tide? La. Cap. A fortnight, and odd days. Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year, Come Lammas-eve at night, shall she be fourteen, Susan and she,- God rest all Christian souls! Were of an age.-Well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me: But, as I said, On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen ; That shall she, marry; I remember it well. "Tis since the earthquake now eleven years3; And she was wean'd, -I never shall forget it,Of all the days of the year, upon that day; For I had then laid wormwood to my dug, Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall, My lord and you were then at Mantua :Nay, I do bear a brain1:-but, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool! 2 i. e. to my sorrow. This old word is introduced for the sake of the jingle between teen, and four, and fourteen. 3 Mr. Tyrwhitt thinks that Shakspeare had in view the earthquake which had been felt in England in his own time, on the 6th of April, 1580; and that we may from hence conjecture that Romeo and Juliet was written in 1591. 4 The nurse means to boast of her retentive faculty. To bear a brain was to possess much mental capacity either of attention, ingenuity, or remembrance. Thus in Marston's Dutch Courtezan:My silly husband, alas! knows nothing of it, 'tis I that must beare a braine for all.' To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug. And since that time it is eleven years: For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood, 1 warrant, an I should live a thousand years, And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said—Ay. La. Cap. Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy peace. Nurse. Yes, madam; Yet I cannot choose but laugh, To think it should leave crying, and say-Ay: To stint is to stop. Baret translates Lachrymas supprimere, to stinte weeping;' and 'to stinte talke,' by sermones restinguere.' So Ben Jonson in Cynthia's Revels: Stint thy babbling tongue, Fond Echo.' Again, in What You Will, by Marston: Pish! for shame, stint thy idle chat.' Spenser uses the word frequently. This tautologous speech is not in the first quarto of 1597. VOL. X. Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nurs'd: La. Cap. Marry, that marry is the very theme Jul. It is an honour that I dream not of. Nurse. An honour! were not I thine only nurse, I'd say, thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat. La. Cap. Well, think of marriage now; younger than you, Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, Are made already mothers: by my count, Nurse. A man, young lady! lady, such a man, La. Cap. Verona's summer hath not such a flower. This night you shall behold him at our feast; And see how one another lends content; So in 1 i. e. as well made as if he had been modelled in wax. Wily Beguiled:- Why, he is a man as one should picture him in wax. So Horace uses Cerea brachia,' waxen arms, for arms well shaped.-Od. xiii. 1. 1. Which Dacier explains: Des bras faits au tour comme nous disons d'un bras rond, qu'il est comme de cire. 8 After this speech of the Nurse, Lady Capulet, in the old quarto, says only: Well, Juliet, how like you of Paris' love? ' She answers, ་ Thus the quarto of 1599. The quarto of 1609 and the folio read, 'several lineaments." We have, The unity and married calm of states, in Troilus and Cressida. And in his eighth Sonnet :If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, By unions married, do offend thine ear. See vol. vii. p. 312, note 12. |