This was one of the touches of nature that would every thing soothing was welcome, in order that we may escaped the hand of any painter less attentive to it not be frightened out of the melancholy, to which we Shakspeare. What happens to a person while he willingly resign ourselves, by too painful discords. Why

1 Watch. [Within.] Lead, boy :-Which way? | La. Cap. O, me! this sight of death is as a bell, Jul. Yea, noise ?-then I'll be brief.---O, happy That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

dagger! [Snatching ROMEO's Dagger. This is thy sheath [Stabs herself :] there rust, and let me die.1

[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.

[Exeunt some.

Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain;
And Juliet bleeding; warm, and newly dead,
Who here hath lain these two days buried.-
Go, tell the prince,-run to the Capulets,-
Raise up the Montagues,-some others search ;-
[Exeunt other Watchmen.
We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;
But the true ground of all these piteous woes,
We cannot without circumstance descry.

Enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR.
2 Watch. Here's Romeo's man, we found him in
the churchyard.

1 Watch. Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither.

Enter another Watchman, with FRIAR LAURENCE.
3 Watch.' Here is a friar, that trembles, sighs,
and weeps:

We took this mattock and this spade from him,
As he was coming from this churchyard side.
1 Watch. A great suspicion; Stay the friar too.
Enter the Prince and Attendants.

Prince. What misadventure is so early up,
That calls our person from our morning's rest?
Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, and others.
Cap. What should it be, that they so shriek

abroad?

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, seek, and know how this

murder comes.

1 Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter'd

meo's man;

With instruments upon them, fit to open
These dead men's tombs.

Enter MONTAGUE and others.
Prince. Come, Montague; for thou art carly up,
To see thy son and heir more early down.
Mon. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night ;3
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 ?4

Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, "Till we can clear these ambiguities,

And know their spring, their head, their true descent;
And then will I be general of your woes,
And lead you even to death: Mean time forbear,
And let mischance be slave to patience.-
Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

Fri. I am the greatest, able to do least,
Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me, of this direful murder,
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned and myself excus'd.

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;
And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife:
I married them; and their stol'n marriage-day
Was Tybalt's doomsday, whose untimely death
Banish'd the new made bridegroom from this city;
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin'd.
You-to remove that siege of grief from her,-
Betroth'd, and would have married her perforce,
To county Paris :--Then comes she to me;
And, with wild looks, bid me devise some means
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or, in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
As I intended, for it wrought on her

That he should hither come at this dire night.
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave.
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was staid by accident; and yesternight
Return'd my letter back: Then all alone,
At the prefixed hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Ro-Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:

foul

But, when I came (some minute ere the time
Of her awakening,) here untimely lay
The noble Paris, and true Romeo, dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,

Cap. O, Heavens !-Q, wife! look how our And bear this work of heaven with patience:

daughter bleeds!

This dagger hath mista'en,-for lo! his house

Is empty on the back of Montague,

And is missheathed in my daughter's bosom.2

should we heap still more upon accident, that is already
so guilty? Wherefore shall not the tortured Romeo
quietly

"Shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From his world-wearied flesh ?"

He holds his beloved in his arms, and, dying, cheers
himself with a vision of everlasting marriage. She also
seeks death, in a kiss, upon his lips. These last
moments must belong unparticipated to tenderness, that
we may hold fast to the thought, that love lives,
although the lovers perish.'

1 Thus the quarto of 1599. That of 1597 reads:
Ay, noise? then must I be resolute,
Oh, happy dagger! thou shalt end my fear,
Rest in my bosom; thus I come to thee.'

2 The words, for lo! his house is empty on the back of Montague,' are to be considered parenthetical. It appears that the dagger was anciently worn behind the back. So in Humor's Ordinarie:

'See you yon huge bum dagger at his back? And in The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art, 1570:

But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But (as it seems) did violence on herself.
All this I know: and to the marriage
Her nurse is privy: And, if aught in this

Thou must wear thy sword by thy side,
And thy dagger handsumly at thy backe.
3 After this line the quarto of 1597 adds:-
And young Benvolio is deceased too.'
4 So in the Tragedy of Darius, 1603:--

Ah me! malicious fates have done me wrong. Who came first to the world, should first depart. It not becomes the old t' o'er-live the young; This dealing is preposterous and over-thwart.'

5 It is to be lamented that the poet did not conclude the dialogue with the action, and avoid a narrative o. events which the audience already knew.'-Johnson.

Shakspeare was led into this uninteresting narrative by following too closely The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet. In this poem, (which is printed in the Variorum Editions of Shakspeare) the bodies of the dead are removed to a public scaffold; and from that elevation is the Friar's narrative delivered. The same circumstance is introduced in Hamet near the con clusion.