Shakespeare's Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗
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229. I will be brief, etc. Johnson and Malone criticise S. for following Brooke in the introduction of this long narrative. Ulrici well defends it as preparing the way for the reconciliation of the Capulets and Montagues over the dead bodies of their children, the victims of their hate. For date, see on i. 4. 105 above.
237. Siege. Cf. the same image in i. 1. 209.
238. Perforce. By force, against her will; as in C. of E. iv. 3. 95, Rich. II. ii. 3. 121, etc.
241. Marriage. A trisyllable. See on iv. 1. 11 above, and cf. 265 below.
247. As this dire night. This redundant use of as in statements of time is not uncommon. Cf. J.C. v. 1. 72: "as this very day was Cassius born," etc.
253. Hour. A dissyllable; as in iii. 1. 198 above.
257. Some minute. We should now say "some minutes," which is Hanmer's reading. Cf. "some hour" in 268 below.
258. Untimely. For the adverbial use, see on iii. 1. 121 above.
270. Still. Always. See on 106 above.
273. In post. In haste, or "post-haste." Cf. v. 1. 21 above. We find "in all post" in Rich. III. iii. 5. 73, and "all in post" in R. of L. 1.
276. Going in. See on v. 1. 36 above.
280. What made your master? What was your master doing? Cf. A. Y. L. i. 1. 3, ii. 3. 4, etc.
284. By and by. Presently. See on ii. 2. 151 above.
289. Pothecary. Generally printed "'pothecary" in the modern eds., but not in the early ones. It was a common form of the word. Cf. Chaucer, Pardoneres Tale:—
Therewithal. Therewith, with it. Cf. T.G. of V. iv. 4. 90:—
291. Be. Cf. Ham. iii. 2. 111, v. 1. 107, etc.
295. A brace of kinsmen. Mercutio and Paris. For the former, see iii. 1. 112; and for the latter, iii. 5. 179 and v. 3. 75. Steevens remarks that brace as applied to men is generally contemptuous; as in Temp. v. 1. 126: "But you, my brace of lords," etc. As a parallel to the present passage, cf. T. and C. iv. 5. 175: "You brace of warlike brothers, welcome hither!"
305. Glooming. Used by S. only here. Steevens cites Tom Tyler and his Wife, 1578: "If either he gaspeth or gloometh." Cf. Spenser, F.Q. i. 14: "A little glooming light, much like a shade." Young uses the verb in his Night Thoughts, ii.: "A night that glooms us in the noontide ray."
308. Some shall be pardoned, etc. In the novel, Juliet's attendant is banished for concealing the marriage; Romeo's servant set at liberty because he had acted under his master's orders; the apothecary tortured and hanged; and Friar Laurence permitted to retire to a hermitage, where he dies five years later.
APPENDIXConcerning Arthur Brooke
Little is known of the life of Arthur Broke, or Brooke, except that he wrote Romeus and Juliet (1562) and the next year published a book entitled Agreement of Sundry Places of Scripture, seeming in shew to jarre, serving in stead of Commentaryes not only for these, but others lyke; a translation from the French. He died that same year (1563), and an Epitaph by George Turbervile (printed in a volume of his poems, 1567) "on the death of maister Arthur Brooke" informs us that he was "drowned in passing to Newhaven."
So far as I am aware, no editor or commentator has referred to the singular prose introduction to the 1562 edition of Romeus and Juliet. It is clear from internal evidence that it was written by Brooke, and it is signed "Ar. Br."—the form in which his name also appears on the title-page; but its tone and spirit are strangely unlike those of the poem. We have seen (p. 25 above) that he refers to the perpetuation of "the memory of so perfect, sound, and so approved love" by the "stately tomb" of Romeo and Juliet, with "great store of cunning epitaphs in honour of their death;" but in the introduction he expresses a very different opinion of the lovers and finds a very different lesson in their fate. He says: "To this end (good Reader) is this tragical matter written, to describe unto thee a couple of unfortunate lovers, thralling themselves to unhonest desire, neglecting the authority and advice of parents and friends, conferring their principal counsels with drunken gossips and superstitious friars (the naturally fit instruments of unchastity), attempting all adventures of peril for the attaining of their wicked lusts, using auricular confession (the key of whoredom and treason) for furtherance of their purpose, abusing the honourable name of lawful marriage to cloak the shame of stolen contracts; finally, by all means of unhonest life, hasting to most unhappy death." The suggestion is added that parents may do well to show the poem to their children with "the intent to raise in them an hateful loathing of so filthy beastliness."
It is curious that there is not the slightest hint of all this anywhere in the poem; not a suggestion that the love of Romeo and Juliet is not natural and pure and honest; not a word of reproach for the course of Friar Laurence. Even the picture of the Nurse, with her vulgarity and unscrupulousness, is drawn with a kind of humour.
I have quoted above (note on ii. 2. 142) what Brooke makes Juliet say to her lover in the balcony scene. In their first interview, she says:—
And Romeo has just said:—
Of the Friar the poet says:—
At the end of the tragic story the poet asks:—
The puzzling prose preface to the poem is followed, in the original edition, by another in verse, similarly headed "To the Reader," from which we learn that Brooke had written other poems, which with this he compares to unlicked whelps—"nought els but lumpes of fleshe withouten heare" (hair)—but this poem, he says, is "the eldest of them" and his "youthfull woorke." He has decided to publish it, but "The rest (unlickt as yet) a whyle shall lurke" (that is, in manuscript)—
I suspect that after this poem was written he had become a Puritan,—or more rigid in his Puritanism,—but nevertheless lusted after literary fame and could not resist the temptation to publish the "youthfull woorke." But after writing the verse prologue it occurred to him—or some of his godly friends may have admonished him—that the character of the story and the manner in which he had treated it, needed further apology or justification; and the prose preface was written to serve as a kind of "moral" to the production. After the suggestion to parents quoted above he adds: "Hereunto if you applye it, ye shall deliver my dooing from offence, and profit your selves. Though I saw the same argument lately set foorth on stage with more commendation then I can looke for (being there much better set forth then I have or can dooe) yet the same matter penned as it is, may serve to lyke good effect, if the readers do brynge with them lyke good myndes, to consider it, which hath the more incouraged me to publishe it, such as it is."
The reader may be surprised that Brooke refers to having seen the story "on stage;" but the Puritans did not altogether disapprove of plays that had a moral purpose. It will be remembered that Stephen Gosson, in his Schoole of Abuse (1579), excepts a few plays from the sweeping condemnation of his "plesaunt invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Jesters, and such like caterpillers of a Commonwelth"—among them being "The Jew,... representing the greedinesse of worldly chusers, and the bloody minds of usurers," which may have anticipated Shakespeare in combining the stories of the caskets and the pound of flesh in The Merchant of Venice.
That Brooke was a Puritan we may infer from the religious character of the only other book (mentioned above) which he is known to have published. His death the same year probably prevented his carrying out the intention of licking the rest of his poetical progeny into shape for print.
Comments on Some of the CharactersJuliet.—Juliet is not fortunate in her parents. Her father is sixty or more years old (as we may infer from what he says in i. 5. 29 fol.), while her mother is about twenty-eight (see i. 3. 50), and must have been married when she was half that age. Her assertion that Juliet was born when she herself was "much upon these years" of her daughter (who will be fourteen in about a fortnight, as the Nurse informs us in the same scene) is somewhat indefinite, but must be within a year or two of the exact figure. Her marriage was evidently
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