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Page 26
ROMEO AND JULIET
ACT I. SCENE ii. (I. i. 181 foll.)
Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! &c.
Of these lines neither the sense nor occasion is very evident. He
is not yet in love with an enemy, and to love one and hate another
is no such uncommon state, as can deserve all this toil of antithesis.
ACT I. SCENE iii. (I. ii. 25.)
Earth-treading stars that make dark HEAVEN's light.
This nonsense should be reformed thus,
Earth-treading stars that make dark EVEN light.
--Warburton.
But why nonsense? Is anything more commonly said, than that beauties
eclipse the sun? Has not Pope the thought and the word?
Sol through white curtains shot a tim'rous ray,
And ope'd those eyes that must eclipse the day.
Both the old and the new reading are philosophical nonsense, but
they are both, and both equally poetical sense.
ACT I. SCENE iii. (I. ii. 26-8.)
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel,
When well-apparel'd April on the heel
Of limping winter treads.
To say, and to say in pompous words, that a "young man shall feel"
as much in an assembly of beauties, "as young men feel in the month
of April," is surely to waste sound upon a very poor sentiment.
I read, Such comfort as do lusty YEOMEN feel. You shall feel from
the sight and conversation of these ladies such hopes of happiness
and such pleasure, as the farmer receives from the spring, when the
plenty of the year begins, and the prospect of the harvest fills
him with delight.
ACT I. SCENE iv. (l. iii. 92.)
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
The "golden story" is perhaps the "golden legend", a book in the
darker ages of popery much read, and doubtless often exquisitely
embellished, but of which Canus, one of the popish doctors, proclaims
the author to have been homo ferrei oris, plumbei cordis.
ACT I. SCENE vi. (1. v. 34.)
Good cousin Capulet.
This cousin Capulet is "unkle" in the paper of invitation, but as
Capulet is described as old, "cousin" is probably the right word
in both places. I know not how Capulet and his lady might agree,
their ages were very disproportionate; he has been past masking
for thirty years, and her age, as she tells Juliet is but eight
and twenty.
ACT I. CHORUS. (II. PROLOGUE.)
The use of this chorus is not easily discovered, it conduces nothing
to the progress of the play, but relates what is already known or
what the next scenes will shew; and relates it without adding the
improvement of any moral sentiment.
ACT II. SCENE vi. (ii. vi. 15.)
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
He that travels too fast is as long before he comes to the end of
his journey, as he that travels slow.
Precipitation produces mishap.
ACT III. SCENE i. (III. i. 2.)
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