I will say for you.

It is "music, with her silver

sound," because such fellows as you have seldom gold for sounding :

Then music, with her silver sound,

With speedy help doth lend redress.

[Exit, singing

1 Mus. What a pestilent knave is this same! 2 Mus. Hang him, Jack! Come, we'll in here tarry for the mourners, and stay dinner.

[Exeunt

ACT V.

SCENE I. Mantua. A Street.

Enter ROMEO.

Rom. If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand : My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne; And, all this day, an unaccustom'd spirit Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.* I dreamt, my lady came and found me dead, (Strange dream! that gives a dead man leave to think,)

And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips,

.

Thus the first quarto.

The later copies read, "If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep." The sense appears to be, If I may trust the visions with which my eye flattered me in sleep.

2 These three last lines are very gay and pleasing. But why does Shakespeare give Romeo this involuntary cheerfulness just before the extremity of unhappiness? Perhaps to show the vanity of trusting to those uncertain and casual exaltations or depressions, which many consider as certain foretokens of good and evil. JOHNSON.

That I reviv'd, and was an emperor.

Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd,
When but love's shadows are so rich in joy !-

Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar?
How doth my lady? Is my father well?

How fares my Juliet ? 3

That I ask again; For nothing can be ill, if she be well.

Bal. Then she is well, and nothing can be ill : Her body sleeps in Capels' monument, And her immortal part with angels lives. I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault, And presently took post to tell it you : O! pardon me for bringing these ill news, Since you did leave it for my office, sir.

Rom. Is it e'en so? then I defy you, stars! Thou know'st my lodging: get me ink and paper, And hire post-horses; I will hence to-night.

Bal. I do beseech you, sir, have patience : Your looks are pale and wild, and do import Some misadventure.

Rom.

Tush! thou art deceiv'd;

Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do.
Hast thou no letters to me from the friar?

Bal. No, my good lord.

Rom. No matter; get thee gone, And hire those horses: I'll be with thee straight. —

[Exit BALTHASAR.

So the first quarto; the later copies, "How doth my lady Juliet" thus repeating a part of the foregoing line.

H.

4 So all the old editions except the first, which reads, -"Pardon me, sir, I will not leave you thus." Defy, in the first line of the preceding speech. is from the earliest copy; the others having deny.

Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night

Let's see for means:- O, mischief! thou art swift
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
I do remember an apothecary,

And hereabouts he dwells, whom late I noted
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples: meagre were his looks;
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones:
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuff'd, and other skins

5

Of ill-shap'd fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,

Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show.
Noting this penury, to myself I said,—
An if a man did need a poison now,
Whose sale is present death in Mantua,

Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.
O! this same thought did but forerun my need;
And this same needy man must sell it me.
As I remember, this should be the house:
Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut.—
What, ho! apothecary!

Ap.

Enter the Apothecary.

Who calls so loud?

Rom. Come hither, man. I see that thou art

poor;

Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have

5 We learn from Nashe's Have with You to Saffron Walden, 1596, that a stuffed alligator then made part of the furniture of an apothecary's shop: "He made an anatomie of a rat, and after hanged her over his head, instead of an apothecary's crocodile ot dried alligator."

A drain of poison; such soon-speeding gear
As will disperse itself through all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may fall dead;
And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath
As violently, as hasty powder fir'd

Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.

Ap. Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law Is death to any he that utters them.

6

Rom. Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness, And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks, Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes, Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back, The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law: The world affords no law to make thee rich; Then, be not poor, but break it, and take this. Ap. My poverty, but not my will, consents. Rom. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will. Ap. Put this in any liquid thing you will, And drink it off; and, if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would despatch you straight. Rom. There is thy gold; worse poison to men's souls,

Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not
sell:

I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.
Farewell; buy food, and get thyself in flesh.—

Thus the old copies. Otway copied the line in his Caius Marius, only changing starreth to stareth, which has been adopted into the text by Singer, and may be right. Pope changed "starn eth in thy eyes "" to "stare within thy eyes." As it stands, the expression conveys a strong sense, though it will hardly bear analysing. The two nouns with a verb in the singular was not ungrammatical according to old usage. In the next line, the first quarto has, Upon thy back hangs ragged misery," which is strangely preferred by some editors.

H.

1

Come, cordial, and not poison, go with me
To Juliet's grave for there must I use thee.

[Exeunt

SCENE II. Friar LAURENCE'S Cell.

Enter Friar JOHN.

John. Holy Franciscan friar! brother, ho!

Enter Friar LAURENCE

Lau. This same should be the voice of friar

Welcome from Mantua: What says Romeo?
Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.
John. Going to find a barefoot brother out,
One of our order, to associate me,'
Here in this city visiting the sick,

And finding him, the searchers of the town,
Suspecting that we both were in a house
Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
Seal'd up the doors, and would not let us forth;
So that my speed to Mantua there was stay'd.

Each friar had always a companion assigned him by the su. perior, when he asked leave to go out. In the Visitatio Notabilis de Seleborne, a curious record printed in White's Natural History of Selborne, Wykeham enjoins the canons not to go abroad without leave from the prior, who is ordered on such occasions to assign the brother a companion, "ne suspicio sinistra vel scandalum oriatur." There is a similar regulation in the statutes of Trinity College, Cambridge. So in the poem :

"Apace our frier John to Mantua him hyes,

And, for because in Italy it is a wonted gyse

That friers in the towne should seldome walke alone,
But of theyr covent ay should be accompanide with one
Of his profession, straight a house he fyndeth out,
In mynde to take some frier to walke the town about."

Shakespeare has departed from the poem, in supposing the pesti
lence to rage at Verona instead of Mantua.