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against the suitor par convenance, Paris, and the quondam wooer of Rosalinde. It is easy to dwell upon his despair at banishment, his fatal errors of judgment, as when he fails to suspect life in Juliet's still warm and rosy form.1 But to suppose that he is unmanned by his love of Juliet contradicts the whole tenour of Shakespeare's implicit teaching. Passion for a Cressida or a Cleopatra saps the nerve of Troilus and Antony; but nowhere does Shakespeare represent a man as made less manly by absolute soul-service of a true woman: rather, this was a condition of that 'marriage of true minds' to which, in his loftiest. sonnet, he refused to admit impediments.'

1 Cf. Bulthaupt, Dramaturgie des Schauspiels, ii. 189 f.

ROMEO AND JULIET

PROLOGUE.

Enter Chorus.

Chor. Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could

remove,

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Prologue. Omitted in Ff. In the Qq (except Q1) the speaker of the Prologue is described as

ΤΟ

'Chorus,' the same person no

doubt delivering the 'chorus' at the end of Act I.

ACT I.

SCENE I. Verona. A public place.

Enter SAMPSON and GREGORY, of the house of Capulet, armed with swords and bucklers. Sam. Gregory, on my word, we'll not carry coals.

Gre. No, for then we should be colliers.

Sam. I mean, an we be in choler, we 'll draw. Gre. Ay, while you live, draw your neck out of collar.

Sam. I strike quickly, being moved.

Gre. But thou art not quickly moved to strike. Sam. A dog of the house of Montague

moves me.

Gre. To move is to stir; and to be valiant is to stand therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn'st away.

Sam. A dog of that house shall move me to stand: I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague's.

Gre. That shows thee a weak slave; for the weakest goes to the wall.

ΙΟ

Sam. 'Tis true; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall: there- 20 fore I will push Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall.

Gre. The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.

I.

carry coals (proverbial), stand an indignity, be put upon. 5. out of collar; so Q2, 3. This is more idiomatic than the 'out

of the collar,' which Ff and most modern edd. substitute.

15. take the wall, get the better.

:

Sam. 'Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant when I have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the maids; I will cut off their heads.

Gre. The heads of the maids?

Sam. Ay, the heads of the maids, or their 30 maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt.

Gre. They must take it in sense that feel it.

Sam. Me they shall feel while I am able to stand and 'tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.

Gre. 'Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor John. Draw thy tool; here comes two of the house of Montagues.

Sam. My naked weapon is out: quarrel; I will back thee.

Gre. How! turn thy back and run?

Sam. Fear me not.

Gre. No, marry; I fear thee!

Sam. Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.

Gre. I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.

Sam. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to them, if they bear it.

Enter ABRAHAM and BALTHASAR. Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? Sam. I do bite my thumb, sir.

27. cruel; so Q945 Q23 Ff have civil.'

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32. sense, physical feeling. 37. poor John, a coarse fish dried and salted.

48. bite my thumb at them, an insulting gesture, commonly

40

50

used by swaggerers as a means of provoking quarrels. It is more precisely described by Cotgrave as performed by putting the thumb-nail into the mouth, and with a jerk from the upper teeth make it to knack.'

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