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By Root 21481 0

that between Juliet and the Nurse when she hears of it, and of the death of her cousin Tybalt (which bear no proportion in her mind, when passion after the first shock of surprise throws its weight into the scale of her affections), and the last scene at the tomb, are among the most natural and overpowering. In all of these it is not merely the force of any one passion that is given, but the slightest and most unlooked-for transitions from one to another, the mingling currents of every different feeling rising up and prevailing in turn, swayed by the master-mind of the poet, as the waves undulate beneath the gliding storm. Thus when Juliet has by her complaints encouraged the Nurse to say, 'Shame come to Romeo', she instantly repels the wish, which she had herself occasioned, by answering:

Blister'd be thy tongue

For such a wish, he was not born to shame.

Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit,

For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd

Sole monarch of the universal earth!

O, what a beast was I to chide him so!

Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin?

Juliet. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?

Ah my poor lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,

When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it?

And then follows on the neck of her remorse and returning fondness, that wish treading almost on the brink of impiety, but still held back by the strength of her devotion to her lord, that 'father, mother, nay, or both were dead', rather than Romeo banished. If she requires any other excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being banished from her.—Perhaps one of the finest pieces of acting that ever was witnessed on the stage, is Mr. Kean's manner of doing this scene and his repetition of the word, BANISHED. He treads close indeed upon the genius of his author.

A passage which this celebrated actor and able commentator on Shakespeare (actors are the best commentators on the poets) did not give with equal truth or force of feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of Juliet, before he drinks the poison.

—Let me peruse this face—

Mercutio's kinsman! noble county Paris!

What said my man, when my betossed soul

Did not attend him as we rode! I think,

He told me, Paris should have married Juliet!

Said he not so? or did I dream it so?

Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,

To think it was so?—O, give me thy hand,

One writ with me in sour misfortune's book!

I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave—

For here lies Juliet.

. . . . . .

—O, my love! my wife!

Death that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,

Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:

Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks,

And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.—

Tybalt, ly'st thou there in thy bloody sheet?

O, what more favour can I do to thee,

Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain,

To sunder his that was thine enemy?

Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,

Why art thou yet so fair! I will believe

That unsubstantial death is amorous;

And that the lean abhorred monster keeps

Thee here in dark to be his paramour.

For fear of that, I will stay still with thee;

And never from this palace of dim night

Depart again: here, here will I remain

With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here

Will I set up my everlasting rest;

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh.—Eyes, look your last!

Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss

A dateless bargain to engrossing death!—

Come, bitter conduct, come unsavoury guide!

Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on

The dashing rocks my sea-sick weary bark!

Here's to my love!—[Drinks.] O, true apothecary!

Thy drugs are quick.—Thus with a kiss I die.

The lines in this speech describing the loveliness of Juliet, who is supposed to be dead, have been compared to those in which it is said of Cleopatra after her death, that she looked 'as she would take another Antony in