Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/114

fantasticoes,[C 1][E 1] these new tuners of accents![C 2] "By[C 3] Jesu, a very good blade! a very tall[E 2] man! a very good whore!" Why, is not this a lament- able thing, grandsire,[E 3] that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies,[E 4] these fashion-35 mongers, these pardonnez-mois[C 4][E 5], who stand so much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench?[E 6] O, their bons,[C 5][E 7] their bons!

Enter Romeo.

Ben.	Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo.[C 6]40

Mer.	Without his roe,[E 8] like a dried herring. O flesh,

1. 31. fantasticoes] Q1; phantacies Q, F;
2. accents] Q1; accent Q, F.
3. 32. By] Q1, Q; omitted F.
4. 36. pardonnez-mois] Collier, from Theobald; pardonmees Q1; pardons mees Q; pardona-mees Qq 4, 5; pardon-mee's F.
5. 38, 39. bons … bons] Theobald (printing bon's); bones … bones Q, F, and several editors.
6. 40. Here … Romeo] only once in Q1.

1. 31. fantasticoes] Steevens quotes Dekker, Old Fortunatus: "I have … seen fantasticoes, conversed with humourists."
2. 32. tall] sturdy, lusty, valiant, as frequently in Shakespeare.
3. 34. grandsire] The staid Benvolio addressed as if he belonged to an elder generation.
4. 35. flies] Compare the description of Osric as a "water-fly," Hamlet, v. ii. 84, and "gilded butterflies," courtiers in Lear, v. iii. 13.
5. 36. pardonnez-mois] The reading of Qq 4, 5 supports the form adopted by Cambridge editors, perdona-mi's. But Frenchified gallants seem to be the object of mockery. In Westward Hoe (Pearson's Dekker, ii. p. 355), we have the form pardona moy.
6. 36, 38. stand … bench] who insist so much on the new mode of manners, or of clothes, possibly the large breeches, which made sitting difficult—with a quibble on the meaning of form=seat or bench,—that they cannot sit at ease, etc.
7. 38, 39. bons] Malone confirms Theobald's emendation of bones (with, however, a play on that word), by a passage from Greene's Tu quoque, from which we learn that bon jour was the common salutation of those who affected to appear fine gentlemen: "No, I want the bon jour … which yonder gentleman has." Possibly, as Capell says, there is an allusion to "the French disease."
8. 41. roe] Seymour has the grotesque notion that Romeo without his roe is meo, or O, me! a lover's sigh. Rolfe thinks roe may mean mistress (from the female deer). Why has not an "ingenious gentleman" said that roe stands for Ro-saline? "A herring, without a roe" is the crowning comparison of Menelaus with contemptible creatures put into Thersites' mouth, Troilus and Cressida, v. i. 168.