Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/120

Nurse.

By my troth, it is well said;[C 1] "for himself to125 mar," quoth a'? Gentlemen,[C 2] can any of you tell me where I may find the young Romeo?

Rom.	I can tell you; but young Romeo will be older when you have found him than he was130 when you sought him: I am the youngest of that name, for fault of a worse.

Nurse.

You say well.

Mer.	Yea, is the worst well?[C 3] very well took, i' faith; wisely, wisely.135

Nurse.

If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence[E 1] with you.

Ben.	She will indite[C 4][E 2] him to some supper.

Mer.	A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho![E 3]

Rom.	What hast thou found?140

Mer.	No hare,[E 4] sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar[E 5] ere it be spent.[Sings.[C 5]

1. 125. well said] Q1, Q; said F.
2. 126. Gentlemen] Q, F (some copies F Gentleman).
3. 134. well?] Q5; well, Q, F.
4. 138. indite] Q, F (endite); invite Q1, Ff 2–4.
5. 143. Sings] Q1 has "He walkes by them, and sings."

1. 136. confidence] The same jest of blundering on confidence for conference appears in Merry Wives, i. iv. 172 (Mrs. Quickly), and in Much Ado, iii. v. 3 (Dogberry). Q1 here reads conference.
2. 138. indite] Benvolio follows suit and transforms invite to indite. Q1 reads invite, and omits some before supper.
3. 139. So ho!] "'As soon as he espieth her [the hare], he must cry So how.' Thus writes the author of the Noble Arte [of Venerie] … And so when Mercutio cried So ho!, Romeo … asks, 'What hast thou found?'" Madden, Diary of Master William Silence, p. 173.
4. 141. hare] The word seems to have been used for courtesan. See the use of "hare-pie" in Rowley, A Match at Midnight. (Hazlitt's Dodsley, xiii. p. 88.)
5. 142. hoar] mouldy. New Eng. Dict. quotes Sylvester's Du Bartas: "The long journey we have gone, hath … turn'd our victuals hoar." Malone supposes the quibbling verses that follow to be part of an old song.