Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/145

It best agrees with night. Come, civil[E 1] night,10 Thou sober-suited[C 1] matron, all in black, And learn[E 2] me how to lose a winning match, Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods: Hood my unmann'd blood, bating[E 3] in my cheeks, With thy black mantle, till strange[E 4] love grown[C 2] bold15 Think true love acted simple modesty. Come, night, come, Romeo, come, thou day in night; For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow on[C 3] a raven's back. Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,20 Give me my Romeo; and, when he[C 4] shall die,[E 5] Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish[E 6] sun.25

1. 11. sober-suited] hyphen F4.
2. 15. grown] Rowe; grow Q, F.
3. 19. new snow on] F 2; new snow upon Q, F; snow upon Qq 4, 5.
4. 21. he] Qq 4, 5; I Q, F.

1. 10. civil] grave, sober, as in Dekker, Seven Sinnes of London, i. (ed. Arber, 13), "in lookes, grave; in attire, civill."
2. 12. learn] teach; as often in Shakespeare.
3. 14. Hood my unmanned blood, bating] Falconry terms; unmann'd, not sufficiently trained to be familiar with the keeper; bating, fluttering; the bird was hooded on fist or perch to check the bating (French, se battre). There is probably a pun here on the word unmann'd. See Henry V. III. vii. 121, 122, and Taming of the Shrew, IV. i. 206–209.
4. 15. strange] reserved, as in II. ii. 101.
5. 21. when he shall die] Delius prefers the I of Q, F, perhaps rightly. Juliet, he says, demands life-long possession of her lover; after her death, Night shall be her heiress: "of the possibility of Romeo's death she cannot, in her present happiness, conceive."
6. 25 garish] excessively bright, glaring. Johnson: "Milton had this speech in his thoughts when he wrote … in Il Penseroso: 'Till civil-suited morn appear,' and 'Hide me from day's garish eye.'"