130
ROMEO AND JULIET
[ACT III.
Cap. | God's bread! it makes me mad. Day, night, hour, tide,[C 1] time, work, play, Alone, in company,[C 2] still my care[E 1] hath been[E 2] To have her match'd; and having now provided A gentleman of noble[C 3] parentage,180 Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly trained,[C 4][E 3] Stuff'd, as they say, with honourable parts, Proportion'd as one's thought would[C 5] wish a man; And then to have a wretched puling fool, A whining mammet, in her fortune's[C 6] tender,[E 4]185 To answer "I'll not wed," "I cannot love," "I am too young," "I pray you, pardon me." |
- ↑ 177. tide] Q, ride F.
- ↑ 176–178. God's … company] Q, F; Gods blessed mother wife it mads me, Day, night, early, late, at home, abroad, Alone, in company, waking or sleeping, Q 1.
- ↑ 180. noble] Q, F; princely Q 1.
- ↑ 181. train'd] Q 1; liand Q; allied Qq 3–5, F.
- ↑ 183. thought would] Q, F; heart could Q 1.
- ↑ 185. fortune's] Theobald; fortunes Q, F.
- ↑ 178. my care] Rushton, Shakespeare's Euphuism, p. 64, cites Lyly: "Mine only care hath bene hetherto, to match thee.… At the last I have found … a gentleman of great revenues, of a noble progenie, of honest behaviour, of comly personage."
- ↑ 176–178] Pope, following, in the main, Q 1, read:"God's bread! it makes me mad: day, night, late, early,
At home, abroad; alone, in company,
Waking or sleeping, still," etc.So Malone, reading with Q 1 early, late.—Fleay conjectured and Daniel reads:"God's bread, it makes me mad:
Day-tide, night-time, waking or sleeping hour,
At home, abroad, alone, in company,
Working or playing, still," etc.Perhaps Shakespeare intended that Capulet's madness should break the metrical regularity. A passage in the play Wily Beguiled, resembling this speech, is quoted by Malone; but his statement that Nash in 1596 alluded to this old play is probably an error; the earliest existing edition is of 1606. Several hints for this speech were derived from Brooke's poem. - ↑ 181. train'd] The allied of Q 3 is preferred by several editors. On the suggestion of Q liand, Capell conjectured 'lianc'd; Mommsen lined (spoken of Paris' purse), or loin'd.
- ↑ 185. mammet … tender] a whining puppet, on the offer of good fortune. Mammet or maumet, an idol (from the supposed idolatry of the religion of Mahomet), hence a puppet. So 1 Henry IV. II. iii. 95: "to play with mammets." Every Woman in her Humour (1609): "I have seen the city of New Nineveh and Julius Cæsar acted by mammets."