The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (Dowden)/Act 1/Scene 2

by William Shakespeare

SCENE II.—The Same. A Street.

Enter Capulet, Paris, and Servant.^{[C 1]}

Cap.	But[C 2] Montague is bound as well as I, In penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, I think, For men so old as we to keep the peace.

Par.	Of honourable reckoning are you both; And pity 'tis you lived at odds so long. 5 But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?

Cap.	But saying o'er what I have said before: My child is yet a stranger in the world; She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;[E 1] Let two more summers wither in their pride 10 Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.

Par.	Younger than she are happy mothers made.

Cap.

And too soon marr'd are those so early made[C 3][E 2]. The earth[C 4][E 3] hath swallow'd all my hopes but she, She is the hopeful lady of my earth:[E 4] 15 But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart, My will to her consent[E 5] is but a part; An[C 5] she agree[C 6][E 6] within her scope of choice Lies my consent and fair according voice. This night I hold an old accustom'd[E 7] feast, 20 Whereto I have invited many a guest, Such as I love; and you, among the store, One more, most welcome, makes my number more. At my poor house look to behold this night Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light:[E 8] 25 Such comfort as do lusty young men[E 9] feel When well-apparell'd April on the heel Of limping[E 10] winter treads, even such delight Among fresh female[C 7] buds shall you this night Inherit[E 11] at my house; hear all, all see, 30 And like her most whose merit most shall be: Which on[C 8] more view of, many[C 9]—mine being one— May stand in number, though in reckoning none.[E 12] Come, go with me.—Go, sirrah, trudge about Through fair Verona; find those persons out 35 Whose names are written there, and to them say, My house and welcome on their pleasure stay. [Exeunt Capulet and Paris.

Serv.

Find them out whose names are written here! It[C 10] is written that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard, and the tailor with his last, the 40 fisher with his pencil, and the painter with his nets; but I am sent to find those persons whose names are here writ[C 11], and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. I must to the learned. In good time. 45

Enter Benvolio and Romeo.

Ben.	Tut, man, one fire[E 13] burns out another's burning, One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish; Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; One desperate grief cures with another's languish: Take thou some new infection to thy[C 12] eye, 50 And the rank poison of the old will die.

Rom.	Your plantain[E 14] leaf is excellent for that.

Ben.	For what, I pray thee?

Rom.	For your broken shin.

Ben.	Why, Romeo, art thou mad?

Rom.	Not mad, but bound more than a madman is; 55 Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipp'd and tormented, and—Good-den[C 13][E 15], good fellow.

Serv.

God gi' good-den[C 14]. I pray, sir, can you read?

Rom.	Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.

Serv.

Perhaps you have learned it without book: 60 but, I pray, can you read any thing you see?

Rom.	Ay, if I know the letters and the language.

Serv.

Ye say honestly; rest you merry!

Rom.

Stay, fellow; I can read.[Reads. [E 16]Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;[C 15] 65 County Anselme[C 16] and his beauteous sisters; The lady widow of Vitruvio;[C 17] Signior Placentio and his lovely nieces; Mercutio and his brother Valentine; Mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters; 70 My fair niece Rosaline; Livia; Signior Valentio and his cousin Tybalt; Lucio and the lively Helena. A fair assembly; whither should they come?

Serv.

Up—[C 18] 75

Rom.	Whither? to supper?[C 19]

Serv.

To our house.[E 17]

Rom.	Whose house?

Serv.

My master's.

Rom.	Indeed, I should have asked you that before. 80

Serv.

Now I'll tell you without asking. My master is the great rich Capulet; and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray, come and crush a cup of wine[E 18]. Rest you merry! [Exit.[C 20]

Ben.	At this same ancient feast of Capulet's 85 Sups the fair Rosaline, whom thou so lovest,[C 21][E 19] With all the admired beauties of Verona: Go thither; and with unattainted[E 20] eye Compare her face with some that I shall show, And I will make thee think thy swan a crow. 90

Rom.	When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires![C 22][E 21] And these, who often drown'd could never die, Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars! One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun[E 22] 95 Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.

Ben.

Tut[C 23], you saw her fair, none else being by, Herself poised with herself in either eye; But in that crystal scales[E 23] let there be weigh'd Your lady's love[E 24] against some other maid 100 That I will show you shining at this feast, And she shall scant show well that now seems[C 24][E 25] best.

Rom.	I'll go along, no such sight to be shown, But to rejoice in splendour of mine own.[Exeunt.

Critical notes

1. Enter …] Rowe; Enter Capulet, Countie Paris, and the Clowne Q, F.
2. 1. But] Q; omitted F; And Qq 4, 5.
3. 13. made] Q, F; married Q1.
4. 14. The earth] Qq 4, 5; Earth Q, F; Earth up Ff 2–4.
5. 18. An] Capell, And Q, F
6. agree] F, agreed Q (alone).
7. 29. female] Q1; fennell Q, F.
8. 32. Which on] Qq 4, 5; Which one Q, F
9. view of, many] Ed.; view, of many, Q, F; view of many, Qq 1, 4, 5.
10. 38, 39. written here! It] Dyce; written. Here it Q, F.
11. 43. here writ] Q, writ F.
12. 50. thy] Q (alone), the F.
13. 57. Good-den] Capell; Godden Q, F.
14. 58. God gi' good-den] Godgigoden Q, F.
15. 65. daughters] Q, daughter F.
16. 66. Anselme] Q (facsimile) Anselmē Q (Daniel, Furness).
17. 67. Vitruvio] F3; Vtruuio Q1, Q, F.
18. 75. Up—] Keightley, Up. Q, F.
19. 76. Whither? to supper?] F, Q5; Whither to supper? Q.
20. 84. Exit] F, omitted Q.
21. 86. lovest] F2; loves Q1, Q, F.
22. 92. fires] Pope; fire Q1, Q, F.
23. 97. Tut] F, Q; Tut Tut F2.
24. 102. seems] Q1, Q; shows Qq 3–5, Ff.

Explanatory notes

1. 9. fourteen years] In Brooke's poem Juliet is older: "Scarse saw she yet full xvi years"; in Paynter's prose tale she is nearly eighteen. Shakespeare's Marina, in Pericles, is fourteen; his Miranda is fifteen.
2. 13. made] The jingle between made and marr'd occurs, as Dyce notes, in II. iv. 123, 124, in Macbeth, II. iii. 36, and elsewhere. The jingle of Q1 made and married occurs in All's Well, II. iii. 315: "A young man married is a man that's marr'd," and in other writers beside Shakespeare.
3. 14. The earth] If earth be read with F, Q, swallowed of F, Q is perhaps a trisyllable, but it hardly mends the verse. F2, inserting up, shows that the line was considered defective.
4. 15. my earth] Three explanations have been given—(1) A Gallicism, fille de terre, heiress—Steevens. (2) my body, as in ii. i. 2, in Sonnets, cxlvi. "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth "; in Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy, v. 19, "This earth of mine doth tremble"—Mason and Malone, with whom I agree. (3) the hopeful lady of the world for me—Ulrici. Cartwright conjectures hearth. The Elizabethan earth meaning ploughing suggests another possible explanation; cf. Ant. and Cleop. II. ii. 233.
5. 17. to her consent] My will is a part subsidiary to her consent, which is the chief thing.
6. 18. An she agree] Daniel, inserting a comma after And, follows Q, And, she agreed.
7. 20. old accustom'd] Dyce, after Walker, hyphens these words.
8. 25. make dark heaven light] Stars of earth which shall cast up their beams to the dark heaven and illuminate it. Warburton read dark even (i.e. evening) light. Mason proposed heaven's light, the earthly stars outshine, and so eclipse, the stars of heaven. Daniel suggests mock ( = rival) dark heaven's light. No emendation is needed.
9. 26. young men] Johnson proposed yeomen, and Daniel, printing young-men from Q1, understands it as yeomen. Malone happily compares Sonnets, xcviii.:
   
   "When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
   Hath put a spirit of youth in every-thing."
10. 28. limping] Daniel prints lumping, Q1, "as conveying a more picturesque notion of dull, heavy, boorish winter."
11. 30. Inherit] possess, as in Tempest, IV. i. 154.
12. 32, 33] I venture on what I suppose to be a new pointing of these lines, but I do not alter any word of Qq 4, 5, inserting only a comma after of, and dashes to make the meaning clearer. Which for who and whom is common in Shakespeare. Reckoning is used for estimation in line 4 of this scene. The meaning I take to be: On more view of whom (i.e. the lady of most merit), many (other ladies)—and my daughter among them—may stand in a count of heads, but in estimation (reckoning, with a play on the word) none can hold a place. The same construction of "which" governed by a following "view of" occurs in Henry VIII. IV. i. 70, 71: "which when the people Had the more view of, such a noise," etc. Commentators, I think, have been misled into supposing an allusion here to the old saying that "one is no number." Q1 has Such amongst view of many myne beeing one,; Capell, On which more view; Mason proposed and Dyce read, Whilst on more view of many,; Daniel, Such amongst, view o'er many,; other suggestions of less value may be found in Cambridge Shakespeare.
13. 46. one fire] Rolfe refers to the proverb "fire drives out fire," and compares Julius Cæsar, III. i. 171, and Coriolanus, iv. vii. 54. The passage was probably suggested by lines in Brooke's poem.
14. 52. plantain] So referred to, as a salve for a broken shin, in Love's Labour's Lost, III. i. 76. Romeo would turn aside Benvolio's talk of remedies for love with a jest on the popular remedy for an ailment less hard to cure than a broken heart; let us discuss broken shins, not deeper wounds.
15. 57. Good-den] A corruption of "good e'en," it being now the afternoon.
16. 65–73. Capell conjectured that the list of invited guests was in verse; Dyce (ed. 2) so prints it. In line 66 Anselme, a trisyllable, should perhaps, as Capell conjectured, be Anselmo. Q1 for line 71 has My faire Neece Rosaline and Livia. Is it an over-refinement to suppose that Romeo falters and delays over Rosaline's name, and that the text as printed above was so designed? Fair may be a dissyllable; but it is not so in line 74.
17. 75–77] I believe that Romeo eagerly interrupts the Servant, who would have said "Up to our house." It is afternoon, and Romeo guesses that the invitations are for supper. Many editors, following Warburton and Theobald, assign the words to supper to the Servant, line 77.
18. 84. crush … wine] drink, quaff. So Greene, Works (Grosart), xi. 43, "crush a potte of ale."
19. 86. lovest] The loves of Q, F is not out of accord with Shakespeare's usage.
20. 88. unattainted] So 1 Henry VI. V. v. 81: "My tender youth was never yet attaint With any passion of inflaming love."
21. 92. fires] White accepts fire, Q, F, and observes truly, "The difference of a final s seems not to have been regarded in rhyme in Shakespeare's day."
22. 95. sun] Perhaps Massinger's "shade Of barren sicamores which the all-seeing sun Could not pierce through" (Great Duke of Florence, IV. ii.) is an echo from Romeo and Juliet. See I. 125.
23. 99. that crystal scales] Rowe read those, and is followed by many editors, Dyce: "Used here as a singular noun."
24. 100. lady's love] Theobald read lady-love, which Dyce follows. Challenged to produce an Elizabethan example of lady-love, Dyce produced one from Wilson's Cobler's Prophesie, 1594. Keightley reads lady and love. Clarke ingeniously suggests that "your lady's love" means the little love Rosaline bears you; let this be weighed against the charms of some other maid. Q1 agrees with Q, F in "lady's love." See White's remark on fires, line 92. Might we read maid's at the end of this line?
25. 102. seems] Perhaps shows is right; but Q1 supports Q in reading seems; shows might easily be repeated here by the printer; seems, in two independent texts, is unlikely to be a printer's error.