nets; but I am sent to find those persons, whose names are here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. I must to the learned:-In good time.

Enter BENVOLIO and ROMEO.

Ben. Tut, man! one fire 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 eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.

Rom. Your plantain 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 : Shut up in prison, kept without my food,

Whipp'd, and tormented, and-Good-e'en, good fellow.

Serv. God gi' good e'en.-I pray, sir, can you read?

Rom. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery. Serv. Perhaps you have learn'd it without book: 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. Signior Martino, and his wife and daughters; County Anselme, and his beauteous sisters; The lady widow of Vitruvio; Signior Placentio, and his

The plantain leaf is a blood-stancher, and was formerly applied to green wounds. So in Albumazar :

Help, Armellina, help! I'm fallen i'the cellar:
Bring a fresh plantain-leaf, I've broke my shin.'

lovely nieces; Mercutio, and his brother Valentine; Mine uncle Capulet, his wife, and daughters; My fair niece Rosaline; Livia; Signior Valentio, and his cousin Tybalt; Lucio, and the lively Helena. A fair assembly; [Gives back the Note]. Whither should they come?

Serv. Up.

Rom. Whither?

Serv. To supper; to our house.
Rom. Whose house?

Serv. My master's.

Rom. Indeed, I should have asked you that before. 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. Rest you merry.

[Exit.
Ben. At this same ancient feast of Capulet's
Sups the fair Rosaline, whom thou so lov'st;
With all the admired beauties of Verona.
Go thither; and, with unattainted eye,
Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.
Rom. When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires!
And these, who, often drown'd, could never die,—
Transparent hereticks, be burnt for liars!

One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun
Ne'er saw her match, since first the world begun.
Ben. Tut! you saw her fair, none else being by,
Herself pois'd with herself in either eye:
But in those crystal scales, let there be weigh'd
Your lady's love 10 against some other maid

9 This cant expression seems to have been once common: it often occurs in old plays. We have one still in use of similar import :-To crack a bottle.

10 Heath says,' Your lady's love' is the love you bear to your lady, which, in our language, is commonly used for the lady herself.' Perhaps we should read, ' Your lady love.".

That I will show you, shining at this feast,
And she shall scant show well, that now shows best.

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

SCENE III. A Room in Capulet's House1.

Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse.

La. Cap. Nurse, where's my daughter? call her forth to me.

Nurse. Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year

old,-

I bade her come. -What, lamb! what, lady-bird!— God forbid !—where's this girl?—what, Juliet!

La. Cap. This is the matter:-Nurse, give leave awhile,

We must talk in secret.-Nurse, come back again; I have remember'd me, thou shalt hear our counsel. Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.

Nurse. 'Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour. La. Cap. She's not fourteen.

Nurse.

I'll lay fourteen of my teeth, And yet, to my teen2 be it spoken, I have but four,She is not fourteen: How long is it now To Lammas-tide?

In all the old copies the greater part of this scene was printed as prose. Capell was the first who exhibited it as verse; the subsequent editors have followed him, but perhaps erroneously.

2 i. e. to my sorrow. This old word is introduced for the sake of the jingle between teen, and four, and fourteen.

La. Cap.

A fortnight, and odd days. Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year, Come Lammas-eve at night, shall she be fourteen. Susan and she,—God rest all Christian souls!Were of an age.-Well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me: But, as I said, On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen; That shall she, marry; I remember it well. 'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years3; And she was wean'd,-I never shall forget it,Of all the days of the year, upon that day; For I had then laid wormwood to my dug, Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall, My lord and you were then at Mantua :Nay, I do bear a brain :-but, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool! To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug. Shake, quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow, To bid me trudge.

And since that time it is eleven years:

For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,
She could have run and waddled all about.
For even the day before, she broke her brow:
And then my husband-God be with his soul!
'A was a merry man ;-took up the child:
Yea, quoth he, dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward, when thou hast more wit;

3 Mr. Tyrwhitt thinks that Shakspeare had in view the earthquake which had been felt in England in his own time, on the 6th of April, 1580; and that we may from hence conjecture that Romeo and Juliet was written in 1591.

4. The nurse means to boast of her retentive faculty. To bear a brain was to possess much mental capacity either of attention, ingenuity, or remembrance. Thus in Marston's Dutch Cour

tezan:

My silly husband, alas! knows nothing of it, 'tis

I that must beare a braine for all.'

Wilt thou not, Jule? and, by my holy-dam,
The pretty wretch left crying, and said—Ay:
To see now, how a jest shall come about!

I warrant, an I should live a thousand

years, I never should forget it; Wilt thou not, Jule? quoth he:

And, pretty fool, it stinted 5, and said—Ay.

La. Cap. Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy

peace.

Nurse. Yes, madam; Yet I cannot choose but

laugh,

To think it should leave crying, and say-Ay:
And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow
A bump as big as a young cockrel's stone;
A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly.
Yea, quoth my husband, fall'st upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward, when thou com'st to age;
Wilt thou not, Jule? it stinted, and said-Ay.
Jul. And stint thou too, I pray
thee, nurse, say
Nurse. Peace, I have done. God mark thee to
his grace!

Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nurs'd:
An I might live to see thee married once,
I have my wish.

La. Cap. Marry, that marry is the very theme
I came to talk of:-Tell me, daughter Juliet,
How stands your disposition to be married?
Jul. It is an honour that I dream not of.

I.

To stint is to stop. Baret translates Lachrymas supprimere, to stinte weeping;' and 'to stinte talke,' by 'sermones restinguere.' So Ben Jonson in Cynthia's Revels:

Again, in What You Will, by Marston:

'Pish! for shame, stint thy idle chat.'

Spenser uses the word frequently.

6 This tautologous speech is not in the first quarto of 1597.