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SCENE

III.

Changes to a Monastery.

Enter Friar Lawrence, with a basket.

Fri. HE grey-ey'd ing night,

HE grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frown

Check'ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light:
And darkness flecker'd, like a drunkard, reels
From forth day's path, and Titan's burning wheels.
Now ere the Sun advance his burning eye,
The day to chear, and night's dank dew to dry,
I must fill up this ofier-cage of ours
With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth, that's Nature's mother, is her tomb;
What is her burying Grave, that is her womb;
And from her womb children of divers kind
We fucking on her natural bosom find:
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for fome, and yet all different.
O, mickle is the 9 powerful grace, that lies
In plants, herbs, ftones, and their true qualities.
Nor nought fo vile, that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught fo good, but, strain'd from that fair ufe,
Revolts from true Birth, stumbling on abuse.

8 The grey-ey'd morn, &c.] These four first lines are here replaced, conformable to the first edition, where such a description is much more proper than in the mouth of Romeo just before, when he was full of nothing but the

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thoughts of his mistress. POPE.

In the folio these lines are printed twice over, and given once to Romeo, and once to the Frier.

9-powerful grace,] Efficacious virtue.

Virtue

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometime by action's dignify'd.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
• Poison hath refidence, and med❜cine power,
For this being smelt, with that sense chears each part,
Being tasted, lays all senses with the heart.
* Two such opposed foes encamp them still
In man, as well as herbs, Grace and rude Will :
And where the worser is predominant,
Full-foon the canker death eats up that plant.

Enter Romeo,

Rom. Good morrow, father!
Fri. Benedicite!

What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?
Young fon, it argues a distemper'd head
So foon to bid good-morrow to thy bed :
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
And, where care lodgeth, sleep will never lie;
But where unbruised youth with unstuft brain
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign;
Therefore thy earliness doth me affure,

Thou art up-rouz'd by some distemp'rature;

* Poison bath refidence, and medicine power:] I believe Shakespear wrote, more accurately, thus,

Poison hath refidence, and medic'nal power :

i. e. both the poison and the antidote are lodged within the rind of this flower. WARBURTON.

There is no need of alteration. 2 Two such opposed FOES This is a modern Sophistication. The old books have it opposedKINGS, So that it appears, Shakespear wrote, Two such op

posed KIN. Why he calls them Kin was, because they were qualities refiding in one and the fame substance. And as the enmity of opposed Kin generally rises higher than that between strangers, this circumstance adds a beauty to the expression.

WARB.

Foes is certainly wrong, and kin is not right. Two kings are two opposite powers, two contending potentates, in both the natural and moral world. The word encamp is proper to commanders.

Or if not fo, then here I hit it right,

Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.

Rom. That last is true, the sweeter Rest was mine. Fri. God pardon fin! wast thou with Rofaline? Rom. With Rofaline, my ghostly father? no. I have forgot that name, and that name's woe. Fri. That's my good fon: but where haft thou

been then ?

Rom. I'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again;
I have been feasting with mine enemy,
Where, on a sudden, one hath wounded me,
That's by me wounded; both our remedies
Within thy help and holy physick lies;
I bear no hatred, blessed man, for, lo,
My interceffion likewise steads my foe.

Fri. Be plain, good fon, rest homely in thy drift; Riddling confeffion finds but riddling fhrift.

Rom. Then plainly know, my heart's dear love is

fet
On the fair daughter of rich Capulet;
As mine on hers, fo hers is set on mine;
And all combin'd; save what thou must combine
By holy marriage: When, and where, and how,
We met, we woo'd, and made exchange of vow,
I'll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,
That thou consent to marry us this day.

Fri. Holy faint Francis, what a change is here !
Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,
So foon forsaken? young mens' love then lies
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
Holy faint Francis! what a deal of brine
Hath washt thy fallow cheeks for Rofaline ?
How much falt-water thrown away in waste,
To season love, that of it doth not taste?
The Sun not yet thy sighs from heaven cleats,
Thy old groans ring yet in my antient ears,
Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth fit
Of an old tear that is not wash'd off yet.

If

If e'er thou wast thyself, and these woes thine,
Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline.

And art thou chang'd? pronounce this sentence then,
Women may fall, when there's no strength in men.

Rom. Thou chidd'st me oft for loving Rofaline.
Fri. For doating, not for loving, Pupil mine.
Rom. And bad'it me bury love.

Fri. Not in a Grave,

To lay one in, another out to have.

Rom. I pray thee, chide not: she, whom I love

now,

Doth grace for grace, and love for love allow :
The other did not fo.

Fri. Oh, she knew well,

Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell.
But come, young waverer, come and go with me,
In one respect I'll thy assistant be:

For this alliance may so happy prove,

To turn your houshold-rancour to pure love.

Rom. O let us hence, I stand on fudden hafte.

Fri. Wifely and flow; they stumble, that run faft.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

Changes to the STREET.

Enter Benvolio and Mercutio.

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HERE the devil should this Romeo be? came he not home to-night?

Ben. Not to his father's, I spoke with his man. Mer. Why, that fame pale, hard-hearted, wench,

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that Rofaline,

Torments him so, that he will, fure, run mad.

Ben.

Ben. Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet,
Hath fent a letter to his father's house.
Mer. A challenge, on my life.
Ben. Romeo will answer it.

Mer. Any man, that can write, may answer a letter.

Ben. Nay, he will answer the letter's master how he dares, being dar'd.

Mer. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! stabb'd with a white wench's black eye, run through the ear with a love-fong; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's but-shaft; and is he a man to encounter Tybalt!

Ben. Why, what is Tybalt?

Mer. More than prince of cats ?-Oh, he's the + courageous captain of compliments; he fights as you fing prick'd fongs, keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests his minum, one, two, and the third in your bosom; the very butcher of a filk button, a duellift, a duellist; 5 a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause; ah, the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the, hay!

Ben. The what?

3 More than prince of cats ?-] Tybalt, the name given to the Cut, in the story-book of Reynold the Fox. WARBURTON.

4 courageous captain of compliments: A complete master of all the laws of ceremony, the principal man in the doctrine of untilio.

A man of compliments; whom ri ht and wrong Have chose as umpire; Says our authour of Don Armado, the Spaniard, in Love's labour loft.

s A gentleman of the very first bouf, of the first and I con! cause ;] VOL. VIII.

E

i. e. one who pretends to be at the head of his family, and quarrels by the book. See Note on As you like it, Act V. Scene 6.

WARBURTON.

6 The, hay!] All the terms of the modern fencing-school were criginally Italian; the rapier, or small thrusting sword, being first used in Itay. The hay is the word hai, y u have it, used when a thrust reaches the antagonist, from which our fencers, on the fame occafion, without knowing. I fippose, any reason for it, cry out, ba!

Mer

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