ROM. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.5 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 lovely nieces; Mercutio, and his brother Valentine; Mine

Tackius tells us,

Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.] that a toad, before she engages with a spider, will fortify herself with some of this plant; and that, if she comes off wounded, she cures herself afterwards with it. DR. GREY.

The same thought occurs in Albumazar, in the following lines: "Help, Armellina, help! I'm fall'n i' the cellar: "Bring a fresh plantain leaf, I've broke my shin." Again, in The Case is Alter'd, by Ben Jonson, 1609, a fellow who has had his head broke, says: ""Tis nothing, ""Tis nothing, a fillip, a

device: fellow Juniper, prithee get me a plantain.'

The plantain leaf is a blood-stauncher, and was formerly ap

plied to green wounds. STEEVENS.

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.

• To supper; to our house.] The words to supper are in the old copies annexed to the preceding speech. They undoubtedly belong to the Servant, to whom they were transferred by Mr. Theobald. MALONE.

7

-crush a cup of wine.] This cant expression seems to have been once common among low people. I have met with it often in the old plays. So, in The Two angry Women of Abington, 1599:

"Fill the pot, hostess &c. and we'll crush it." Again, in Hoffman's Tragedy, 1631:

66 -we'll crush a cup of thine own country wine." Again, in The Pinder of Wakefield, 1599, the Cobler says: "Come, George, we'll crush a pot before we part.”

We still say, in cant language to crack a bottle. STEEVENS.

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:

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But in those crystal scales, let there be weigh'd
Your lady's love against some other maid'
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.

8

SCENE III.

A Room in Capulet's House.

Enter Lady CAPULET and Nurse.

LA. CAP. Nurse, where's my daughter? call her forth to me.

NURSE. Now, by my maiden-head,-at twelve year old,—

-in those crystal scales,] The old copies have-that crystal, &c. The emendation was made by Mr. Rowe. I am not sure that it is necessary. The poet might have used scales for the entire machine. MALONE.

9

let there be weigh'd

Your lady's love against some other maid-] Your lady's love is the love you bear to your lady, which in our language is commonly used for the lady herself. HEATH.

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 teen' be it spoken, I have but

four,

She is not fourteen: How long is it now
To Lammas-tide ?

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;

This old word is introduced by Shakspeare for the sake of the jingle between teen, and four, and fourteen. STEEVENS.

That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
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 :3-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:

But how

'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;] comes the Nurse to talk of an earthquake upon this occasion? There is no such circumstance, I believe, mentioned in any of the novels from which Shakspeare may be supposed to have drawn his story; and therefore it seems probable, that he had in view the earthquake, which had really been felt in many parts of England, in his own time, viz. on the 6th of April, 1580. [See Stowe's Chronicle, and Gabriel Harvey's Letter in the Preface to Spenser's Works, edit. 1679.] If so, one may be permitted to conjecture, that Romeo and Juliet, or this part of it at least, was written in 1591; after the 6th of April, when the eleven years since the earthquake were completed; and not later than the middle of July, a fortnight and odd days before Lam

mas-tide. TYRWHITT.

3

Nay, I do bear a brain:] That is, I have a perfect remembrance or recollection. So, in The Country Captain, by the Duke of Newcastle, 1649, p. 51: "When these wordes of command are rotten, wee will sow some other military seedes; you beare a braine and memory." REED.

So, in Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, 1611: "Dash, we must bear some brain." Again, in Marston's Dutch Courtesan, 1604: nay an I bear not a brain,-."

Again, in Heywood's Golden Age, 1611:

"As I can bear a pack, so I can bear a brain.”

STEEVENS.