8

So early waking,-what with loathsome smells;
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad ;'-
O! if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefathers' joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks, I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body

7

1623:

run mad;] So, in Webster's Dutchess of Malfy,

"I have this night digg'd up a mandrake,
"And am grown mad with't."

Again, in The Atheist's Tragedy, 1611:

"The cries of mandrakes never touch'd the ear

"With more sad horror, than that voice does mine."

Again, in A Christian turn'd Turk, 1612:

"I'll rather give an ear to the black shrieks

"Of mandrakes," &c.

Again, in Aristippus, or the Jovial Philosopher:

"This is the mandrake's voice that undoes me."

The mandrake (says Thomas Newton, in his Herball to the Bible, 8vo. 1587,) has been idly represented as "a creature having life and engendered under the earth of the seed of some dead person that hath beene convicted and put to death for some felonie or murther; and that they had the same in such dampish and funerall places where the saide convicted persons were buried," &c. STEEVENS.

See Vol. XII. p. 149, n. 1; and Vol. XIII. p. 297, n. 8.

MALONE.

8-be distraught,] Distraught is distracted. So, in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song 10:

"Is, for that river's sake, near of his wits distraught." Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. I. c. ix:

"What frantick fit, quoth he, hath thus distraught," &c. STEEVENS.

Upon a rapier's point:-Stay, Tybalt, stay!—
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee."

[She throws herself on the Bed.

SCENE IV.

Capulet's Hall.

Enter Lady CAPULET and Nurse.

LA. CAP. Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse.

NURSE. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.1

Enter CAPULET.

CAP. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow'd,

The curfeu bell' hath rung, 'tis three o'clock:

9 Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.] So the first quarto, 1597. The subsequent ancient copies read:

1

Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, here's drink, I drink to thee.

MALONE.

They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.] i. e. in the room where paste was made. So laundry, spicery, &c.

See Vol. V. p. 321, n. 5.

MALONE.

On the books of the Stationers' Company, in the year 1560, are the following entries:

"Item payd for iiii pound of dates iiii s.

"Item payd for xxiiii pounde of prunys iii. s. viii d.”

STEEVENS.

* The curfeu bell-] I know not that the morning-bell, is called the curfeu in any other place. JOHNSON.

Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica :3
Spare not for cost.

NURSE. Go, go, you cot-quean, go, Get you to bed; 'faith, you'll be sick to-morrow For this night's watching.

CAP. No, not a whit; What! I have watch'd ere

now

All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick. LA. CAP. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time;

The curfew bell was rung at nine in the evening, as appears from a passage in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608: well 'tis nine o'clock, 'tis time to ring curfew.”

66

STEEVENS.

The curfew bell is universally rung at eight or nine o'clock at night; generally according to the season. The term is here used with peculiar impropriety, as it is not believed that any bell was ever rung so early as three in the morning. The derivation of curfeu is well known, but it is a mere vulgar error that the institution was a badge of slavery imposed by the Norman Conqueror. To put out the fire became necessary only because it was time to go to bed: And if the curfeu commanded all fires to be extinguished, the morning bell ordered them to be lighted again. In short, the ringing of those two bells was a manifest and essential service to people who had scarcely any other means of measuring their time. RITSON.

3 Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica:] Shakspeare has here imputed to an Italian nobleman and his lady all the petty solicitudes of a private house concerning a provincial entertainment. To such a bustle our author might have been witness at home; but the like anxieties could not well have occurred in the family of Capulet, whose wife, if Angelica be her name, is here directed to perform the office of a housekeeper. STEEVENS. a mouse-hunt in your time;] In my original attempt to explain this passage, I was completely wrong, for want of knowing that in Norfolk, and many other parts of England, the cant term for a weasel is-a mouse-hunt. The intrigues of this animal, like those of the cat kind, are usually carried on during the night. This circumstance will account for the appellation

4

But I will watch you from such watching now. [Exeunt Lady CAPULET and Nurse. CAP. A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!-Now, fellow,

What's there?

Enter Servants, with Spits, Logs, and Baskets.

1 SERV. Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what.

CAP. Make haste, make haste. [Exit 1 Serv.]Sirrah, fetch drier logs;

Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.

2 SERV. I have a head, sir, that will find out

logs,

And never trouble Peter for the matter.

[Exit. CAP. 'Mass, and well said; A merry whoreson !

ha,

Thou shalt be logger-head.-Good faith, 'tis day:
The county will be here with musick straight,
[Musick within.
For so he said he would. I hear him near :-
Nurse!-Wife-what, ho!-what, nurse, I say!

Enter Nurse.

Go, waken Juliet, go, and trim her up;
I'll go and chat with Paris:-Hie, make haste,
Make haste! the bridegroom he is come already:
Make haste, I say!

[Exeunt.

which Lady Capulet allows her husband to have formerly deserved.

STEEVENS.

The animal called the mouse-hunt, is the martin. HENLEY.

-Cat after kinde, good mouse hunt, is a proverb in Heywood's Dialogue, 1598, 1st. pt. c. 2. HOLT WHITE.

SCENE V.

Juliet's Chamber'; JULIET on the Bed.

Enter Nurse.

NURSE. Mistress !-what, mistress!-Juliet!fast, I warrant her, she:

Why, lamb !-why, lady!-fye, you slug-a-bed!— Why, love, I say!-madam! sweet-heart!—why, bride!

What, not a word?-you take your pennyworths

now;

Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant, The county Paris hath set up his rest,

5

5

— set up his rest,] This expression, which is frequently employed by the old dramatick writers, is taken from the manner of firing the harquebuss. This was so heavy a gun, that the soldiers were obliged to carry a supporter called a rest, which they fixed in the ground before they levelled to take aim. Decker uses it in his comedy of Old Fortunatus, 1600: “ -set your heart at rest, for I have set up my rest, that unless you can run swifter than a hart, home you go not.” "" The same expression occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's Elder Brother:

Again, in The Roaring Girl, 1611:

"Like a musket on a rest."

See Montfaucon's Monarchie Françoise, Tom. V. plate 48. STEEVENS.

The origin of this phrase has certainly been rightly explained, but the good Nurse was here thinking of other matters. T. C. The above expression may probably be sometimes used in the sense already explained; it is, however, oftener employed with a reference to the game at primero, in which it was one of the terms then in use. In the second instance above quoted it is cer tainly so. To avoid loading the page with examples, I shall refer