slay his dear lady who lived but in his life?  The noble form of man, he said, was but a shape of wax, when it wanted the courage which should keep it firm.  The law had been lenient to him, that instead of death which he had incurred, had pronounced by the prince’s mouth only banishment.  He had slain Tybalt, but Tybalt would have slain him:  there was a sort of happiness in that.  Juliet was alive, and (beyond all hope) had become his dear wife, therein he was most happy.  All these blessings, as the friar made them out to be, did Romeo put from him like a sullen misbehaved wench.  And the friar bade him beware, for such as despaired (he said) died miserable.  Then when Romeo was a little calmed, he counselled him that he should go that night and secretly take his leave of Juliet, and thence proceed straitways to Mantua, at which place he should sojourn, till the friar found a fit occasion to publish his marriage, which might be a joyful means of reconciling their families; and then he did not doubt but the prince would be moved to pardon him, and he would return with twenty times more joy than he went forth with grief.  Romeo was convinced by these wise counsels of the friar, and took his leave to go and seek his lady, proposing to stay with her that night, and by day-break pursue his journey alone to Mantua; to which place the good friar promised to send him letters from time to time, acquainting him with the state of affairs at home.

That night Romeo passed with his dear wife, gaining secret admission to her chamber, from the orchard in which he had heard her confession of love the night before.  That had been a night of unmixed joy and rapture; but the pleasures of this night, and the delight which these lovers took in each other’s society, were sadly allayed with the prospect of parting, and the fatal adventures of the past day.  The unwelcome day-break seemed to come too soon, and when Juliet heard the morning-song of the lark, she would have persuaded herself that it was the nightingale, which sings by night; but it was too truly the lark which sung, and a discordant and unpleasing note it seemed to her; and the streaks of day in the east too certainly pointed out that it was time for these lovers to part.  Romeo took his leave of his dear wife with a heavy heart, promising to write to her from Mantua every hour in the day, and when he had descended from her chamber-window, as he stood below her on the ground, in that sad foreboding state of mind in which she was he appeared to her eyes as one dead in the bottom of a tomb.  Romeo’s mind misgave him in like manner; but now he was forced hastily to depart, for it was death for him to be found within the walls of Verona after day-break.

This was but the beginning of the tragedy of this pair of star-crossed lovers.  Romeo had not been gone many days, before the old lord Capulet proposed a match for Juliet.  The husband he had chosen for her, not dreaming that she was married already, was count Paris, a gallant, young, and noble gentleman, no unworthy suitor to the young Juliet, if she had never seen Romeo.