Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill’d your cousin?
Juliet. Shall I speak ill of
him that is my husband?
Ah my poor lord, what
tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I, thy three-hours’
wife, have mangled it?
And then follows on the neck of her remorse and returning fondness, that wish treading almost on the brink of impiety, but still held back by the strength of her devotion to her lord, that ’father, mother, nay, or both were dead’, rather than Romeo banished. If she requires any other excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being banished from her.—Perhaps one of the finest pieces of acting that ever was witnessed on the stage, is Mr. Kean’s manner of doing this scene and his repetition of the word, banished. He treads close indeed upon the genius of his author.
A passage which this celebrated actor and able commentator on Shakespeare (actors are the best commentators on the poets) did not give with equal truth or force of feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of Juliet, before he drinks the poison.
—Let me peruse
this face—
Mercutio’s kinsman!
noble county Paris!
What said my man, when
my betossed soul
Did not attend him as
we rode! I think,
He told me, Paris should
have married Juliet!
Said he not so? or did
I dream it so?
Or am I mad, hearing
him talk of Juliet,
To think it was so?—O,
give me thy hand,
One writ with me in
sour misfortune’s book!
I’ll bury thee
in a triumphant grave—
For here lies Juliet.
. . . . . .
—O, my love!
my wife!
Death that hath suck’d
the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet
upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer’d;
beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips,
and in thy cheeks,
And Death’s pale
flag is not advanced there.—
Tybalt, ly’st
thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favour
can I do to thee,
Than with that hand
that cut thy youth in twain,
To sunder his that was
thine enemy?
Forgive me, cousin!
Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so
fair! I will believe
That unsubstantial death
is amorous;
And that the lean abhorred
monster keeps
Thee here in dark to
be his paramour.
For fear of that, I
will stay still with thee;
And never from this
palace of dim night
Depart again: here,
here will I remain
With worms that are
thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting
rest;
And shake the yoke of
inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied
flesh.—Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last
embrace! and lips, O you
The doors of breath,
seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to