Part 8 (1/2)
By Tybalts rage, prouoked unto yre, He payeth death to Tybalt for his hyre.
A banisht man, he scapes by secret flight, New mariage is offred to his wyfe.
She drinkes a drinke that seemes to reue her breath, They bury her, that sleping yet hath lyfe.
Her husband heares the tydinges of her death: He drinkes his bane. And she with Romeus knyfe, When she awakes, her selfe (alas) she sleath.”
And the t.i.tle of the same story in William Painter's ”Palace of Pleasure,”
is on the same lines:
”The goodly Hystory of the true, and constant Loue betweene Rhomeo and Iulietta, the one of whom died of Poyson, and the other of sorrow, and heuinesse: wherein be comprysed many aduentures of Loue, and other deuises touchinge the same.”
Here is Shakespeare's Prologue to his adaptation of the story for the stage:
”Two housholds, both alike in dignitie, In faire Verona, where we lay our Scene, From auncient grude breake to new mutinie Where ciuill bloud makes ciuill hands uncleane.
From forth the fatall loynes of these two foes A paire of starre-crost louers take their life; Whose misaduentur'd pittious overthrowes Doth, with their death, burie their Parents strife.
The fearfull pa.s.sage of their death-markt loue, And the continuance of their Parents rage, Which, but their childrens end, nought could remoue, Is now the two houres trafficque of our Stage; The which, if you with patient eares attend, What here shall misse, our toyle shall striue to mend.”
Why the dramatist thought fit to choose a different motive for his tragedy to the one shown in the poem and the novel, we shall never know. He may have found the hatred of the two houses accentuated in an older play on this subject, and his unerring dramatic instinct would prompt him to use the parents' strife as a lurid background on which to portray with greater vividness the ”fearfull pa.s.sage” of the ”starre-crost louers”; or the modification may have been due to his reflections upon the political and religious strife of his day; or to his irritation at Brooke's short-sightedness in upholding, as more deserving of censure, the pa.s.sion of improvident love than the evil of ready-made hatred. Whatever be the reason, the fact remains that Shakespeare, who was not partial to Prologues, has in this instance made use of one to indicate the lines that guide the action of his play, and it is upon these lines that I propose to-night to discuss the stage representation.
I divide the characters into three groups. Those who belong to the House of Capulet, the House of Montague, and those who, as partisans of neither of the houses, we may call the neutrals. These include Escalus, Mercutio, Paris, Friar Laurence, Friar John, an apothecary, and all the citizens of any position and standing, the Italian munic.i.p.alities being ever anxious to repress the feuds of n.o.bles.
The play opens with a renewal of hostilities between the two houses, which serves not only as a striking opening, but brings on to the stage many of the chief actors without unnecessary delay. In less than thirty lines we are introduced to seven persons, all of whom indicate their character by the att.i.tude they a.s.sume towards the quarrel. We are shown the peace-loving Benvolio, the fiery Tybalt, the imperious and vigorous Capulet, calling for his two-handed sword--
”What noyse is this? giue me my long sword, hoe!”--
his characterless wife, feebly echoing her husband's moodiness--
”A crowch, a crowch, why call you for a sword?”
and the calm dignity of Romeo's mother--
”Thou shalt not stir one foote to seeke a foe.”
We are also shown the citizens hastily arming themselves to part the two houses, and hear for the first time their ominous shout:
”Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Mountagues.”
It is heard on two subsequent occasions during the play, and is the death-knell of the lovers. The quarrel is abruptly terminated by the entrance of the Prince, who speaks with a precision and decision which throws every other character on the stage into insignificance, and stamps him at once in our eyes as a central figure. After the belligerents disperse, admonished by the Prince that death awaits the next offender against the peace, a scene follows to prepare us for Romeo's entrance, Shakespeare having wisely kept him out of the quarrel, that the audience may see him indifferent to every other pa.s.sion but the one of love. Romeo, until he had been shot with Cupid's arrow, seems to have pa.s.sed for a pleasant companion, as we learn from Mercutio's words, spoken to him in the third act:
”Why is not this better now, than groning for loue; now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo: now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature.”
Romeo's romantic temperament naturally leads him into a love affair of a sufficiently compromising character to need being kept from the knowledge of his parents. Brooke narrates Rosaline's reception of Romeo's pa.s.sion:
”But she that from her youth was fostred euermore, With vertues foode, and taught in schole of wisdomes skillful lore: By aunswere did cutte of th' affections of his loue, That he no more occasion had so vayne a sute to moue.”
And Shakespeare gives to Romeo almost similar words:
”And in strong proofe of chast.i.tie well armd, From loues weak childish bow she liues uncharmd; Shee will not stay the siege of louing tearmes, Nor bide th' incounter of a.s.sailing eies, Nor ope her lap to sainct seducing gold.”
A note in the Irving stage-version, referring to Mercutio's words, ”stabd with a white wenches blacke eye,” states that ”a pale woman with black eyes” is suggestive of a wanton nature. Is this Rosaline's character? If we are to accept seriously Mercutio's words as being the poet's description of Rosaline's personal appearance, we may also give a literal interpretation to the following lines:
”I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes, By her high forehead, and her Scarlet lip.”