“Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun
Peer’d forth the golden window of the east”—
and, far more strikingly, the following speech of old Montague:—
“Many a morning hath he there been seen
With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew”—
prove that Shakespeare meant the _Romeo and Juliet_ to approach to a poem,
which, and indeed its early date, may be also inferred from the multitude
of rhyming couplets throughout. And if we are right, from the internal
evidence, in pronouncing this one of Shakespeare’s early dramas, it
affords a strong instance of the fineness of his insight into the nature
of the passions, that Romeo is introduced already love-bewildered. The
necessity of loving creates an object for itself in man and woman; and yet
there is a difference in this respect between the sexes, though only to be
known by a perception of it. It would have displeased us if Juliet had
been represented as already in love, or as fancying herself so;—but no
one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeo’s forgetting his
Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful
imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere
creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of
Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is
really near the heart.
“When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires!
One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun
Ne’er saw her match, since first the world begun.”
The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakespeare to a
direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in
infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a
class,—just as in describing one larch tree, you generalise a grove of
them,—so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalisation is done to
the poet’s hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the
feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother’s
affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the
mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike
fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy humble,
ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her
superiors!—
“Yes, madam!—Yet I cannot choose but laugh,” &c.
In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. O! how shall I
describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted
on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty
that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing enraptured,
and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! Wit ever
wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an easy mind
that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of
others, and yet to be interested in them,—these and all congenial
qualities, melting into the common _copula_ of them all, the man of rank
and the gentleman, with all its excellencies and all its weaknesses,
constitute the character of Mercutio!