ROMEO AND JULIET is the only tragedy which Shakspeare has written entirely
on a love-story. It is supposed to have been his first play, and it
deserves to stand in that proud rank. There is the buoyant spirit of youth
in every line, in the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in the
bitterness of despair. It has been said of ROMEO AND JULIET by a great
critic, that "whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern
spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the
first opening of the rose, is to be found in this poem." The description
is true; and yet it does not answer to our idea of the play. For if it has
the sweetness of the rose, it has its freshness too; if it has the languor
of the nightingale's song, it has also its giddy transport; if it has the
softness of a southern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There is
nothing of a sickly and sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in love,
but they are not love-sick. Everything speaks the very soul of pleasure,
the high and healthy pulse of the passions: the heart beats, the blood
circulates and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid
interchange of sentiments lip-deep, learnt at second-hand from poems and
plays,--made up of beauties of the most shadowy kind, of "fancies wan that
hang the pensive head," of evanescent smiles, and sighs that breathe not,
of delicacy that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce
supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an artificial dearth
of sense, spirit, truth, and nature! It is the reverse of all this. It is
Shakspeare all over, and Shakspeare when he was young.