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speare all the women love, have loved, or are capable of loving, because they are true women. Juliet is love itself. That passion is the reason of her being; without it she would cease to exist; it is the pulse of her heart, the lifeblood in her veins, entwined with every fibre of her nature. Love, so pure and noble in Portia, so ethereally tender and free from care in Miranda, so sweetly trusting in Perdita, so playful in Rosalind, so faithful in Imogen, so full of submission in Desdemona, is in Juliet all these at once. They all remind us of her; she reminds us of nothing but her own sweet self. Thus she stands, together with her Romeo, in contradistinction to their whole surroundings, full of love in the midst of hatred, full of harmony in the midst of the jarring clash of enmity."

Verona is kept in perpetual unrest by the ever-renewed strife between the two great houses of Montague and Capulet. Blood flows in the streets, for the servants of the two families lose no opportunity of breaking out into strife and flying to arms. The ruler of the city has warned the unruly vassals, threatening that the next breach of the city's peace will be punished in life and limb. In these two houses have grown up, unknown to each other, two beings, both in strong contradiction to their surroundings, doomed by fate to break down with their love the family hatred, and through their painful death to reconcile the inimical houses, and quench with their blood the flame of discord that had lasted for a century. The poet has nowhere actually described Juliet Capulet, but, with consummate art, without any such formal description, he has revealed her to us as infinitely charming. Every utterance of her father, of the friar, of Romeo, unite around her an entrancing picture of young and tender sweetness, whose influence is heightened when we learn that love for her has driven the image of another from Romeo's heart. And from what environment has this lovely creature sprung? Between haughty parents and a plebeian nurse, her purity and gentleness are placed in a high light and prepare us for

her future sufferings. She trembles before her stern mother, before her rough fiery father. Like a spoiled child, she alternately flatters and tyrannises over her nurse; hence the mingling of wilfulness and impatience, of strength and weakness, of distrust and confidence, we find in her character. On the other side, Romeo Montague, equally different from his surroundings, in the midst of the clash of arms that resounds about him, remains soft and susceptible, and is known, even among the impartial members of the house of his focmen, as a "virtuous and well-governed youth," averse to the wild strife of the time, seeking solitude, giving himself over to love for a beauty who turns from him in cold inaccessible chastity. Thus we find him on the morning of the day on which the fatal action begins that dooms him to an early grave. Already, before daybreak, he is "carly walking underneath the grove of sycamore that westward rooteth from the city's side." Seeking solitude, avoiding a meeting with his cousin Benvolio, given up entirely to romantic dreams of his cold and cruel beloved, whose charms he, at last constrained to speak by that same cousin, praises as above all, female beauty on earth:

Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
What doth her beauty serve, but as a note
Where I may read who pass'd that passing fair?
Farewell: thou canst not teach me to forget.

Romeo and Juliet, act i. scene 1.

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Juliet's heart, on the contrary, is a virgin page. Her father puts off the Count Paris, who sues for her hand, on account of her tender youth. But the alliance seems so honourable and useful to the clan, that the mother feels constrained to consult her child as to what she thinks of the proposal. She touches on the matter at first in a general way. "Tell me, daughter Juliet, how stands your disposition to be married?" With childlike indifference Juliet answers, "It is an honour that I dream not of." The nurse, with the freedom of an old and faithful servant, enters continually into

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the conversation, with stories and remarks of a more than doubtful character, such as to make us question whether she be the best companion for a young girl like Juliet. She praises her answer with comic admiration. Then, when the mother, pursuing the subject, mentions Count Paris as a suitor, nurse breaks out into extravagant praise. To the dircct question of her mother, whether Juliet is well inclined to the young Count, whose physical and mental qualities she lauds enthusiastically, the daughter answers with pious and childlike obedience:

I'll look to like, if looking liking move;
But no more deep will I endart mine eye
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.

Who could suspect in this passionless, dutiful, obedient girl, the woman who, borne away by a tempest of passion, breaks resolutely every tie that bound her childhood, and with unshaken determination dares every terror of death and corruption, that she may belong to the man she loves? Most admirable is the poet's art, that forces us to consider this unexpected development as natural to Juliet's character, and as the outcome of the situation in which she is placed. Let us try to trace the sources of this art.

The event leading to the important meeting of the youthful pair, who at a first glance fall passionately in love, occurs in a perfectly natural manner. A brilliant masked ball is given in the Capulet house, to which the whole nobility of the city is invited. With youthful rashness, Romeo's companions start the idea of going to this ball. Romeo accompanies them, not for fun, or that he expects to enjoy the ball, but only to behold, from afar, his beloved Rosaline, who, outshining all the other belles, is sure to be present. But his heart is full of fearful presentiments as he enters the Capulet palace :

My mind misgives

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

With this night's revels, and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.

Romeo and Juliet, act i. scene 4

Only too soon is fulfilled that which his warning spirit forbode. With this evening his doom begins. The ball is at its height when the Montagues enter the hall. Tybalt, the wild passionate nephew of old Capulet, the principal fomenter of the implacable hatred between the houses, has recognised his enemies, and Romeo in particular. Enraged, he would fain fly at the intruders, but old Capulet, who will not break the sacred laws of hospitality even against his enemies, orders him sternly, and with praises of Romeo, to keep the peace. Tybalt is only quieted after furious resistance. The prophecy he utters in his suppressed rage against Romeo, "This intrusion shall, now seeming sweet, convert to bitter gall," is fulfilled, though in a different fashion from what he expects. And now Romeo sees Juliet. He, who has gone to the ball to behold how far his Rosaline surpasses all others in beauty, at the first sight of this lovely creature, of whom he knows nothing, not even that she is the daughter of his enemy, forgets Rosaline, the whole world, everything, carried away by the magic of her loveliness:

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

Romeo and Juliet, act i. scene 5.

We will quote the first words exchanged between Romeo

and Juliet, to which the poet gives sonnet form:

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Rom. If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Jul. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss.

Rom. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Jul. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
Rom. O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Jul. Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
Rom. Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

Jul. Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Rom. Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

Jul.

You kiss by the book.

Romeo and Juliet, act i. scene 5.

In order to comprehend this first meeting between the lovers, we must rid our minds of the manners of our day, and transport ourselves into those in which a kiss, in midst of a large entertainment, was not only allowed in the highest classes in England, but was the most usual form of politeness. But the sudden manner in which the lovers, at the first moment of their meeting, abandon themselves to their love, and the continued renewal of these demonstrations throughout their connection to the last mournful catastrophe, awakes in us profound anxiety for their future. Juliet, when she sends her nurse to learn the name of the unknown youth, says something which betrays the full force of her suddenly kindled passion and the certainty that her whole future hangs upon it: "If he be married, the grave is like to be my wedding-bed." When she hears that Romeo belongs to the house of the foemen Montague, she recognises the full fatality that attends her love :

My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

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