Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.

Romeo and Juliet, act i. scene 5.

Romeo, too, when he learns that the lovely maiden Juliet is a Capulet, feels that fate has taken hold of him:

When Benvolio, in quite another temper, only conscious that the ball is losing its brightness, calls to him, “Away, begone! the sport is at the best!" Romeo answers, “Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest." But the all-powerful, irresistible stream of passion overcomes in both hearts all anxiety concerning the future which lies before them, fateful and threatening, overshadowed by the enmity of their two houses. With bold resolution, Romeo, who asks, "Can I go forward when my heart is here?" climbs the wall of the Capulet's garden to seek his sun. His reserve towards his friends begins from this moment. He parts from them without giving them information about his movements. This secrecy later on results in important consequences for Juliet and him. Upon their first meeting, which so suddenly sent the shaft of love into their hearts, follows the interview in Juliet's balcony, that indissolubly knits the tie between them, and brings about the fateful resolution, dictated by their impatient passion, which brooks no delay, to become united without regarding the terrible obstacles that lie between them. In the whole mass of the world's literature there is no love-scene to be compared to this. This indeed seems to have been dictated by Love himself. As longing has brought Romeo over the wall, so the passionate heart of Juliet cannot find the rest she sought in the virgin chamber where yesterday she slept a harmless child. She steps out on the balcony, not in the hope of finding the beloved of her soul, but to confide to the still night her tempest-tossed, blissful, and yet anguished feelings. She

feels painfully that she is in the grasp of an unrelenting fate. "Ah, me!" are the first words she utters to ease her oppressed heart. But she is firmly resolved, if Romeo returns her love, to dare everything, to tear herself free from all that chains and hems her in, to sever all family ties, and to live only for her love:

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

Romeo and Juliet, act ii. scene 2.

Romeo, of whose vicinity Juliet knows nothing, has listened entranced to the tender love confession of his sweetheart. When he appears, her first thought is of the danger he incurs, her first words are a warning, "If they do see thee, they will murder thee." Then she remembers, with blushes, which only "the mask of night" hide from him, that he, unknown to her, has heard her confession. But she does not retract it. She would, perhaps, had she not already spoken, "dwell on form," and delay to speak, but what she has said she will not recall, and he must return it with the confession of his own love. Full of touching tenderness is her entreaty that he will not "think her 'haviour light," and her promise to "prove more true, than those who have more cunning to be strange." Her nurse must, in garrulous fashion, have told her many tales of masculine unfaithfulness, for she knows that there is such a thing as false love. She says, "At lovers' perjuries, they say, Jove laughs." Therefore she dissuades him from swearing, or, if he will, he must not swear "by the moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb," but by his gracious self, that is the god of her idolatry. In all her happiness she is not free from timid doubts. Of this night's "too rash, too unadvised, too sudden" contract, she "has no joy." But her romantic all-trusting love repels the doubt

as soon as it has arisen, for she wishes him “as sweet repose and rest as that within her breast." She says:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep: the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

The nurse's call interrupts the lovers' talk. Juliet has time to assure him that if his bent of love be honourable, his purpose marriage, he is to send her word on the morrow by one that she'll procure to come to him, where and what time he will perform the rite. And all her fortunes at his foot she'll lay, and follow him, her lord, throughout the world. Once again she comes back to ask at what o'clock she shall send to him. But this is only a feint, because she cannot make up her mind to let him go. Amid romantic protestations they take a lingering leave, consoling themselves with the promise of a speedy meeting, and with the blissful hope of knitting ere long an indissoluble bond. Thus is this most important engagement undertaken. The pair of lovers who have found each other so early and so unexpectedly are determined, disregarding all obstacles, to contract an alliance which the deadly hatred between their two houses would seem to render impossible. In the earlier scenes there are phrases uttered which sound as if a reconciliation between the two families, founded on the irrevocable union of two members, might not be out of the question. Old Capulet says, "'Tis not hard, I think, for men so old as me to keep the peace." When his passionate nephew, Tybalt, wishes to attack the Montagues, he forbids him. An attempt at such reconciliation might not have been without result. But the evil star of the lovers will not permit their peaceful union. Sudden impulse and passionate haste remain the characteristic marks of their actions, and hence they themselves weave the net in which they are enmeshed, bringing them to a tragic end. Friar Lawrence, to whom Romeo hurries early on the following morning, to ask him

to marry them secretly, blames the fickleness of his young friend, whom he left yesterday in the deepest love-grief about another, and now finds so glowing with passion for Juliet, that, despite the hatred between their two houses, he wishes to marry her clandestinely. Rosaline, said the old man, "knew well thy love did read by rote, and could not spell." But nevertheless, though all this haste and suddenness does not please him, he is willing to grant Romeo's request, because he nourishes a hope that by means of this union the old feud between the two houses, which has caused so much unhappiness, may be healed. But while acceding to Romeo's prayer, he censures with prophetic anxiety the boundless passionate haste with which he goes about the affair, speaking the words, "Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast." And now, on the one hand, so ruled by his passion that he thinks of nothing else but obtaining as soon as possible its object, on the other, following another no less strong characteristic of his nature-determined impulse-Romeo commits the fatal blunder which is the starting-point of all the misery that befalls the pair. He arranges with the nurse that Juliet shall come that next afternoon to Friar Lawrence's cell to be married, but he conceals his secret from his friends. This reserve is heavily avenged. With passionate impatience Juliet watches for the nurse and the message she is to bring from Romeo, and when she comes at last, is almost driven mad by the delay caused by the old woman's discursive garrulity. An entrancing, soul-devouring bliss speaks but few words. Juliet greets the message, when at last she hears it, with the brief but important phrase, "Hie to high fortune! Honest nurse, farewell." When we ask, astonished, how a girl so young, who has as yet seen nothing of the world, and has had no companionship with men, can make up her mind so suddenly, without any virgin shame or terror, to a clandestine marriage, this scene with the nurse goes far to explain it. The nurse makes a very vulgar remark when

going to fetch the rope-ladder by which Romeo is to climb that night to his bliss. Such a phrase sounds unfit for the ear of an innocent young girl. In connection with her talk before the fatal ball, we conclude that the plebeian old woman has not been in the habit of bridling her tongue even in Juliet's presence. The young lady must early and often have heard improper speeches, and thus learned much which girls of her age and innocence and purity do not generally know. Hence she declares herself willing to take the decisive step without hesitation, without reference to her past, or to the surroundings amid which she has grown up. The lovers meet at Friar Lawence's cell. In his passionate excitement Romeo rashly defies fortune:

Amen, amen! but come what sorrow can,
It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
That one short minute gives me in her sight:
Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
Then love-devouring death do what he dare;
It is enough I may but call her mine.

Romeo and Juliet, act ii. scene 6.

Love-destroying Death waits on the threshold to take the incautious youth at his word. The old monk warns him, in tones which recall the ancient Greek Chorus, against his passionate talk:

These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume.

The marriage takes place. The love-drunken pair believe themselves to be on the threshold of Paradise. But already envious fortune is ready to destroy their too rapid dream of love and happiness. Already the avenging angel has bared the flaming sword that shall drive them for ever from their visioned Paradise. The unlucky results of Romeo's reserve begin to appear. The members of the two hostile houses meet again in the street, and, with the exception of the peacefully inclined Benvolio, all the Montagues rather seek