William Shakespeare: A Critical Study. Georg Brandes

[1] N. J. Halpin: Oberon's Vision in the Midsummer Night's Dream, illustrated by a Comparison with Lylie's Endymion, 1842.

[2] New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1880-86, p. 67.

[3] The passage in The Maydes Metamorphosis runs as follows:—

      "Mopso. I pray you, what might I call you? 1st Fairy. My name is Penny. Mopso. I am sorry I cannot purse you. Frisco. I pray you, sir, what might I call you? 2nd Fairy. My name is Cricket. Frisco. I would I were a chimney for your sake."

[4] The passion for alliteration in his contemporaries is satirised in these lines of the prologue to Pyramus and Thisbe:—

      "Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade,

       He bravely broach'd his boiling bloody breast."

      XIII

      ROMEO AND JULIET—THE TWO QUARTOS—ITS ROMANESQUE STRUCTURE—THE USE OF OLD MOTIVES—THE CONCEPTION OF LOVE

      Romeo and Juliet, in its original form, must be presumed to date from 1591, or, in other words, from Shakespeare's twenty-seventh year.

      The matter was old; it is to be found in a novel by Masuccio of Salerno, published in 1476, which was probably made use of by Luigi da Porta when, in 1530, he wrote his Hystoria novellamente ritrovata di dui nobili Amanti. After him came Bandello, with his tale, La sfortunata morte di due infelicissimi amanti; and upon it an English writer founded a play of Romeo and Juliet, which seems to have been popular in its day (before 1562), but is now lost.

An English poet, Arthur Brooke, found in Bandello's Novella the matter for a poem: The tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, written first in Italian by Bandell and now in Englishe by Ar. Br. This poem is composed in rhymed iambic verses of twelve and fourteen syllables alternately, whose rhythm indeed jogs somewhat heavily along, but is not unpleasant and not too monotonous. The method of narration is very artless, loquacious, and diffuse; it resembles the narrative style of a clever child, who describes with minute exactitude and circumstantiality, going into every detail, and placing them all upon the same plane.[1].

      Shakespeare founded his play upon this poem, in which the two leading characters, Friar Laurence, Mercutio, Tybalt, the Nurse, and the Apothecary, were ready to his hand, in faint outlines. Romeo's fancy for another woman immediately before he meets Juliet is also here, set forth at length; and the action as a whole follows the same course as in the tragedy.

      The First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet was published in 1597, with the following title: An excellent conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet. As it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon his Seruants. Lord Hunsdon died in July 1596, during his tenure of office as Lord Chamberlain; his successor in the title was appointed to the office in April 1597; in the interim his company of actors was not called the Lord Chamberlain's, but only Lord Hunsdon's servants, and it must, therefore, have been at this time that the play was first acted.

      Many things, however, suggest a much earlier origin for it, and the Nurse's allusion to the earthquake (i. 3) is of especial importance in determining its date. She says—

      "'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;"

      and a little later—

      "And since that time it is eleven years."

      There had been an earthquake in England in the year 1580. But we must not, of course, take too literally the babble of a garrulous old servant.

      But even if Shakespeare began to work upon the theme in 1591, there is no doubt that, according to his frequent practice, he went through the play again, revised and remoulded it, somewhere between that date and 1599, when it appeared in the Second Quarto almost in the form in which we now possess it. This Second Quarto has on its title-page the words, "newly corrected, augmented and amended." Not until the fourth edition does the author's name appear.

      No one can doubt that Tycho Mommsen and that excellent Shakespeare scholar Halliwell-Phillips are right in declaring the 1597 Quarto to be a pirated edition. But it by no means follows that the complete text of 1599 already existed in 1597, and was merely carelessly abridged. In view of those passages (such as the seventh scene of the second act) where a whole long sequence of dialogue is omitted as superfluous, and where the old text is replaced by one totally new and very much better, this impression will not hold ground.

      We have here, then, as elsewhere—but seldom so indubitably and obviously as here—a play of Shakespeare's at two different stages of its development.

      In the first place, all that is merely sketched in the earlier edition is elaborated in the later. Descriptive scenes and speeches, which afford a background and foil to the action, are added. The street skirmish in the beginning is much developed; the scene between the servants and the scene with the musicians are added. The Nurse, too, has become more loquacious and much more comic; Mercutio's wit has been enriched by some of its most characteristic touches; old Capulet has acquired a more lifelike physiognomy; the part of Friar Laurence, in particular, has grown to almost twice its original dimensions; and we feel in these amplifications that care on Shakespeare's part, which appears in other places as well, to prepare, in the course of revision, for what is to come, to lay its foundations and foreshadow it. The Friar's reply, for example, to Romeo's vehement outburst of joy (ii. 6) is an added touch:—

      "These violent delights have violent ends,

       And in their triumphs die: like fire and powder,

       Which, as they kiss, consume."

      New, too, is his reflection on Juliet's lightness of foot:—

      "A lover may bestride the gossamer

       That idles in the wanton summer air,

       And yet not fall; so light is vanity."

      With the exception of the first dozen lines, the Friar's splendidly eloquent speech to Romeo (iii. 3) when, in his despair, he has drawn his sword to kill himself, is almost entirely new. The added passage begins thus:—

      "Why rail'st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth?

       Since birth, and heaven, and earth, all three do meet

       In thee at once, which thou at once wouldst lose.

       Fie, fie! thou sham'st thy shape, thy love, thy wit;

       Which, like an usurer, abound'st in all,

       And usest none in that true use indeed

       Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit."

      New, too, is the Friar's minute description to Juliet (iv. I) of the action of the sleeping-draught, and his account of how she will be borne to the tomb, which paves the way for the masterly passage (iv. 3), also added, where Juliet, with the potion in her hand, conquers her terror of awakening in the grisly underground vault.

      But the essential change lies in the additional earnestness, and consequent beauty, with which the characters of the two lovers have been endowed in the course of the revision. For example, Juliet's speech to Romeo (ii. 2) is inserted:—

      "And yet I wish but for the thing I have.

       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."

      In the passage (ii. 5) where Juliet is awaiting the return of the Nurse with a message from Romeo, almost the whole expression of