William Shakespeare: A Critical Study. Georg Brandes

the lines:—

      "Had she affections, and warm youthful blood,

       She'd be as swift in motion as a ball;

       My words would bandy her to my sweet love,

       And his to me:

       But old folks, many feign as they were dead;

       Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead."

      In Juliet's celebrated soliloquy (iii. 2), where, with that mixture of innocence and passion which forms the groundwork of her character, she awaits Romeo's first evening visit, only the four opening lines, with their mythological imagery, are found in the earlier text:—

      "Jul. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phœbus' lodging: such a waggoner As Phæthon would whip you to the west, And bring in cloudy night immediately."

      Not till he put his final touches to the work did Shakespeare find for the young girl's love-longing that marvellous utterance which we all know:—

      "Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night!

       That runaways' eyes may wink, and Romeo

       Leap to these arms, untalk'd-of, and unseen!

       . . . . . . . . .

       Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,

       With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,

       Think true love acted simple modesty.

       Come, night! come, Romeo! come, thou day in night!"

      Almost the whole of the following scene between the Nurse and Juliet, in which she learns of Tybalt's death and Romeo's banishment, is likewise new. Here occur some of the most daring and passionate expressions which Shakespeare has placed in Juliet's mouth:—

      "Some word there was, worser than Tybalt's death,

       That murder'd me. I would forget it fain.

       . . . . . . . . .

       That 'banished,' that one word 'banished,'

       Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt's death

       Was woe enough, if it had ended there:

       Or,—if sour woe delights in fellowship,

       And needly will be rank'd with other griefs,—Why

       follow'd not, when she said—Tybalt's dead,

       Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both,

       Which modern lamentation might have mov'd?

       But, with a rearward following Tybalt's death,

       'Romeo is banished!'—to speak that word,

       Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,

       All slain, all dead."

      To the original version, on the other hand, belong not only the highly indecorous witticisms and allusions with which Mercutio garnishes the first scene of the second act, but also the majority of the speeches in which the conceit-virus rages. The uncertainty of Shakespeare's taste, even at the date of the revision, is apparent in the fact that he has not only let all these speeches stand, but has interpolated not a few of equal extravagance.

      So little did it jar upon him that Romeo, in the original text, should thus apostrophise love (i. I)—

      "O heavy lightness! serious vanity!

       Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

       Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

       Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!"

      that in the course of revision he must needs place in Juliet's mouth these quite analogous ejaculations (iii. 2):—

      "Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!

       Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!

       Despised substance of divinest show!"

      Romeo in the old text indulges in this deplorably affected outburst (i. 2):—

      "When the devout religion of mine eye

       Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;

       And these, who, often drown'd, could never die,

       Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars."

      In the old text, too, we find the barbarously tasteless speech in which Romeo, in his despair, envies the fly which is free to kiss Juliet's hand (iii. 2):—

      "More validity,

       More honourable state, more courtship lives

       In carrion flies, than Romeo: they may seize

       On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand,

       And steal immortal blessing from her lips;

       Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,

       Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin;

       But Romeo may not; he is banished.

       Flies may do this, but I from this must fly:

       They are free men, but I am banished."

      It is astonishing to come upon these lapses of taste, which are not surpassed by any of the absurdities in which the French Précieuses Ridicules of the next century delighted, side by side with outbursts of the most exquisite lyric poetry, the most brilliant wit, and the purest pathos to be found in the literature of any country or of any age.

      Romeo and Juliet is perhaps not such a flawless work of art as A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is not so delicately, so absolutely harmonious. But it is an achievement of much greater significance and moment; it is the great and typical love-tragedy of the world.

      It soars immeasurably above all later attempts to approach it. The Danish critic who should mention such a tragedy as Axel and Valborg in the same breath with this play would show more patriotism than artistic sense. Beautiful as Oehlenschläger's drama is, the very nature of its theme forbids us to compare it with Shakespeare's. It celebrates constancy rather than love; it is a poem of tender emotions, of womanly magnanimity and chivalrous virtue, at war with passion and malignity. It is not, like Romeo and Juliet, at once the pæan and the dirge of passion.

      Romeo and Juliet is the drama of youthful and impulsive love-at-first-sight, so passionate that it bursts every barrier in its path, so determined that it knows no middle way between happiness and death, so strong that it throws the lovers into each other's arms with scarcely a moment's pause, and, lastly, so ill-fated that death follows straightway upon the ecstasy of union.

      Here, more than anywhere else, has Shakespeare shown in all its intensity the dual action of an absorbing love in filling the soul with gladness to the point of intoxication, and, at the same time, with despair at the very idea of parting.

      While in A Midsummer Night's Dream he dealt with the imaginative side of love, its fantastic and illusive phases, he here regards it in its more passionate aspect, as the source of rapture and of doom.

      His material enabled Shakespeare to place his love-story in the setting best fitted to throw into relief the beauty of the emotion, using as his background a vendetta between two noble families, which has grown from generation to generation through one sanguinary reprisal after another, until it has gradually infected the whole town around them. According to the traditions of their race, the lovers ought to hate each other. The fact that, on the contrary, they are so passionately drawn together in mutual ecstasy, bears witness from the outset to the strength of an emotion which not only neutralises prejudice in their own minds, but continues to assert itself in opposition to the prejudices of their surroundings. This is no peaceful tenderness. It flashes forth like lightning at their first meeting, and its violence, under the hapless circumstances, hurries these young souls straight to their tragic end.

      Between the lovers and the haters Shakespeare has placed Friar Laurence, one of his most delightful embodiments of reason. Such figures