Shakespeare in the Theatre Part 8

By Tybalts rage, prouoked unto yre, He payeth death to Tybalt for his hyre.

A banisht man, he scapes by secret flight, New mariage is offred to his wyfe.

She drinkes a drinke that seemes to reue her breath, They bury her, that sleping yet hath lyfe.

Her husband heares the tydinges of her death: He drinkes his bane. And she with Romeus knyfe, When she awakes, her selfe (alas) she sleath."

And the t.i.tle of the same story in William Painter's "Palace of Pleasure,"

is on the same lines:

"The goodly Hystory of the true, and constant Loue betweene Rhomeo and Iulietta, the one of whom died of Poyson, and the other of sorrow, and heuinesse: wherein be comprysed many aduentures of Loue, and other deuises touchinge the same."

Here is Shakespeare's Prologue to his adaptation of the story for the stage:

"Two housholds, both alike in dignitie, In faire Verona, where we lay our Scene, From auncient grude breake to new mutinie Where ciuill bloud makes ciuill hands uncleane.

From forth the fatall loynes of these two foes A paire of starre-crost louers take their life; Whose misaduentur'd pittious overthrowes Doth, with their death, burie their Parents strife.

The fearfull pa.s.sage of their death-markt loue, And the continuance of their Parents rage, Which, but their childrens end, nought could remoue, Is now the two houres trafficque of our Stage; The which, if you with patient eares attend, What here shall misse, our toyle shall striue to mend."

Why the dramatist thought fit to choose a different motive for his tragedy to the one shown in the poem and the novel, we shall never know. He may have found the hatred of the two houses accentuated in an older play on this subject, and his unerring dramatic instinct would prompt him to use the parents' strife as a lurid background on which to portray with greater vividness the "fearfull pa.s.sage" of the "starre-crost louers"; or the modification may have been due to his reflections upon the political and religious strife of his day; or to his irritation at Brooke's short-sightedness in upholding, as more deserving of censure, the pa.s.sion of improvident love than the evil of ready-made hatred. Whatever be the reason, the fact remains that Shakespeare, who was not partial to Prologues, has in this instance made use of one to indicate the lines that guide the action of his play, and it is upon these lines that I propose to-night to discuss the stage representation.

I divide the characters into three groups. Those who belong to the House of Capulet, the House of Montague, and those who, as partisans of neither of the houses, we may call the neutrals. These include Escalus, Mercutio, Paris, Friar Laurence, Friar John, an apothecary, and all the citizens of any position and standing, the Italian munic.i.p.alities being ever anxious to repress the feuds of n.o.bles.

The play opens with a renewal of hostilities between the two houses, which serves not only as a striking opening, but brings on to the stage many of the chief actors without unnecessary delay. In less than thirty lines we are introduced to seven persons, all of whom indicate their character by the att.i.tude they a.s.sume towards the quarrel. We are shown the peace-loving Benvolio, the fiery Tybalt, the imperious and vigorous Capulet, calling for his two-handed sword--

"What noyse is this? giue me my long sword, hoe!"--

his characterless wife, feebly echoing her husband's moodiness--

"A crowch, a crowch, why call you for a sword?"

and the calm dignity of Romeo's mother--

"Thou shalt not stir one foote to seeke a foe."

We are also shown the citizens hastily arming themselves to part the two houses, and hear for the first time their ominous shout:

"Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Mountagues."

It is heard on two subsequent occasions during the play, and is the death-knell of the lovers. The quarrel is abruptly terminated by the entrance of the Prince, who speaks with a precision and decision which throws every other character on the stage into insignificance, and stamps him at once in our eyes as a central figure. After the belligerents disperse, admonished by the Prince that death awaits the next offender against the peace, a scene follows to prepare us for Romeo's entrance, Shakespeare having wisely kept him out of the quarrel, that the audience may see him indifferent to every other pa.s.sion but the one of love. Romeo, until he had been shot with Cupid's arrow, seems to have pa.s.sed for a pleasant companion, as we learn from Mercutio's words, spoken to him in the third act:

"Why is not this better now, than groning for loue; now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo: now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature."

Romeo's romantic temperament naturally leads him into a love affair of a sufficiently compromising character to need being kept from the knowledge of his parents. Brooke narrates Rosaline's reception of Romeo's pa.s.sion:

"But she that from her youth was fostred euermore, With vertues foode, and taught in schole of wisdomes skillful lore: By aunswere did cutte of th' affections of his loue, That he no more occasion had so vayne a sute to moue."

And Shakespeare gives to Romeo almost similar words:

"And in strong proofe of chast.i.tie well armd, From loues weak childish bow she liues uncharmd; Shee will not stay the siege of louing tearmes, Nor bide th' incounter of a.s.sailing eies, Nor ope her lap to sainct seducing gold."

A note in the Irving stage-version, referring to Mercutio's words, "stabd with a white wenches blacke eye," states that "a pale woman with black eyes" is suggestive of a wanton nature. Is this Rosaline's character? If we are to accept seriously Mercutio's words as being the poet's description of Rosaline's personal appearance, we may also give a literal interpretation to the following lines:

"I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes, By her high forehead, and her Scarlet lip."

In Charlotte Bronte's opinion, a high forehead was an indication of conscientiousness; she could get on, she would say, with anyone "who had a lump at the top of the head." The reproaches of the Friar are, in my opinion, levelled against Romeo, and not Rosaline. Romeo says:

"Thou chidst me oft for louing Rosaline."

And the Friar replies:

"For doting, not for louing, pupill mine."

Romeo could not openly woo one who was of the House of Capulet, and Rosaline would not tolerate a clandestine courtship.

In Scene 2 allusion is made for the second time to the quarrel of the two houses. We also hear of Juliet for the first time, and are shown Paris, no less a person than the Prince's kinsman, as a suitor for her hand. The a.s.sumed dignity and good breeding of Capulet in this scene are to be noted. The Irving acting-version leaves out the whole of the servant's very amusing speech about the shoemaker and his "yard." Why are virtuous tragedians always anxious to rob the low comedians of their cakes and ale?

In Scene 3 we are introduced to our princ.i.p.al comic character, the Nurse, brought into the play no doubt to supply "those unsavoury morsels of unseemly sentences, which doth so content the hungry humours of the rude mult.i.tude." We are shown Juliet, and hear again of Paris, whose high rank and fine clothes have won the simple mother's heart, but Juliet's independence of character is indicated in the line:

"He looke to like, if looking liking moue."

And a touch of subtlety is revealed to us in the words:

"But no more deepe will I endart mine eye, Than your consent giues strength to make (it) flie."

In Scene 4 Mercutio is brought on to the stage; a character that figures in many Elizabethan plays, and in the theatrical parlance of the poet's time was known as the "braggart" soldier, and yet the part had never received such brilliant treatment till Shakespeare took it in hand. Scene 5 is the hall in Capulet's house, where Romeo and Juliet see each other for the first time, the audience now being fully aware of the conditions under which the two meet. It has seen the hatred of the houses; the purse-proud Capulet contracting a fashionable marriage for his daughter; Romeo's melancholy; his longing for the love and sympathy of woman; and Juliet's loneliness amid conventional and uncongenial surroundings. The sight of a Montague within Capulet's house gives warning for a fresh outbreak of hostilities--

"but this intrusion shall, Now seeming sweet, conuert to bittrest gall"--

and Romeo's cry,

"Is _she_ a Capulet?

O deare account! my life is my foes debt"--

and Juliet's exclamation,

"Prodigious birth of loue it is to mee, That I must loue a loathed _enemie_!"

foreshadow the doom prophesied by Romeo as about to begin "with this night's reuels."

In the rebuke of Tybalt we get an indication of Capulet's character. A note in the Irving-version states that Capulet is a meddlesome mollycoddle not unlike Polonius. But the fussiness of Polonius proceeds from his vanity, from his mental and physical impotence. Capulet's activity is the outcome of a love for domineering that springs from his pride of birth, and his consciousness of physical superiority. Tybalt, who is no child, sinks into insignificance at the thunder of this man's voice:

"He shall be endured.

What goodman boy, I say he shall, go too.

Am I the master here, or you? go too, Youle not endure him, G.o.d shall mend my soule, ...

You will set c.o.c.k a hoope, youle be the man ...

You must contrarie _me_."

Capulet, I fear, would have annihilated the bloodless and decorous Polonius with the breath of his nostrils. Women who marry men of this overbearing character often lose their own individuality, and become mere ciphers. So does Lady Capulet. She dare not call her soul her own; she cannot be mistress even in the kitchen. It is Capulet's indignation at his nephew's interference with his affairs that prepares us for his outburst of pa.s.sion, in the fourth act, when his daughter threatens opposition to his will.

At the close of Scene 5 Shakespeare thinks it necessary to bring the Chorus on to the stage in order to make known to the audience the direction in which the future action of the play will turn, and to account for the suppression of Rosaline, of whom, until the entrance of Juliet, so much has been said. That the words were not printed in the first quarto, a piratical version published from notes taken at a performance of the play, seems to suggest that after the first representation the Chorus did not appear on the stage, for the speech was found to be an unnecessary interruption.

Presuming, therefore, that there is no delay in the progress of the action, Romeo returns from the ball, and, giving his companions the slip, hides himself in Capulet's orchard, where he hears their taunts about his Rosaline. The value, to the poet, of the Rosaline episode is thus further shown by the use he makes of it to conceal from Romeo's inquisitive companions this second love intrigue, so fraught with danger. That David Garrick, in his acting-version, should allow Mercutio to make open fun of Romeo's love for the daughter and heiress of old Capulet proves how rarely the actor is able to replace the author.