From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (London: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 472-76.
ROMEO AND JULIET
1591-3
AN | EXCELLENT | conceited Tragedie | OF | Romeo and Juliet. | As it hath been often (with great applause) | plaid publiquely, by the right Ho | nourable the L. of Hunsdon, | his Seruants. | LONDON | Printed by Iohn Danter. | 1597. -- TITLE PAGE OF FIRST EDITION, 1597.
Two households, both alike in dignity
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life
Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to end.
-- SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM, 1597, Romeo and Juliet, Prologue.
March 1st. To the Opera, and there saw "Romeo and Juliet," the first time it was ever acted, but it is a play of itself the worst that ever I heard in my life, and the worst acted that ever I saw these people do, and I am resolved to go no more to see the first time of acting, for they were all of them out more or less. -- PEPYS, SAMUEL, 1662, Diary and Correspondence.
Shakespear show'd the best of his skill in his Mercutio, and he said himself, that he was forc'd to kill him in the third act to prevent being kill'd by him. But, for my part, I cannot find he was so dangerous a person: I see nothing in him but what was so exceeding harmless, that he might have lived to the end of the play, and died in his bed, without offence to any man. -- DRYDEN, JOHN, 1672, The Conquest of Granada. Second Part. Defence of the Epilogue.
"Romeo and Juliet" is best known by that copy of it which is generally performed, and in which Garrick has very Judiciously done little more than make Shakespear alter his own play, fitting the catsatrophe to the original invention of the novelist. The two grand points that Garrick, by the advice of his friends, has insisted on, are the expunging the idea of Rosalind, and Romeo's sudden inconstancy on the first impression of Juliet's superior beauty, and heightening the catastrophe, by Romeo's first shallowing the poison then in the extacy of finding Juliet survive, forgetting the desperate act he had committed, and flattering himself with a delusive hope of future happiness, and, again, the astonishment and delight of Juliet at recovering her lover, all which is instantly damped by a discovery that her fallacious hopes are to be but momentary. -- DIBDIN, CHARLES, 1795, A Complete History of the Stage, vol. III, p. 43.
Who can repress a groan at the sight of an enlightened nation, that counts among its critics a Pope and an Addison, going into raptures over the description of an Apothecary in "Romeo and Juliet?" It is the most hideous and disgusting burlesque. True it is that a flash of lightning illumines it, as in all Shakspere's shadows. Romeo utters a reflection on the unfortunate wretch who clings so closely to life burdened though he be with every wretchedness. -- CHATEAUBRIAND FRANCOIS RENE, VICOMTE DE, 1801, Shakspere ou Shakspeare.
By the manner in which he has handled it, it has become a glorious song of praise on that inexpressible feeling which ennobles the soul and gives to it its highest sublimity, and which elevates even the senses themselves into soul, and at the same time is a melancholy elegy on its frailty from its own nature and external circumstances: at once the deification and the burial of love. It appears here like a heavenly spark that, descending to the earth, is converted into a flash of lightning, by which mortal creatures are almost in the same moment set on fire and consumed. Whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous on the first opening of the rose, is breathed into this poem. But even more rapidly than the earliest blossoms of youth and beauty decay, it hurries on from the first timidly-bold declaration of love and modest return to the most unlimited passion, to an irrevocable union; then, amidst alternating storms of rapture and despair to the death of the two lovers, who still appear enviable as their love survives them, and as by their death they have obtained a triumph over every separating power. -- SCHLEGEL, AUGUSTUS WILLIAM, 1809, Dramatic Art and Literature, tr. Black, Lecture XII.
Of the truth of Juliet's story they [i.e., the Veronese] seem tenacious to a degree, insisting on the fact -- giving a date (1303), and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love. -- BYRON, LORD 1816, Letters.
O! how shall I describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life wafted on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an easy mind that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of others, and yet to be interested in them these and all congenial qualities, melting into the common copula of them all, the man of rank and the gentleman, with all its excellences and all its weaknesses, constitute the character of Mercutio! -- COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1818 Lectures and Notes on Shakspere, ed. Ashe, p 324.
What can be more truthful than the love of Romeo and Juliet, so young, so ardent, so unreflecting, full at once of physical passion and of moral tenderness, without restraint, and yet without coarseness, because delicacy of heart ever combines with the transports of the senses! There is nothing subtle or factitious in it, and nothing cleverly arranged by the poet, it is neither the pure love of piously exalted imaginations, nor the licentious love of palled and perverted lives; it is love itself--love complete, involuntary and sovereign, as it bursts forth in early youth, in the heart of man, at once simple and diverse, as God made it. "Romeo and Juliet" is truly the tragedy of love, as "Othello" is that of jealousy, and "Macbeth" that of ambition. . . . Wherever they are not disfigured by conceits, the lines in "Romeo and Juliet" are perhaps the most graceful and brilliant that ever flowed from Shakspeare's pen. -- GUIZOT, FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME, 1821-52, Shakspeare and His Times, pp. 167, 173.
I am inclined to think that the role of Friar Lawrence the Poet wrote for himself; in it is every variety of tone without its ever rising to the height of passionateness -- golden words, part instructive, part soothing or consolatory; at last from these holy lips issue the sighs and the plaints of the unhappy lovers. -- TIECK, JOHANN LUDWIG, 1826, Dramaturgische Blatter, vol. I.
Romeo and Juliet are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic back-ground; . . . but every circumstance, and every personage, and every shade of character in each tends to the development of the sentiment which is the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can possibly be conceived, is interfused through all the characters; the splendid imagery lavished upon all with the careless prodigality of genius; and the whole is lighted up into such a sunny brilliance of effect, as though Shakspeare had really transported himself into Italy, and had drunk to intoxication of her genial atmosphere. How truly it has been said, that "although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not love-sick!" What a false idea would anything of the mere whining amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he really is in Shakspeare -- the noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Juliet -- with even less truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! . . . It is flushed with the genial spirit of the south: it tastes of youth, and of the essence of youth; of life, and of the very sap of life. We have indeed the struggle of love against evil destinies, and, a thorny world, the pain, the grief, the anguish, the terror, the despair; the aching adieu; the pang unutterable of parted affection, and rapture, truth, and tenderness trampled into an early grave: but still an Elysian grace lingers round the whole, and the blue sky of Italy bends over all! -- JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL, 1832, Characteristics of Women.
The incidents in Romeo and Juliet are rapid, various, unintermitting in interest, sufficiently probable, and tending to the catastrophe. The most regular dramatist has hardly excelled one writing for an infant and barbarian stage. It is certain that the observation of the unity of time, which we find in this tragedy, unfashionable as the name of unity has become in our criticism, gives an intenseness of interest to the story, which is often diluted and dispersed in a dramatic history. No play of Shakspeare is more frequently represented, or honored with more tears. -- HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. ii, ch. vi, par. 43.
To eulogize this luxuriant drama would be like gilding refined gold. -- CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1838, ed. Shakespeare's Plays, Solomon ed., Life.
I consider Romeo designed to represent the character of an unlucky man -- a man, who with the best views and fairest intentions, is perpetually so unfortunate as to fail in every aspiration, and, while exerting himself to the utmost in their behalf, to involve all whom he holds dearest in misery and ruin. Had any other passion or pursuit occupied Romeo, he would have been equally unlucky as in his love. Ill-fortune has marked him for her own. From the beginning to end he intends the best; but his interfering is ever for the worst. . . . If we desire to moralize with the harsh-minded satirist, who never can be suspected of romance, we should join with him in extracting as a moral from the play --
"Nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia; nos te
Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam, caeloque locamus;"
and attribute the mishaps of Romeo, not to want of fortune, but of prudence. Philosophy and poetry differ not in essentials, and the stern censure of Juvenal is just. But still, when looking on the timeless tomb of Romeo, and contemplating the short and sad career through which he
ran, we cannot help recollecting his mourning words over his dying friend, and suggest as an inscription over the monument of the luckless gentleman,
"I thought all for the best."
-- MAGINN, WILLIAM, 1842-67, Shakespeare Papers
While it has profoundly made use of all that is most true and deep in the inner-most nature of love, the poet has imbued himself also with those external forms which the human mind had long before created in this domain of poetry. He preferred rather not to be original than to misconceive the form suitable: he preferred to borrow the expression and the style which centuries long had fashioned and developed, for in this the very test of their genuineness and durability lay and thus the lyric love-poetry of all ages is. as it were, recognized in the forms, images, and expressions employed in this tragedy of love. -- GERVINUS, G. G., 1845-62, Shakespeare Commentaries, tr. Bunnett, p. 208.
Who does not recall those lovely summer nights in which the forces of nature seem eager for development, and constrained to remain in drowsy languor -- a mingling of intense heat, superabundant energy, impetuous power, and silent freshness? The nightingale sings in the depths of the woods. The flower-cups are half closed. A pale lustre is shed over the foliage of the forests and upon the brow of the hills. The deep repose conceals, we are aware, a procreant force, the melancholy reserve of nature is the mask of a passionate emotion. finder the paleness and the coolness of the night, you divine restrained ardors, and flowers which brood in silence, impatient to shine forth. Such is the peculiar atmosphere with which Shakspeare has enveloped one of his most wonderful creations -- "Romeo and Juliet." Not only the substance, but the forms of the language come from the South. Italy was the inventor of the tale: she drew it from her national memorials, her old family feuds, her annals filled with amorous and bloody intrigues. In its lyric accent, its blindness of passion, its blossoming and abundant vitality, in the brilliant imagery in the bold composition, no one can fail to recognize Italy. Romeo utters himself like a sonnet of Petrarch, with the same refined choice and the same antitheses; there is the same grace and the same pleasure in versifying passion in allegorical stanzas. Juliet, too, is wholly the woman of Italy; with small gift of forethought, and absolutely ingenuous in her abandon, she is at once vehement and pure. -- CHASLES, PHILARETE, 1851, Etudes sur W. Shakspeare, Marie Stuart, et l'Aretine, pp. 141, 142.
The language of the lovers often degenerates into quibbling; but what they feel with naivete they express with affectation. What they say is an idyll of the ball-room; what they feel is a most gracious and vivid picture of innocent love. And it is under this image that the two lovers remain graven on our imagination. All the world over, when two hearts, young and pure, fall in love with each other, if they are cultivated, they think of Romeo and Juliet, if they are uncultivated, they do better than think of them, they re-enact them. -- GIRARDlN, SAINT-MARC, 1855, Cours de Litterature Dramatique, vol. III, p. 364.
"Romeo and Juliet" is a youthful work; if Shakespeare had written it later he would doubtless have lopped the concetti and the flowers of rhetoric, but he might perchance have drawn those passionate emotions with less ardor. Whoever touches the play under pretext of correcting it, cannot efface a blemish without' erasing the brilliant colors of this youthful and burning poetry. -- MEZIERES, ALFRED, 1860, Shakespeare ses. OEuvres et ses Critiques.
In this first great dramatic work of Shakespeare we find: Invention, none; it is literally translated from an Italian novel: a vitiated taste, since the most scandalous obscenity usurps the place of that virgin purity which is as necessary to style as to love: a style in a great measure depraved by the Italian affectation of that age, when authors made jests in place of revealing what should have been the true and pure sentiments of the situations in which they placed their characters: pathos chilled by the false over-refinement of the expressions. Such are the defects of Shakespeare in this piece. But after this is admitted, and too well proved by the citations over which we have thrown the veil of omission, its beauties reveal a great genius, a splendid imagination, a soul full of pathos and a master of hearts. -- LAMARTINE, ALPHONSE MARIE LOUIS DE, 1865, Shakespeare et son Oeuvre, p. 132.
We found it a very old and time-worn edifice, built round an ample court, and we knew it, as we had been told we should, by the cap carven in stone above the interior of the grand portal. The family, anciently one of the principal in Verona, has fallen from much of its former greatness. . . .
There was a great deal of stable litter, and many empty carts standing about in the court, and if I might hazard the opinion formed upon these and other appearances, I should say that old Capulet has now gone to keeping a hotel, united with the retail liquor business, both in a small way. -- HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN, 1868, Italian Journeys, p. 306.
In two of the scenes we may say that the whole heart or spirit of "Romeo and Juliet" is summed up and distilled into perfect and pure expression; and these two are written in blank verse of equable and blameless melody. Outside the garden scene in the second act and the balcony scene in the third, there is much that is fanciful and graceful, much of elegiac pathos and fervid if fantastic passion; much also of superfluous rhetoric and (as it were) of wordy melody, which flows and foams hither and thither into something of extravagance and excess; but in these two there is no flaw, no outbreak, no superflux, and no failure. Throughout certain scenes of the third and fourth acts I think it may be reasonably and reverently allowed that the river of verse has broken its banks, not as yet through the force and weight of its gathering stream, but merely through the weakness of the barriers or boundaries found insufficient to confine it. -- SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p. 35.
There is in this play no scope for surmise, no possible misunderstanding of the chief characters or of the poet's purpose, such as there are in "Hamlet" and "Macbeth." The chill mists and vapours of the North seem to shroud these plays in an atmosphere of mystery, uncertainty, and gloom. But here all is distinct and luminous as the vivid sunshine, or the clear, tender moonlight of the South. You have but to throw your mind back into the history of the time, and to let your heart warm and your imagination kindle with the hot blood and quick-flashing fancies of the Italian temperament, and the whole tale of love and woe stands fully revealed before you. Still, to judge Juliet rightly, we must have clear ideas of Romeo, of her parents, and of all the circumstances that determined her conduct. -- MARTIN, LADY (HELENA FAUCIT), 1881, On Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters, p. 192.
Is there a more delightful love-poem than "Romeo and Juliet?" yet it is full of conceits. . . . No one has drawn the true passion of love like Shakespeare. -- TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD, 1883, Some Criticisms on Poets, Memoir by His Son vol. II, p. 291.
But though in subject Shakespeare follows Brooke, it need hardly be said that in its spirit -- in its transfiguration of the story -- the play altogether transcends the poem; a greater effort than Brooke's wearisome production would pale its uneffectual fire before the glowing warmth of this Song of Songs of Romantic Passion. -- GOLLANCZ, ISRAEL, 1896, ed. Temple Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Preface.
"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 Oehlenschlager'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 paean and the dirge of passion. -- BRANDES, GEORGE, 1898, William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, vol. I, p. 92.
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