Illustrations of Shakspeare, and of Ancient Manners: / with Dissertations on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare; on a Collection of Popular Tales Entitled Gesta Romanorum; and on the English Morris dance.

by Francis Douce

ACT III.

Scene 1. Page 452.

Rom. O! I am fortune's fool!

"I am always running in the way of evil fortune, like the fool in the play," says Dr. Johnson. There is certainly no allusion to any play. See the note in p. [146].

Scene 2. Page 456.

Jul. That run-away's eyes may wink.

A great deal of ingenious criticism has been expended in endeavouring to ascertain the meaning of this expression. Dr. Warburton thought the runaway in question was the sun; but Mr. Heath has most completely disproved this opinion. Mr. Steevens considers the passage as extremely elliptical, and regards the night as the runaway; making Juliet wish that its eyes, the stars, might retire to prevent discovery. Mr. Justice Blackstone can perceive nothing optative in the lines, but simply a reason for Juliet's wish for a cloudy night; yet according to this construction of the passage, the grammar of it is not very easily to be discovered.

Whoever attentively reads over Juliet's speech will be inclined to think, or even be altogether satisfied, that the whole tenor of it is optative. With respect to calling the night a runaway, one might surely ask how it can possibly be so termed in an abstract point of view? Is it a greater fugitive than the morning, the noon, or the evening? Mr. Steevens lays great stress on Shakspeare's having before called the night a runaway in The Merchant of Venice,

"For the close night doth play the runaway;"

but there it was already far advanced, and might therefore with great propriety be said to play the runaway; here it was not begun. The same remark will apply to the other passage cited by Mr. Steevens from The fair maid of the Exchange. Where then is this runaway to be found? or can it be Juliet herself? She who had just been secretly married to the enemy of her parents might with some propriety be termed a runaway from her duty; but she had not abandoned her native pudency. She therefore invokes the night to veil those rites which she was about to perform, and to bring her Romeo to her arms in darkness and in silence. The lines that immediately follow may be thought to favour this interpretation; and the whole Scene may possibly bring to the reader's recollection an interesting part in the beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche.

Scene 5. Page 483.

Jul. Hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day.

Of the notes on this line, that by Mr. Malone is most to the point. He has shown from Cotgrave, that the hunt's-up was "a morning song to a new married woman, &c.;" and it was, no doubt, an imitation of the tune to wake the hunters, noticed by Mr. Steevens, as was that in the celebrated Scotish booke of godly and spirituall songs, beginning,

"With hunts up, with huntis up,
It is now perfite day:
Jesus our king is gane in hunting,
Quha likes to speed they may."

It is not improbable that the following was the identical song composed by the person of the name of Gray mentioned in Mr. Ritson's note. It occurs in a collection entitled Hunting, hawking, &c., already cited in the course of the remarks on The merry wives of Windsor. There was likewise a country dance with a similar title.

Cho. { The hunt is up, the hunt is up,
{ Sing merrily wee, the hunt is up;
The birds they sing,
The Deare they fling,
Hey, nony nony-no:
The hounds they crye,
The hunters flye,
Hey trolilo, trololilo.
The hunt is up, ut supra.

The wood resounds
To heere the hounds,
Hey, nony nony-no:
The rocks report
This merry sport,
Hey, trolilo, trololilo.
Cho. { The hunt is up, the hunt is up,
{ Sing merrily wee, the hunt is up.

Then hye apace,
Unto the chase,
Hey nony, nony-no;
Whilst every thing
Doth sweetly sing,
Hey trolilo, trololilo.
Cho. { The hunt is up, the hunt is up,
{ Sing merrily wee, the hunt is up.

Scene 5. Page 496.

Nurse. ... an eagle, madam,
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye.

Besides the authorities already produced in favour of green eyes, and which show the impropriety of Hanmer's alteration to keen, a hundred others might, if necessary, be given. The early French poets are extremely fond of alluding to them under the title of yeux vers, which Mons. Le Grand has in vain attempted to convert into yeux vairs, or grey eyes.[22] It must be confessed that the scarcity, if not total absence of such eyes in modern times, might well have excited the doubts of the above intelligent and agreeable writer. For this let naturalists, if they can, account. It is certain that green eyes were found among the ancients. Plautus thus alludes to them in his Curculio:

"Qui hic est homo
Cum collativo ventre, atque oculis herbeis?"

Lord Verulam says, "Great eyes with a green circle between the white and the white of the eye, signify long life."—Hist. of life and death, p. 124. Villa Real, a Portuguese, has written a treatise in praise of them, and they are even said to exist now among his countrymen. See Pinkerton's Geography, vol. i. p. 556, and Steevens's Shakspeare, vol. v. 164, 203.