[ROMEO AND JULIET.]
ACT I.
Scene 1. Page 325.
Sam. Gregory, o' my word, we'll not carry coals.
Gre. No, for then we should be colliers.
Of the various conjectures on the origin and real meaning of this phrase, that by Mr. Steevens seems deserving of the preference. In a rare little pamphlet entitled The cold yeare, 1614, 4to, being a dialogue in which the casualties that happened in the great fall of snow are enumerated, one of the interlocutors, a North-country man, relates that on his approach to London he overtooke a collier and his team, "walking as stately as if they scorned to carry coales." It was therefore a term of reproach to be called a collier; and thence, to carry coals was metaphorically used for any low or servile action. Barnaby Googe, in his New yeares gift to the Pope's holinesse, 1579, 4to, says he "had rather be a collyer at Croydon than a Pope at Rome."
A hint had been given, by a gentleman whose opinions are on all occasions entitled to the highest respect and attention, that the phrase in question might have originated from Proverbs xxv. 22. "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink; for thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head." But this is a metaphor expressive of the pain which a man shall suffer from the reproaches of his conscience, and as such, has been adopted into our language. Thus, in Newes from the North, otherwise called The conference between Simon Certain and Pierce Plowman, 1579, 4to, "Now God forbid that ever a lawyer should heap coales upon a merchant's head, or that a merchant should not be as willing and as ready to doo a goodly deed as a lawyer."
Scene 2. Page 347.
Cap. Such comfort, as do lusty young men feel
When well-apparell'd April on the heel
Of limping winter treads.
Two of the commentators would read lusty yeomen, and make the passage refer to the sensations of the farmer on the return of spring. One of them, Dr. Johnson, to render the present text objectionable, has been obliged to invert the comparison. Capulet, in speaking of the delight which Paris is to receive in the society of the young ladies invited to his house, compares it to that which the month of April usually afforded to the youth of both sexes, when assembled in the green fields to enjoy their accustomed recreations. Independently of the frequent allusions in the writings of our old poets to April, as the season of youthful pleasures, and which probably occurred to Shakspeare's recollection, he might besides have had in view the decorations which accompany the above month in some of the manuscript and printed calendars, where the young folks are represented as sitting together on the grass; the men ornamenting the girls with chaplets of flowers. From the following lines in one of these, the passage in question seems to derive considerable illustration.