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,