Leape to these armes, untalkt of and unseene", &c.
The older commentators do not attempt to change the word run-awayes, but seek to explain it. Warburton says Phœbus is the runaway. Steevens has a long argument to prove that Night is the runaway. Douce thought Juliet herself was the runaway; and at a later period the Rev. Mr. Halpin, in a very elegant and ingenious essay, attempts to prove that by the runaway we must understand Cupid.
Mr. Knight and Mr. Collier have both of them adopted Jackson's conjecture of unawares, and have admitted it to the honour of a place in the text, but Mr. Dyce has pronounced it to be "villainous;" and it must be confessed that it has nothing but a slight similarity to the old word to recommend it. Mr. Dyce himself has favoured us with three suggestions; the first two in his Remarks on Collier and Knight's Shakspeare, in 1844, where he says—
"That ways (the last syllable of run-aways) ought to be days, I feel next to certain; but what word originally preceded it I do not pretend to determine:
'Spread thy close curtain, love-performing Night!
That rude/soon (?) Day's eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen,' &c."
The correctors of Mr. Collier's folio having substituted—
"That enemies eyes may wink,"
Mr. Dyce, in his recent Few Notes, properly rejects that reading, and submits another conjecture of his own, founded on the supposition that the word roving having been written illegibly, roavinge was mistaken for run-awayes, and proposes to read—
"That roving eyes may wink."
Every suggestion of Mr. Dyce, certainly the most competent of living commentators on Shakspeare, merits attention; but I cannot say that I think he has succeeded in either of his proposed readings.
Monck Mason seems to have had the clearest notion of the requirements of the passage. He saw that "the word, whatever the meaning of it might be, was intended as a proper name;" but he was not happy in suggesting renomy, a French word with an English termination.