Sole monarch of the universal earth!
O, what a beast was I to chide him so?
Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill’d your cousin?
Juliet. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Ah my poor lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I, thy three-hours’ wife, have mangled it?’
And then follows on the neck of her remorse and returning fondness, that wish treading almost on the brink of impiety, but still held back by the strength of her devotion to her lord, that ‘father, mother, nay, or both were dead,’ rather than Romeo banished. If she requires any other excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being banished from her.—Perhaps one of the finest pieces of acting that ever was witnessed on the stage, is Mr. Kean’s manner of doing this scene and his repetition of the word, Banished. He treads close indeed upon the genius of his author.
A passage which this celebrated actor and able commentator on Shakespear (actors are the best commentators on the poets) did not give with equal truth or force of feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of Juliet, before he drinks the poison.
——‘Let me peruse this face—
Mercutio’s kinsman! noble county Paris!