Romeo’s banishment brings us to the middle and “busy” part of the play, where the Elizabethan actors were expected to thunder their loudest to split the ears of the groundlings; and Shakespeare, not yet sufficiently independent as a dramatist to dispense with the conventions of his stage, follows suit on the same fiddle to the same tune; and after all the ranting eloquence on the part of Romeo and Juliet, we are just where we were before with regard to any advance made with the story. Act III., Scene 2, is often entirely omitted in representation, but the Irving-version retains most of it. It is not till the middle of Act III., Scene 3, that the action advances again. But this, and the previous scenes, if acted with animation and rapidly spoken by all the characters concerned, would not take up much time, and could be declaimed with effect. The stage fashion of making the Friar stolidly indifferent to the unexpected complication that has arisen through Tybalt’s death is not only undramatic, but inconsistent with the text. A heavy responsibility lies on him, and his position is full of difficulty and danger. The scene that follows shows us Capulet fixing a day for the marriage of Juliet with Paris, and the father’s words—
“I thinke she will be rulde
In all respects by me: nay, more, I doubt it not,”
have a significance, and render the parting of the lovers in the next scene highly dramatic. In the poem and novel, Juliet, before parting with Romeo, proposes to accompany him disguised as his servant; about the best thing she could do. After a good deal of arguing on both sides the idea is abandoned as impracticable. Shakespeare prefers his lovers to discourse about the nightingale. Romeo being gone, the mother enters to announce to the wife her betrothal to Paris, and the early day of marriage. The news is sprung upon her with terrible abruptness, though the audience have been in the secret from the first, and Juliet has hardly time to protest against “this sudden day of joy” before the father enters to complete her discomfiture by his torrents of abuse. Capulet’s varnish of good manners entirely disappears in this scene, and his coarse nature is exposed in all its ugliness. But in the emergency of this tragic moment, as Professor Dowden points out, does Juliet leap into womanhood, and realize her position and responsibilities as a wife, and in the following lines Shakespeare touches the first note of highest tragedy in the play: that of the mind’s suffering as opposed to the mere tragedy of incident—
“O God, ô Nurse, how shall this be preuented?
My husband is on earth, my faith in heauen;
How shall that faith returne againe to earth,
Unlesse that husband send it me from heauen
By leauing earth? comfort me, counsaile me.”
I am curious to learn on what grounds these thrilling words are omitted in the Irving-version. To me they are the climax of the scene and of the play so far as it has progressed. They mark the turning-point in Juliet’s moral nature. They enable us to forgive her any indiscretions of which she may previously have been guilty. From this point onwards all is calm in Juliet’s breast, because there is no infirmity of purpose,
“If all else faile, my self have power to die.”
As the shadows fall across the path of the lovers, so do they over that of the Friar.
“O Iuliet, I already know thy greefe,
It straines me past the compasse of my wits,”
is his greeting in the next scene. A “desperate preventive” to shame or death is decided upon, and then follows what is perhaps the most dramatic episode in the whole play. We are shown Capulet’s household busy with the preparations for the marriage-feast, and the father, now bent on having a “great ado,” hastily summoning “twenty cunning Cookes”—the consequence possibly of Juliet’s threatened opposition to his wishes. Juliet enters to feign submission and beg forgiveness, which enables the father to indulge in another despotic freak by hastening the day of marriage, heedless of all the inconvenience it may cause. Juliet retires to her chamber, and Capulet goes to prepare Paris against to-morrow. Then comes Juliet’s terrible ordeal, the undertaking “of a thing like death,” which is all the more terrible because it must be done alone. This scene is often overacted on the stage. Our Juliets do far too much “stumping and frumping” about. I once saw the “potion-scene” acted with dramatic intelligence by an actress quite unknown to fame. When Juliet lays her dagger on the table, the actress took up the vial, and, standing motionless in the centre of the stage, spoke the lines in a hurried, low whisper, conveying the impression of reflection as well as the need for discretion. At the words,
“O looke, me thinks I see my Cozins Ghost,”