she sank on one knee, and, raising the right arm with a quick movement, pointed into space, the eye following the hand, a very simple but telling gesture. The words, “Stay, Tybalt, stay!” were not given with a scream, but in a tone of alarm and entreaty, followed immediately by the drinking of the potion, as if to suggest Juliet’s desire to come to Romeo’s rescue. The whole scene was acted in less than two minutes. The vision of Tybalt’s ghost pursuing Romeo for vengeance, an incident not to be found in the originals, shows the touch of the master dramatist. We feel the need of some immediate incentive to nerve Juliet to raise the vial to her lips; and what more effectual than that of her overwrought imagination picturing to herself the husband in danger.
While the poor child lies prostrate upon her bed in the likeness of death, we are shown the dawn of the morning, the rousing and bustle of the household; we hear the bridal march in the distance, the sound coming nearer every moment; the Nurse knocking at Juliet’s chamber-door; her awful discovery; the entrance of the parents; the filling of the stage by the bridal party, led by the Friar; the wailing, and wringing of the hands as the first quarto directs; the changing of the sound of instruments to that of melancholy bells, of solemn hymns to sullen dirges, of bridal flowers to funeral wreaths. All this is thrilling in conception, and yet the episode as conceived by Shakespeare is never represented on the stage. Why are the Capulet scenes omitted, those which are dovetailed to the “potion scene,” and make it by contrast so terribly tragic? The accentuation here of Capulet’s tyranny, of his sensuality, his brutal frankness, his indifference to every one’s convenience but his own, his delight in exacting a cringing obedience from all about him, are designed by the dramatist to move us with deep pity for Juliet’s sufferings, and by emphasizing its necessity to save the “potion scene” from the danger of appearing grotesque. But Shakespeare’s method of dramatic composition, that of uniting a series of short scenes with each other in one dramatic movement, will not bear the elaboration of heavy stage sets, and with the demand for carpentry comes the inducement for mutilation. At the Shakespeare Reading Society’s recital of this play, given recently under my direction at the London Institution, these scenes were spoken without delay or interruption, and with but one scene announced, and the interest and breathless attention they aroused among the audience convinced me that my conception as to the dramatic treatment of them was the right one. Until these scenes are restored to the acting version, Shakespeare’s tragedy will not be seen on the stage as he conceived it; and when they are restored, their dramatic power will electrify the house, and twentieth-century dilettantism will lose its influence among playgoers. The comic scene between Peter and the Musicians should also be restored. It comes in as a welcome relief after the intensity of the previous scenes, and is, besides, a connecting link with the comedy in the earlier part of the play.
The last act can be briefly dealt with. We anticipate the final catastrophe, though we do not know by what means it will be brought about. It is carried out, as it should be, effectively but simply. The children have loved and suffered, let them die easily and quickly. Romeo’s costume in exile is described in the poem as that of a merchant venturer, which is certainly a more appropriate dress than the conventional black velvet of the stage. After hearing the fatal news, which provokes the boy to mutter, “Is it even so?” in the Lyceum version is inserted the stage-direction, “He pauses, overcome with grief.” But as there is no similar stage-direction in the originals, the actor may, without violation to the author’s intentions, pause before the words are spoken. The blow is too sudden, too cruel, too overwhelming to allow of any immediate response in words. The colour would fly from Romeo’s face, his teeth grip his under lip, his eyes gleam with a look of frenzy, looks that “import some misadventure,” but there is no action and no sound for a while, and afterwards only a muttering. The stillness of Romeo’s desperation is very dramatic. There is nothing, in my opinion, unnatural in Romeo’s description of the Apothecary’s shop. All sorts of petty details float before our mental vision when the nerves are over-wrought, but the actor should be careful not to accentuate the description in any way; it is but introductory to the dominant words of the speech,
“And if a man did need a poyson now.”
As Juliet’s openly acknowledged lover, Paris occupies too prominent a place in the play to be lightly dismissed, and so he is involved in the final catastrophe. In Brooke’s poem, Romeo, before dying, prays to Heaven for mercy and forgiveness, and the picture of the boy kneeling by his wife’s side, with her hand clasped in his, pleading to his Redeemer to—
“Take pity on my sinnefull and my poore afflicted mynde!”
would, on the stage, have been a supremely pathetic situation. But Shakespeare’s stern love of dramatic truth rejects it. In Romeo’s character he strikes but one note, love—and love as a passion. Love is Romeo’s divinity, physical beauty his deity. The assertion that—
“In nature there’s no blemish but the mind,
None can be call’d deform’d but the unkind,”
would have sounded in Romeo’s ears profanation. When he first sees Juliet he will by touching hers make blessed his rude hand, and when he dies he will seal the doors of breath “with a righteous kiss.” To the Friar he cries:
“Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
Then loue-deuouring death do what he dare.
It is inough I may but call her mine.”