144. [Send me word to-morrow,] etc. This seems rather sudden at first glance, but her desire for immediate marriage is due, partially at least, to what she has just learned (i. 3) of the plan to marry her to Paris.
151. [Madam!] This forms no part of the verse, and might well enough be separated from it, like the Juliet in i. 5. 145 above. By and by = presently; as in iii. 1. 173 and iii. 3. 76 below.
152. [Suit.] The reading of 4th ("sute") and 5th quartos; the other early eds. have "strife." The expression "To cease your sute" occurs in Brooke's poem, a few lines below the passage just quoted.
153. [To-morrow.] "In the alternative which she places before her lover with such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity, there is that jealousy of female honour which precept and education have infused into her mind, without one real doubt of his truth, or the slightest hesitation in her self-abandonment; for she does not even wait to hear his asseverations" (Mrs. Jameson).
157. [Toward school,] etc. Cf. A.Y.L. ii. 7. 145:—
"And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school."
160. [Tassel-gentle.] The tassel-gentle or tercel-gentle is the male hawk. Dyce quotes Cotgrave, Fr. Dict.: "Tiercelet. The Tassell or male of any kind of Hawke, so tearmed, because he is, commonly, a third part less than the female;" and Holmes, Academy of Armory: "Tiercell, Tercell, or Tassell is the general name for the Male of all large Hawks." Malone says that the tiercel-gentle was the species of hawk appropriated to the prince, and thinks that on that account Juliet applies it to Romeo. We find tercel in T. and C. iii. 2. 56: "The falcon as the tercel." The hawk was trained to know and obey the falconer's voice. Cf. T. of S. iv. 1. 196:—
"Another way I have to man my haggard,