87. [Death.] The abstract for the concrete. The dead man is Romeo, who is so possessed with his suicidal purpose that he speaks of himself as dead. Steevens perversely calls it one of "those miserable conceits with which our author too frequently counteracts his own pathos."
88-120. [How oft when men,] etc. "Here, here, is the master example how beauty can at once increase and modify passion" (Coleridge).
90. [A lightning before death.] "A last blazing-up of the flame of life;" a proverbial expression. Steevens quotes The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington, 1601:—
"I thought it was a lightning before death,
Too sudden to be certain."
Clarke notes "the mingling here of words and images full of light and colour with the murky grey of the sepulchral vault and the darkness of the midnight churchyard, the blending of these images of beauty and tenderness with the deep gloom of the speaker's inmost heart."
92. [Suck'd the honey,] etc. Cf. Ham. iii. 1. 164: "That suck'd the honey of his music vows." Steevens quotes Sidney, Arcadia: "Death being able to divide the soule, but not the beauty from her body."
96. [Death's pale flag.] Steevens compares Daniel, Complaint of Rosamond:—
"And nought-respecting death (the last of paines)