THE BATTALION.
5
Juliette and the fabric of the play is essentially the same. It
may seem unusual and improbable but it is not impossible.
Anyhow for this Shakespeare deserves no credit. The plot
may be an admirable one but that is due to the author of the
romance and concerns us little; it is sufficient to say, the ro
mance would soon have been lost in oblivion had it not been
taken up, stripped to a skeleton, covered over again, adorn
ed and embellished and very life put into a once cold and
artificial statue. The frame might have been a good one but
to the sculptor is due the statue.
If Romeo and Juliet did not live, then .they live today:
grosser ones, indeed, ones that do not carry out the manners
and customs of Verona but ones that are just as ardent and
faithful, that think such thoughts that have such actions. Go
with me, reader, and see Romeo, a gallant, handsome young
fellow of perhaps twenty one. He loves one of those crea
tures, proud and beautiful, either cold and passionless or one
of those that delight in tormenting man by shunning his at
tentions. Man without woman or woman’s love is but half a
man. Nature seems to put in man the instinct of selecting, by
which he is practically enabled at sight to select bis love, and
happy nature mutually endows the other sex. Can unhappy
Romeo live on without pronouncing a curse on her that quen
ches the fire of affection with the cold water of indifference.
He pines and like a natural man, wretchedly falls again and
again at her feet and uegs. Here is the wise soliloquy:
‘*Love is a smoke made with the fume of sigb«;
Being purged, a tire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;
Being vexed a sea nourished with lovers’ tears;
Ahat is it else? A madness most discreet.
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.”
Nothing is more beautiful than this poetic figurative de
finition of love.
Romeo no doubt thought that he could never love another,
but again Shakespeare makes him follow the course of human
nature and with the help of good Mercutio finds another that
“So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows.”