Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/147

Hath Romeo slain himself? say thou but "I,"[E 1]45 And that bare vowel "I" shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice:[E 2] I am not I, if there be such an "I,"[C 1][E 3] Or those eyes[E 4] shut[C 2] that make[C 3] thee answer "I." If he be slain say "I"; or if not, no:50 Brief sounds[C 4] determine of[C 5][E 5] my weal or woe.

Nurse.

I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, God save the mark![E 6] here on his manly breast: A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse; Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub'd in blood,55 All in gore blood;[E 7] I swounded[E 8] at the sight.

Jul.	[E 9]O, break, my heart! poor bankrupt, break at once! To prison, eyes, ne'er look on liberty! Vile earth, to earth resign, end motion here,

1. 48. an "I,"] Q 5 (I); an I. Q, F.
2. 49. shut] Capell; shot Q, F;
3. make] Steevens (Johnson conject.); makes Q, F.
4. 51. Brief sounds] Q 5; Briefe, sounds, Q, F;
5. of] F, Q 5; omitted Q; or Collier (MS.).

1. 45. "I"] ay; commonly printed I in Shakespeare's time. A modern editor is compelled here to retain the old form, or to obscure the play on I=ay, I, the vowel, and eye.
2. 47. cockatrice] The power of the fabled cockatrice (often identified with basilisk) to slay with the eye is spoken of in Richard III. IV. i. 56, and Twelfth Night, III. iv. 215. For etymology and sense-history of the word, see a long article in New Eng. Dict. See Topsell, History of Serpents (ed. 1658), pp. 677–681, and Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
3. 48. "I"] Many editors print I, without inverted commas.
4. 49. those eyes] Romeo's eyes.
5. 51. determine of] decide, as in Richard III. III. iv. 2.
6. 53. mark] The origin of the ejaculation is uncertain. It has been suggested that it was originally a bowman's exclamation: "May the mark escape rival shooters!"
7. 56. gore blood] clotted blood. Halliwell quotes Vicars, Virgil, 1632: "vented much black gore-blood."
8. 56. swounded] The forms swoon, swound, sound are all common in Elizabethan books.
9. 57–60. O break … bier] In place of these lines Q 1 has:

   "Ah, Romeo, Romeo, what disaster hap
   Hath severd thee from thy true Juliet?
   Ah why should Heaven so much conspire with Woe,
   Or Fate envie our happie Marriage,
   So soone to sunder us by timelesse Death?"