Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/163

Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed, Prepare her, wife, against this wedding-day.— Farewell, my lord.—Light to my chamber, ho! Afore me,[E 1] it is so very very late, That we may call it early by and by:[C 1][E 2]—35 Good night.[Exeunt.

SCENE V.—The Same. Capulet's orchard.^{[E 3]}

Enter Romeo and Juliet, above, at the window.^{[C 2]}

Jul.	Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yond[C 3] pomegranate[E 4] tree:

1. 34, 35. Afore … by and by] Q 1, Afore … so very late … by and by Q, Afore … so late … by and by F.
2. Enter … above, at the window] Cambridge; Enter … aloft Q, F; Enter … at the window Q 1.
3. 4. yond] Q, F; yon Q 1.

1. 34. Afore me] i.e. God before me (Dyce), in the presence of God, as in Pericles, II. i. 84: "Now, afore me, a handsome fellow." Or may it not be corrupted from "Afore my God"? Here it is possible that the words are an instruction to the light-bearer to carry the light before Capulet, or to Paris to take precedence in leaving the room.
2. 35. by and by] presently, immediately, as in II. ii. 151.
3. Capulet's orchard] So the Cambridge editors; several editors "Juliet's chamber." Rowe, "Capulet's garden," but Rowe closed the scene with line 59. The division-marks which appear in the later part of Q 1 seem to me to support Rowe. I believe that on the Elizabethan stage the dialogue between Romeo and Juliet took place on the balcony, and that the scene then changed to Juliet's chamber. Q 1 introduces the Nurse before the balcony scene closes; she announces that Lady Capulet is coming to Juliet's chamber, and then "she goeth down from the window"; the curtain, I suppose, was drawn, and the orchard below immediately became Juliet's chamber. But for the inconvenience which attends the disturbing of accepted arrangements, I should follow Rowe in this division of scenes.
4. 4. pomegranate] The pomegranate had been introduced into England as early as 1548; it grew "plenteously," says Turner, in his Names of Herbes