first time a substantially true representation of the original play. Still Q 1 is of great value, as it affords the means of correcting many errors which had crept into the 'copy' from which Q 2 was printed, and also, in its more perfect portions, affords conclusive evidence that that 'copy' underwent revision, received some slight augmentations, and, in some few places, must have been entirely rewritten." As evidence of the last statement I may refer my reader to Appendix I., to which the following may here be added; in III. ii. 57–60 Juliet, in our received text, speaks:
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,
And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!
These are evidently new lines written to replace those of Q 1, which run thus:
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?
Shall we conjecture that Shakespeare felt that the sense of fatality, though proper to Romeo, was less characteristic of the strong-willed Juliet?
Q 1, then, is an imperfect representation, piratically issued, of the same play which is given fully and, in the main, aright in Q 2; but before Q 2 appeared Shakespeare had revised the play, and had rewritten a few passages. The theory of Mr. Grant White that traces
