Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/56

Away from light steals home my heavy son[E 1], And private in his chamber pens himself, Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out, And makes himself an artificial night. Black and portentous must this humour prove145 Unless good counsel may the cause remove.

Ben.	My noble uncle, do you know the cause?

Mon.	I neither know it nor can learn of him.

Ben.	Have you importuned him by any means?

Mon.

Both by myself and many other[C 1] friends[E 2]:150 But he, his own affections' counsellor, Is to himself—I will not say how true— But to himself so secret and so close, So far from sounding and discovery, As is the bud bit with an envious[E 3] worm,155 Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate his beauty to the sun[C 2][E 4]. Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow, We would as willingly give cure as know.

1. 150. other] Q, others F.
2. 157. sun] Pope, ed. 2. (Theobald); same Q, F.

1. 141. son] A play on sun, line 138, and son is probably intended, "heavy" being opposed to "all-cheering."
2. 150. other friends] Knight, inserting a comma in text of F, reads others, friends. Daniel observes that Knight's punctuation may be right, but other—frequently used as a plural—would agree with it as well as others.
3. 155. envious] malignant, spiteful, as often. The image of the worm and bud occurs with like significance in Twelfth Night, II. iv, 114.
4. 157. the sun] Theobald's emendation has won its way against the reading of Qq, Ff, by virtue of its beauty. Malone, who prints the same in his text, as "a mode of expression not uncommon in Shakespeare's time," supports the sun by a parallel from Daniel's Sonnets:
   "And whilst thou spread'st unto the rising sunne
   The fairest flower that ever saw the light,
   Now joy thy time, before thy sweet be done."