Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/61

Cuts beauty off from all posterity. She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair[E 1],225 To merit bliss by making me despair: She hath forsworn to love; and in that vow Do I live dead, that live to tell it now.

Ben.	Be ruled by me; forget to think of her.

Rom.	O, teach me how I should forget to think.230

Ben.	By giving liberty unto thine eyes: Examine other beauties.

Rom.

'Tis the way To call hers, exquisite, in question more.[E 2] These happy masks[E 3] that kiss fair ladies' brows, Being black, put[C 1] us in mind they hide the fair;235 He that is strucken blind cannot forget The precious treasure of his eyesight lost: Show me a mistress that is passing fair, What doth her beauty serve but as a note Where I may read who pass'd that passing fair?240 Farewell: thou canst not teach me to forget.

Ben.	I'll pay that doctrine[E 4], or else die in debt. [Exeunt.

1. 235. put] Q5; puts Q, F.

1. 225. wisely too fair] Johnson accepts Hanmer's reading too wisely fair.
2. 233. To call … more] Exquisite in Q, F is in marks of parenthesis. The meaning seems to be, To call her beauty, which is exquisite, yet more, being challenged and put to the test. Malone, taking question to mean conversation (as it often did), explains: "To make her unparalleled beauty more the subject of thought and conversation."
3. 234. These happy masks] not (as has been suggested) masks worn by ladies at the theatre, but, generally, the masks (of our day).
4. 242. pay that doctrine] deliver that piece of instruction.