Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/62

SCENE II.—The Same. A Street.

Enter Capulet, Paris, and Servant.^{[C 1]}

Cap.	But[C 2] Montague is bound as well as I, In penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, I think, For men so old as we to keep the peace.

Par.	Of honourable reckoning are you both; And pity 'tis you lived at odds so long. 5 But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?

Cap.	But saying o'er what I have said before: My child is yet a stranger in the world; She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;[E 1] Let two more summers wither in their pride 10 Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.

Par.	Younger than she are happy mothers made.

Cap.	And too soon marr'd are those so early made[C 3][E 2]. The earth[C 4][E 3] hath swallow'd all my hopes but she, She is the hopeful lady of my earth:[E 4] 15

1. Enter …] Rowe; Enter Capulet, Countie Paris, and the Clowne Q, F.
2. 1. But] Q; omitted F; And Qq 4, 5.
3. 13. made] Q, F; married Q1.
4. 14. The earth] Qq 4, 5; Earth Q, F; Earth up Ff 2–4.

1. 9. fourteen years] In Brooke's poem Juliet is older: "Scarse saw she yet full xvi years"; in Paynter's prose tale she is nearly eighteen. Shakespeare's Marina, in Pericles, is fourteen; his Miranda is fifteen.
2. 13. made] The jingle between made and marr'd occurs, as Dyce notes, in II. iv. 123, 124, in Macbeth, II. iii. 36, and elsewhere. The jingle of Q1 made and married occurs in All's Well, II. iii. 315: "A young man married is a man that's marr'd," and in other writers beside Shakespeare.
3. 14. The earth] If earth be read with F, Q, swallowed of F, Q is perhaps a trisyllable, but it hardly mends the verse. F2, inserting up, shows that the line was considered defective.
4. 15. my earth] Three explanations have been given—(1) A Gallicism, fille de terre, heiress—Steevens. (2) my body, as in ii. i. 2, in Sonnets, cxlvi. "Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth "; in Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid's Tragedy, v. 19, "This earth of mine doth tremble"—Mason and Malone, with whom I agree. (3) the hopeful lady of the world for me—Ulrici. Cartwright conjectures hearth. The Elizabethan earth meaning ploughing suggests another possible explanation; cf. Ant. and Cleop. II. ii. 233.