SC II
ROMEO AND JULIET
23
|
Compare her face with some that I shall show, |
| Rom. | When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires![C 1][E 1] And these, who often drown'd could never die, Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars! One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun[E 2] 95 Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun. |
| Ben. | Tut[C 2], you saw her fair, none else being by, Herself poised with herself in either eye; But in that crystal scales[E 3] let there be weigh'd Your lady's love[E 4] against some other maid 100 That I will show you shining at this feast, And she shall scant show well that now seems[C 3][E 5] best. |
| Rom. | I'll go along, no such sight to be shown, But to rejoice in splendour of mine own.[Exeunt. |
- ↑ 92. fires] White accepts fire, Q, F, and observes truly, "The difference of a final s seems not to have been regarded in rhyme in Shakespeare's day."
- ↑ 95. sun] Perhaps Massinger's "shade Of barren sicamores which the all-seeing sun Could not pierce through" (Great Duke of Florence, IV. ii.) is an echo from Romeo and Juliet. See I. 125.
- ↑ 99. that crystal scales] Rowe read those, and is followed by many editors, Dyce: "Used here as a singular noun."
- ↑ 100. lady's love] Theobald read lady-love, which Dyce follows. Challenged to produce an Elizabethan example of lady-love, Dyce produced one from Wilson's Cobler's Prophesie, 1594. Keightley reads lady and love. Clarke ingeniously suggests that "your lady's love" means the little love Rosaline bears you; let this be weighed against the charms of some other maid. Q1 agrees with Q, F in "lady's love." See White's remark on fires, line 92. Might we read maid's at the end of this line?
- ↑ 102. seems] Perhaps shows is right; but Q1 supports Q in reading seems; shows might easily be repeated here by the printer; seems, in two independent texts, is unlikely to be a printer's error.
