SC III.]
ROMEO AND JULIET
29
This night you shall behold him at our feast: 80 |
- ↑ 83. married] The word as used here for mutually dependent is illustrated by the "well-tuned sounds By unions married" of Sonnets, viii.; but several has the authority of all texts except Q.
- ↑ 84. content] Perhaps with a play on contents of a volume, though elsewhere in Shakespeare only the plural contents is used for what is contained.
- ↑ 85. obscured] Allen suggests obscure.
- ↑ 86. margent] Obscurities were often explained in old books in the margin. Compare Hamlet, v. ii. 162. Malone quotes a close parallel: Lucrece, 99–102:
"But she, that never coped with stranger eyes,
Could pick no meaning from their parling looks,
Nor read the subtle-shining secrecies
Writ in the glassy margents of such books." - ↑ 87. unbound] unattached (of a lover); without binding (of a book).
- ↑ 88. cover] Mason suggests a play on femme couverte, a married woman. That which binds a lover is a wife, and as the lover here is an unbound book, a wife corresponds to the binding or cover of the book. The present passage is the earliest cited in New Eng. Dict, for cover of a book.
- ↑ 89. The fish] Farmer supposed there was an allusion here to fish-skin used for binding books, a far-fetched notion. Lady Capulet, I think, interrupts her metaphor of a book to say Lovers are at large, like fishes in the sea, but ready to be hooked. For the metaphor of lover as a fish, see Chorus preceding Act II. 8, Much Ado, II. iii. 114, and III. i. 26–29, Ant. and Cleop. II. v. 10–15. This parenthetical metaphor occurs after the description of Paris; then the main metaphor proceeds, in a second part, with Juliet (the book-cover) for its theme. Mason proposes shell for sea, the purport of what follows being, he thinks, to show the advantage of having a handsome person to cover a virtuous mind.