Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/77

A visor for a visor![E 1] what care I 30 What curious eye doth quote[E 2] deformities? Here are the beetle-brows[E 3] shall blush for me.

Ben.	Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in But every man betake him to his legs.

Rom.	A torch for me: let wantons, light of heart, 35 Tickle the senseless rushes[E 4] with their heels;[E 5] For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase[E 6]; I'll be a candle-holder, and look on. The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done[C 1].

Mer.	Tut, dun's the mouse[E 7], the constable's own[C 2] word: 40

1. 39. done] Q1, F; dum Q; dun Qq 3–5.
2. 40. own] Q, F; old Q1.

1. 30. A visor for a visor!] My face, fantastic as a mask, needs no visor. Compare Rosaline to Berowne, Love's Labour's Lost, V. ii. 387: "That vizard; that superfluous case That hid the worse and show'd the better face."
2. 31. quote] observe, as in Hamlet, II. i. 112.
3. 32. beetle-brows] overhanging brows; apparently not eye-brows, for eye-brows could not blush. New Eng. Dict. says that brows in Middle English always means eye-brows; beetle-browed is as old as Langland, Piers Ploughman, 1362. The origin favoured by New Eng. Dict, is a comparison with the tufted antennæ of certain kinds of beetles. Shakespeare seems to have invented the verb beetle used in Hamlet, I. iv. 71: "The cliff that beetles o'er his base," that is, a cliff like an overhanging forehead. Cotgrave, however (1611), has "Beetle-browed, sourcilleux," and he explains sourcilleux as "having very great eye-brows."
4. 36. rushes] Steevens notes that not only were rooms strewn with rushes, but the stage was also so strewn. Dekker's Gul's Hornbook, 1609: "On the very rushes when the comedy is to daunce."
5. 35, 36.] Steevens notes Middleton's echo of these lines in Blurt Master-Constable, 1602:

   "—bid him, whose heart no sorrow feels,
   Tickle the rushes with his wanton heels,
   I have too much lead at mine."

6. 37. grandsire phrase] Ray gives a proverb, "A good candle-holder proves a good gamester." Ritson (see line 39) refers to the proverbial saying which advises to give over when the game is at the fairest. I am done in line 39 seems to mean I give over the game.
7. 40. dun's the mouse] This phrase occurs in several Elizabethan dramas, sometimes with quibbles on done. Malone took it to mean Peace; be still! and hence he supposed it is the constable's word. He cites Patient Grissel (1603), "don is the mouse, lie still." Mascal in Government of Cattle (1620) has "mouse-dun coloured hair."