Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare Read Free Book Online Page A

seem natural. It is also often highly appropriate to a particular character. Consider, for instance, this speech from Hamlet , in which Claudius, King of Denmark (“the Dane”), speaks to Laertes:
    And now, Laertes, what’s the news with you?
You told us of some suit. What is’t, Laertes?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane
And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,
That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
    (1.2.42-46)
    Notice the short sentences and the repetition of the name “Laertes,” to whom the speech is addressed. Notice, too, the shift from the royal “us” in the second line to the more intimate “my” in the last line, and from “you” in the first three lines to the more intimate “thou” and “thy” in the last two lines. Claudius knows how to ingratiate himself with Laertes.
    For a second example of the flexibility of Shakespeare’s blank verse, consider a passage from Macbeth . Distressed by the doctor’s inability to cure Lady Macbeth and by the imminent battle, Macbeth addresses some of his remarks to the doctor and others to the servant who is arming him. The entire speech, with its pauses, interruptions, and irresolution (in “Pull’t off, I say,” Macbeth orders the servant to remove the armor that the servant has been putting on him), catches Macbeth’s disintegration. (In the first line, physic means “medicine,” and in the fourth and fifth lines, cast the water means “analyze the urine.”)
    Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it.
Come, put mine armor on. Give me my staff.
Seyton, send out.—Doctor, the thanes fly from me.—
Come, sir, dispatch. If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again.—Pull’t off, I say.—
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug,
Would scour these English hence? Hear’st thou of them?
    (5.3.47-56)
    Blank verse, then, can be much more than unrhymed iambic pentameter, and even within a single play Shakespeare’s blank verse often consists of several styles, depending on the speaker and on the speaker’s emotion at the moment.

The Play Text as a Collaboration
    Shakespeare’s fellow dramatist Ben Jonson reported that the actors said of Shakespeare, “In his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out line,” i.e., never crossed out material and revised his work while composing. None of Shakespeare’s plays survives in manuscript (with the possible exception of a scene in Sir Thomas More ), so we cannot fully evaluate the comment, but in a few instances the published work clearly shows that he revised his manuscript. Consider the following passage (shown here in facsimile) from the best early text of Romeo and Juliet , the Second Quarto (1599):
    Ro, Would I were fleepe and peace to (weet to reft The grey eyde morne (miles on the frowning night, Checking the Eafterne Clouds with ftreaks ot light, And darkneffc fleckted like a drunkard reeles, From forth daies pathway, made by Tyrans wheeles. Heike will I to my ghoftly Friers clofe cell, His helpe to crauc, and my deare hap to tell.
    Exit.
    Enter Frier alone with a basket. (night, Fri . The grey-eyed morne fmiles on the frowning Checking the Eafterne clowdes with streaks of light: And fleckeld darknesse like a drunkard reeles, From forth daies path,and Titus burning wheeles: Now erethe fun advance his burning eie,
    Romeo rather elaborately tells us that the sun at dawn is dispelling the night (morning is smiling, the eastern clouds are checked with light, and the sun’s chariot—Titan’s wheels—advances), and he will seek out his spiritual father, the Friar. He exits and, oddly, the Friar enters and says pretty much the same thing about the sun. Both speakers say that “the gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,” but there are small differences, perhaps having more to do with the business of printing the book than with