It has been said of ROMEO
AND JULIET by a great critic, that 'whatever is most intoxicating in
the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the
nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, is to
be found in this poem'. The description is true; and yet it does not
answer to our idea of the play. For if it has the sweetness of the
rose, it has its freshness too; if it has the languor of the
nightingale's song, it has also its giddy transport; if it has the
softness of a southern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There
is nothing of a sickly and sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in
love, but they are not love-sick. Everything speaks the very soul of
pleasure, the high and healthy pulse of the passions: the heart
beats, the blood circulates and mantles throughout. Their courtship
is not an insipid interchange of sentiments lip-deep, learnt at
second-hand from poems and plays,--made up of beauties of the most
shadowy kind, of 'fancies wan that hang the pensive head', of
evanescent smiles and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy that
shrinks from the touch and feebleness that scarce supports itself,
an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an artificial dearth of sense,
spirit, truth, and nature!--It is the reverse of all this. It is
Shakespeare all over, and Shakespeare when he was young.
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