Of the passionate scenes in this tragedy, that
between the Friar and Romeo when he is told of his sentence of
banishment, that between Juliet and the Nurse when she hears of it,
and of the death of her cousin Tybalt (which bear no proportion in
her mind, when passion after the first shock of surprise throws its
weight into the scale of her affections), and the last scene at the
tomb, are among the most natural and overpowering. In all of these
it is not merely the force of any one passion that is given, but the
slightest and most unlooked-for transitions from one to another, the
mingling currents of every different feeling rising up and
prevailing in turn, swayed by the master-mind of the poet, as the
waves undulate beneath the gliding storm. Thus when Juliet has by
her complaints encouraged the Nurse to say, 'Shame come to Romeo',
she instantly repels the wish, which she had herself occasioned, by
answering:
Blister'd be thy tongue
For such a wish, he was not born to shame.
Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit,
For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd
Sole monarch of the universal earth!
O, what a beast was I to chide him so!
Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin?
Juliet. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Ah my poor lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it?
And then follows on the neck of her remorse and returning fondness,
that wish treading almost on the brink of impiety, but still held
back by the strength of her devotion to her lord, that 'father,
mother, nay, or both were dead', rather than Romeo banished.
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