If she
requires any other excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes
her frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being
banished from her.--Perhaps one of the finest pieces of acting that
ever was witnessed on the stage, is Mr. Kean's manner of doing this
scene and his repetition of the word, BANISHED. He treads close
indeed upon the genius of his author.
A passage which this celebrated actor and able commentator on
Shakespeare (actors are the best commentators on the poets) did not
give with equal truth or force of feeling was the one which Romeo
makes at the tomb of Juliet, before he drinks the poison.
--Let me peruse this face--
Mercutio's kinsman! noble county Paris!
What said my man, when my betossed soul
Did not attend him as we rode! I think,
He told me, Paris should have married Juliet!
Said he not so? or did I dream it so?
Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,
To think it was so?--O, give me thy hand,
One writ with me in sour misfortune's book!
I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave--
For here lies Juliet.
. . . . . .
--O, my love! my wife!
Death that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks,
And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.
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