Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/65

Take thou some new infection to thy[C 1] eye, 50 And the rank poison of the old will die.

Rom.	Your plantain[E 1] leaf is excellent for that.

Ben.	For what, I pray thee?

Rom.	For your broken shin.

Ben.	Why, Romeo, art thou mad?

Rom.	Not mad, but bound more than a madman is; 55 Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipp'd and tormented, and—Good-den[C 2][E 2], good fellow.

Serv.

God gi' good-den[C 3]. I pray, sir, can you read?

Rom.	Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.

Serv.

Perhaps you have learned it without book: 60 but, I pray, can you read any thing you see?

Rom.	Ay, if I know the letters and the language.

Serv.

Ye say honestly; rest you merry!

Rom.	Stay, fellow; I can read.[Reads. [E 3]Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;[C 4] 65 County Anselme[C 5] and his beauteous sisters; The lady widow of Vitruvio;[C 6]

1. 50. thy] Q (alone), the F.
2. 57. Good-den] Capell; Godden Q, F.
3. 58. God gi' good-den] Godgigoden Q, F.
4. 65. daughters] Q, daughter F.
5. 66. Anselme] Q (facsimile) Anselmē Q (Daniel, Furness).
6. 67. Vitruvio] F3; Vtruuio Q1, Q, F.

1. 52. plantain] So referred to, as a salve for a broken shin, in Love's Labour's Lost, III. i. 76. Romeo would turn aside Benvolio's talk of remedies for love with a jest on the popular remedy for an ailment less hard to cure than a broken heart; let us discuss broken shins, not deeper wounds.
2. 57. Good-den] A corruption of "good e'en," it being now the afternoon.
3. 65–73. Capell conjectured that the list of invited guests was in verse; Dyce (ed. 2) so prints it. In line 66 Anselme, a trisyllable, should perhaps, as Capell conjectured, be Anselmo. Q1 for line 71 has My faire Neece Rosaline and Livia. Is it an over-refinement to suppose that Romeo falters and delays over Rosaline's name, and that the text as printed above was so designed? Fair may be a dissyllable; but it is not so in line 74.