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SC. I.
ROMEO AND JULIET
51
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And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, 20 |
| Ben. | An[C 1] if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him. |
| Mer. | This cannot anger him: 'twould anger him To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle Of some strange nature, letting it there[C 2] stand 25 Till she had laid it, and conjured it down; That were some spite: my invocation Is fair and honest, and[C 3] in his mistress' name I conjure only but to raise up him. |
| Ben. | Come, he hath hid himself among these[C 4] trees, 30 To be consorted with the humorous[E 1] night: Blind is his love and best befits the dark. |
| Mer. | If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will he sit under a medlar-tree, And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit 35 As maids call medlars[E 2] when they laugh alone. O, Romeo, that she were, O, that she were An open et cetera,[C 5][E 3] thou a poperin[E 4] pear! Romeo, good night: I'll to my truckle-bed;[E 5] This field-bed[E 6] is too cold for me to sleep: 40 |
- ↑ 31. Humorous] humid. Chapman and Drayton are cited by Steevens as so describing night.
- ↑ 36. medlars] See Halliwell's Dict. of Archaic … Words, p. 589, for the suppressed name.
- ↑ 38. et cetera] Used, as here (a substitute for a suppressed unbecoming word), in Cotgrave, under Bergamasque. Ovid frequently uses cetera in a euphemistic way. See Pilgrimage to Parnassus (ed. Macray), opening lines of Act IV. (p. 13).
- ↑ 38. poperin] Named from Poperingue, a town two leagues distant from Ypres; chosen here for the sake of a quibble. See Cyril Tourneur, The Atheist's Tragedie (ed. Collins, vol. i. pp. 97–99), for conceits on medlars and the poperin pear-tree.
- ↑ 39. truckle-bed] a small bed made to run under a larger.
- ↑ 40. field-bed] a camp-bed, or a bed upon the ground, here used with a play on field. In Brooke's Romeus and Juliet (1562) the Nurse plays on
