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CAPUCHIN. 184 CAPULETTI ED I MONTECCHI. CAPUCHIN, kap'a-shen' or kap'u-chin, The. A comedy by Samuel yoote. ]no(hncd at the Hay- market, August 17, 17711, and i)ul)Ushed in (letavo 1778. It is a modification of the same author's 7Vi;> to Cahiix. and is aimed at a creature of the Duchess of Kingston. (See Viper, Dr.; also Kingston. Elizabeth, DrciiEss of.) Foote played the part of O'Donovan in it. Its perform- ance was stojiped by the public censor, but the attack was continued in The Bankrupt. CAPUCHIN (kap'fl-sheii') MONKEY (It. C(i/j/i»cci/io, Franciscan friar, because of the cowl like blaek spot on the head). Any sapajou of the genus Cebus, but more specitically the •weeper' (Cehiis capuciiiu.i) , one of the connnon species in northern Brazil, and often kept in captivity. See S.pa.toi-. and Plate of Americax AIoNKEYS, under JIonkey. CAPUCHINS (Fr. capuciii, Sp. capuchinn, from It. capiiccio, cowl, Jled. Lat. copuliiim, capilium, from caput, head). A branch of the Franciscan Order of friars, whose rule is es- sentially the same as that of the Friars Minor, or ISIinorites. They were founded at llontefalco, in Umbria, bv llatteo di Bassi, an Observantine Franciscan, who in ir25 left his monastery in order to live the stricter life of a hermit. This he was permitted to do by Pope Clement VII. in 152(). Being imprisoned at Ancona for his alleged disobedience to monastic order, he was released through the influence of the Duchess of Camerino, niece of the Pope, and he and his companions, in 1528. were allowed to wear beards and peculiar, long-pointed hoods (hence the name), to impart their habit to any one who might be willing to join them, to live as her- mits in wild and desolate places, to go barefoot, and to call themselves the "Hermit Friars Minor." They grew rapidly, and had great suc- cess in making converts. After the Jesuits, no order has attracted to itself so many men of the highest birth as this, in which poverty is pushed to its utmost extreme. They have always paid much attention to learning, and liave produced a number of considerable theologians. Five have been canonized and six beatified. The order reached its greatest develoiiment in the Eighteenth Centiiry: in 1775 it had sixty-four provinces with 31,000 members, a number which has never since been reached. They are most numerous in Austria, Init have twenty-two a]ms- tolic mission districts in all parts of the wcrld. In the United States they have two provinces, one with its chief house in Detroit, Jlieh.. and fiftv-six fathers, and the other centred in Pitts- burg, Pa., with forty-eight fathers. To Protest- ants, the best known Capuchins are Bernardino Oehino, who was converted to Protestantism in 1542, and Father Theobald Jlathew, the famous Irish apostle of total abstinence. There are also Capuchin nuns, founded in Naples, IS.^S, who are properly a branch of the Clares (q.v.), insisting strongly on i)overty, and following as far as possible the Capuchin constitution. Con- sult liiilUiriutn Capuriiiiim (7 vols., Rome, 1740- 52), broight up to date in three supplementary volumes (Innsbruck. 188.3-84). CAP'ULETS and MON'TAGUES. The Kng- lish forms of tlic nanii-s of tlic Cap)ielletti and Mont<'Cchi. two nolih' familii's of Verona, chiefly memorable from their connection with the legend on which Shakesj)care founded Romeo and Juliet. They are mentioned by Dante [Purgatorio, vi. 100) in connection with Albert of Hapsburg, King of the Romans, wlio was murdered in 1308. Tliis event has supplied the Veronese with a date for their legend. Implicitly believing the storv, they point out the house of Juliet's par- ents" and her tomb. The legend is undoubtedly Eastern in origin, having analogues in the stories of Pyramus and Tliisbe, Hero and Leander, and Abrocomas and Anthia (as related in the Kphesiara of Xenophon of Ephesus, a writer of the Second Century a.u.). The incident of the sleeping potion was, moreover, quite common in late Creek romance. So far as is known, the essen- tials of the story reached Italy late in the Fif- teenth Century, "ajipcaring in a short novel by ^klassuccio of "Salerno, first published in 1476. We come more closely to the outline of Shake- speare's play in the novel La Oiulietta, by Luigi da Porto, printed in 1535, after the death of the author. He states, in an epistle prefixed to the work, that the story was told him "by one Pere- grino. a man fifty years of age, much experienced in the art of war, a pleasant companion, and, like almost all the Veronese, a great talker." Da Porto, then, was the first to claim that the storv was based on fact. This was a common make-believe of the Sixteenth Century story-tell- ers. In 1554 Bandello published in his collection of tales another Italian version of the legend. It was entitled The I' ii fortunate Death of Tico Unhappy Lovers — One h;/ Poison and the Other of Grief. Both writers fix the date of the event by savirig it took place when Bartolonieo della S'cala" ruled Verona (1301-04), A French ver- sion of the tale was published by Pierre Borsteau in his Bistoires tragiques (1559), It was translated into English in 1567, and publislied in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. Five years before, Arthur Brooke published an English poem on the same subject, entitled The Tragical flistory of Pomeus and Juliet, u-rillcn first in Italian bij Handcll. and now in Pnglish. Shakespeare seems to have founded his tragedy on Brooke's poem, with some use of Painter's version. Yet there is some evidence that the story had been drama- tized l)efore the appearance of Sliakespeare's play. In that case, Shakespeare probably made use' of his predecessor. It was Brooke wlui first tailed the Montecchi 'Montagues,' and the Prince of Verima 'Escalus,' instead of Scala. Wright and Cary, in translating Dante, have followed the example of Shakespeare, and rendered the Ital- ian names of the Divina Commcdia into the fa- miliar "Capulets and Montagues" of llomeo and Juliet. The historical date of the tragedy has not, however, been adopted by modern stage managers, who very proi)erly bring down the action from the beginning to the close of the Fourteenth Century, when commercial oiiulenee and the revival of arts and letters sujiply ac- cessories more in keeping with the drama than the ruder age to which liisfory must assign the 'civil broils,' and the fall of the Capulets and the Montagues. Consult: Daniel. "Originals and Analogues of Romeo and Juliet," in yen- Shake- speare Societij Puhliealions (London. 1875); or the Variorum edition of Romeo and Juliet, by II. II. Fumcss (l'hiladcli)liiii. 1871). CAPULETTI ED I MONTECCHI. kii'pnn- let'tf ftd «'• mftntek'k* (It., Capulets and Mon- tagues), An opera by Bellini, produced in 1830,