ROMEO AND JULIET.

Vieni, a veder Montecchi e Capelletti.

I.

Dante, Purg., Canto VI.

ON a day of some year unknown, early in the sixteenth century, Luigi da Porto, a young cavalry officer in the service of the Venetian Republic, was riding, as he tells us, along the lonely road between Gradisca and Udine, in the pleasant country of Friuli. Two of his attendants had been left far behind, but one followed closer, his favourite archer, Peregrino, a man of fifty, handsome of face, courageous, skilled in the use of his bow, skilled also, like most of his fellow-townsmen of Verona, in use of his tongue, and very learned in tales of love and lovers. The young man, lost in his own thoughts, was musing sadly on the cruelty of fortune, which had given his heart to one who would not give hers in exchange, when the voice of Peregrino sounded in his ears. "Do you wish to live always a wretched life because a beautiful, cruel, and fickle one loves you but little? In your profession, Master mine, it is very unbecoming to stay long in the prison of love; so sad are almost all the ends to which love leads us that to follow him is dangerous. In proof of which, and to shorten the tedium of the way, I will, should it please you, relate a story of what happened in my country, in which you will hear

how two noble lovers were led to a very sad and pitiful death."

The story of Romeo and Juliet, which Peregrino, the Veronese archer, told to the jingling of bridle-reins, if not a tradition of real events, is probably a refinement on an older tale found among the Novelle of Masuccio Salernitano, printed at Naples in 1476. Masuccio, of whose life little is known, calls God to witness that the tales of his recital are not vain fictions, but true passages of history. In Siena lived a young man of good family named Mariotto Mignanelli, who loved a citizen's daughter, Giannozza Saraceni, and was loved by her in return. cannot avow their Augustine monk.

Fate being opposed to them, they love, but are secretly married by an After some time Mariotto quarrels

with a citizen of note, whom he has the misfortune to kill with the blow of a stick. He is condemned to perpetual exile, and, after a sorrowful parting from his beloved, flies to Alexandria, in which city his uncle is a wealthy merchant. Upon Mariotto's departure the father of Giannozza urges her to accept the hand of a suitor whom he has provided, and she, like Juliet in her distress, turns to the friar, who prepares a powder which, dissolved in water, shall cast her into a three days' slumber resembling death. Having first despatched a messenger to inform her husband, she drinks the draught, and is buried in the church of St Augustine. At night the friar delivers her from the tomb, and bears her, still unconscious, to his dwelling. Here she comes to herself at the appointed time, and disguised as a monk hastens on board a ship bound for

Alexandria, Meanwhile her messenger has been captured by pirates, and tidings of the sudden deaths of Giannozza and of her father (who had really died of grief for his daughter's loss) reach Mariotto. Weary of life, he comes to Siena, disguised as a pilgrim, hurries to the church where he believes that his lady's body lies, and flings himself upon her grave. While endeavouring to open the tomb he is discovered by the sacristan, who takes him for a thief. He is seized, identified as the banished Mariotto, on the rack confesses the entire truth, and, notwithstanding the general sympathy, and especially that of all women, is condemned and beheaded. Giannozza, having arrived at Alexandria, learns to her dismay that her husband, on hearing of her reported death, has returned to Siena; she instantly follows him, only to be informed of his execution. She strives to hide her grief in a convent, and there in a short time dies of a broken heart.*

This tale of the "Neapolitan Boccaccio" is comparatively rude in some features almost savage. Love is here in its might, and death in its terror; but beauty has not come to lift the tale out of the melodramatic and make it a symbol of what is most piteous and most august in human existence-the strict bounds which life sets to our purest and most ardent desires, and the boundlessness of those desires which choose rather to abandon this world than to be untrue to themselves.

"Con interno dolore e sanguinose lacrime con poco cibo e niente dormire." I have followed the analyses of Masuccio's novel in Dr Schulze's article, Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, XI., Simrock's "Die Quellen des Shakspeare," and Daniel's Preface to Brooke and Painter (New Shakspere Society, 1878).

What, then, does Masuccio's novel need? It needs that the youth and maiden sacrificed to love should be crowned and garlanded with all that makes life lovely ; that their fate should come upon them at first with a terror of great joy; that they should be swept suddenly and irresistibly into the mid stream of violent delight ; that the obstacle to their happiness should be of no slight or casual kind, but broad-based on an old foundation; that hate should thus stand frowning over against love; that no hazardous wanderings from Italy to Egypt should have place in the story, but that by trivial accident the purpose of destiny should be brought about; finally, that the death of one lover should be self-sought and deliberate outcome of desperate error -and that the other should be fleet to pursue the lost one through the gates of the grave in a rapture of anguish and of desire.

II.

All that was needed to Masuccio's tale Shakspere accomplished; but before the tale reached Shakspere it had been in large measure ennobled and refined. Da Porto's version (1530-35) is sixty years later in date than that of Masuccio. In Italy, says Mr Symonds, "the key-note of the Renaissance was struck by the Novella, as in England by the drama." The tragic simplicity of Masuccio's tale gives place in Da Porto's "Romeo and Juliet" to the heightened effects of an artist; it is a prose poem of the Italian Renaissance. Within a narrow compass it brings together splendour and gloom, joy and misery; the banquet-hall, the bridal

chamber, and the burial-vault; while over all are cast a grace of manners, a bloom of southern life, which the earlier Novella lacks. In almost every essential, and in various details, Da Porto's story agrees with Shakspere's play. It is early in the thirteenth century, the time of Bartolomeo della Scala, Prince of Verona-the Escalus of Shakspere. The two rival houses, Capelletti and Montecchi, wearied with continual strife, are now at length almost pacified. In the Carnival season, the head of the Capelletti, Messer Antonio, gives many entertainments night and day, to one of which, on a certain night, came in pursuit of his mistress a young man of the house of Montecchi, masked, and wearing the dress of a nymph. Having removed his mask all are amazed at his comeliness, and the eyes of the daughter of the house-who is herself "of supernatural beauty, courageous, and very charming" encounter with those of the stranger. In the torch dance the hands of the two touch, and words of love are whispered. From that evening each thinks only of the other, and sometimes at church, sometimes at a window, Romeo catches sight of his beloved. Often at peril of his life he walks before her house, or climbs to her balcony, now while the moon shines bright, and again when the winter snow is falling thick. Considering the danger to which he is exposed, Giulietta consents to be his wife, and Friar Lorenzo of St Francis, "a great philosopher, who tried many experiments as well in natural as

In what follows I have used "The Original Story of Romeo and Juliet, Italian text with English translation," by G. Pace-Sanfelice,