Romeo and Juliet

Next: Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 5

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Explanatory Notes for Act 2, Scene 4

From Romeo and Juliet. Ed. K. Deighton. London: Macmillan.
*Line numbers have been adjusted due to Deighton's omission of Mercutio's suggestive lines [the bawdy hand...(90) and no hare...spent (105-112)].

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1. Where ... should ... be? where can this troublesome fellow, Romeo, possibly have got to?

3. man, servant.

4. pale, a depreciatory epithet, as Capulet below, iii. 5. 158, calls Juliet "tallow-face."

11, 2. Nay, he will answer ... dared, nay, he will not merely answer the letter in writing, but will answer its writer in person, and show him what he dares do being challenged; for answer, = meet in combat, cp. A. C. iii. 13. 27, "And answer me declined, sword against sword." For the play on the two senses of dare, Delius compares ii. H. VI. iii. 2. 203, "What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?"

13. he is already dead, i.e. and therefore there is no need for Tybalt to challenge him.

15. pin, centre; literally the wooden peg by which the target was fastened to the mark at archery practice.

16. butt-shaft, arrow used in shooting at the butts; a butt was properly a mound or erection on which the target was set up, O. F. but, a goal: a man, the proper sort of person, seeing what his condition is.

17. Why, what is Tybalt? why, what is there about Tybalt that is so terrible?

18. prince of cats. "Tybert is the name given to the cat in Reynard the Fox" (Warburton); and that name, or Tibalt, is in old writers frequently used of cats.

18, 9. he's the courageous ... compliments, he is at the head of the troop of valiant formalists, men versed in all the nicest forms of ceremony.

19, 20. as you sing prick-song, with the minutest attention to every detail; prick-song, "harmony pricked or noted down, in opposition to plain-song, where the descant rested with the will of the singer" (Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, etc., quoted by Dyce).

20, 1. rests me ... bosom, poises his weapon during the time that a musician could count one, two, and by the time that he could count three, has it right through you; a rest is a pause in musical time, and a minim, formerly spelled minum, was once the shortest note, from Lat. minimum, the least. For one, two, cp. Temp. iv. 1. 44, 5, "Before you can say 'come' and 'go,' And breathe twice and cry 'so, so.'

21, 2. the very ... button, one who in fencing can hit a button with as much certainty as a butcher can stick a pig. Staunton quotes Silver's Paradoxes of Defence, 1599, "thou that takest upon thee to hit anie Englishman with a thrust upon anie button."

22, 3. a gentleman ... cause, "a gentleman of the first rank, of the first eminence among these duellists, and one who understands the whole science of quarrelling, and will tell you of the first cause and the second cause for which a man is to fight" (Steevens). These causes are wittily ridiculed in A. Y. L. v. 4. 51, et seqq.

24. the immortal ... reverso. "The passado, more properly passata, meant a step forward or aside in fencing. ... The punto reverso was also an Italian term, meaning a back-handed stroke" (Staunton): the hai. "The hay is the [Italian] word hai, used when a thrust reaches the antagonist" (Johnson).

26. fantasticoes, fantastic fellows with their duelling jargon.

27. these new tuners of accents, these fellows who are ever introducing new terms: a very good blade! a fine fencer! the weapon being put for the wielder of it.

28. tall, lusty, spirited; in this sense a term generally used by Shakespeare either with irony, or as a piece of bragging, or put into the mouth of mean persons; cp. the phrase " a tall man of his hands," M. W. i. 4. 26; "a tall fellow of thy hands," W. T. V. 2. 177.

29. grandsire, my staid, sober friend.

29, 30. these strange flies, this new kind of buzzing insects, these fellows who are here, there, and everywhere with their incessant chatter; cp. Haml. v. 2. 84: fashion-mongers, fellows who are forever inventing some new fashion or other: these pardonnez-moys, these fellows with their everlasting affectation of courtesy; these fellows who ever have on their lips the phrase pardonnez moy, excuse me.

31. Stand ... form, are so punctilious in observing the new formalities; with a pun on form in the sense of a long wooden seat.

32. Oh, their bons, their bons! oh, how sick I am of their eternal exclamation of bon! i.e. good. The old copies give 'their bones, their bones,' and though Theobald's correction is almost certainly right, there is probably a pun on bones in allusion to the former sentence.

34. Without his roe. "That is, he comes but half himself - he is only a sigh — O me! i.e. me O! the half of his name" (Seymour): like a dried herring, from which, before it was dried, the roe had been taken out to be preserved separately.

35. fishified, made like a fish: Now ... numbers, now is he given up to such love-songs.

36. Laura, Petrarch's mistress, to whom so much of his poetry is addressed: to, compared with.

37. marry, ... her, by the holy Virgin, she was more fortunate than Rosaline in the poet who celebrated her perfections.

38. a dowdy, a mere slattern: a gipsy, a sun-burnt vagabond; from M. E. Egypcien, an Egyptian, the gipsies, though really of Indian origin, being formerly supposed to have come from Egypt. Cleopatra, though by birth an Egyptian, was by descent Greek. hildings, menial wretches. "Hilding is short for hilderling and hilderling stands for M. E. hinderling, base, degenerate"... (Skeat, Ety. Dict.).

39. a grey eye ... purpose, a lady whose grey eyes were fairly good, but nothing to be compared with those of Rosaline.

41. slop, baggy trousers; more commonly in the plural, as in M. A. iii. 2. 36, "a German from the waist downward, all slops"; ii. II. IV. i. 2. 34, "What said Master Dombledon about the satin for my short cloak and my slops?"

44. The slip ... conceive, why, the slip; are you so dull that you cannot see my little joke? slips were pieces of counterfeit money, brass covered over with silver, and to 'give one the slip' is to play one the trick of stealing away unnoticed.

45. great, important.

46. may strain courtesy, may be forgiven if he does not stand upon ceremony.

48. to bow in the hams, to be particularly polite; to bow low in respect to the knee, to curtsy, as Romeo interprets the phrase, not to treat us as you did.

50. Thou hast ... it, "your reply was of a piece with my speech" (Grant White); but though kindly is primarily used as = of the same kind, or sort, the way in which "courtesy" and "courteous" are insisted upon shows that there is a play upon the other sense of the word.

53. Pink for flower, by pink you mean flower; you are using the species for the genus.

55. then is ... flowered, then is my court-shoe well flowered, ornamented, for it is pinked (i.e. punched with holes in patterns) abundantly. This 'pinking' is still to be seen in ladies' shoes; pump, so called because worn for pomp; from F. pompe, pomp, state, show.

56. follow me this jest, cap this jest for me by another, and another, till, etc.

57. the single sole of it, pumps are made with thin, or single, soles to give lightness in dancing.

57, 8. that, when ... singular, that, when its thin sole is worn out, there may remain nothing but the bare feet. Mercutio's jest is something like the phantom grin of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, and to try to embody his wit as the weaving of coarse canvas out of the spider's web.

59. O single-soled ... singleness! O threadbare feet, unique only in being so silly! Singer has shown that single-soled or 'single-souled' was often used for 'simple,' 'silly,' and sometimes meant 'threadbare.' He quotes from Cotgrave, "Monsieur de trois au boissean et de trois a un epee: a threadbare, coarse-spun, single-soled gentleman."

60. my wits faint. This, the reading of the later quartos and the first folio, seems better than that of the first quarto more generally adopted, "my wits fail."

61,2. Switch ... match, give me whip and spurs, whip and spurs; for I'll cry 'Done with you!' I'll make a match with you, enter myself for a race against you. I have adopted Capell's for in place of 'or,' the reading of the old copies, since an alternative seems to make nonsense of the passage.

63. the wild-goose chase. " A kind of horse race which resembled the flight of wild geese [which fly in a long stream, marshalled by one of the older birds]. Two horses started together; and whichever rider could get the lead, the other was obliged to follow him over whatever ground the foremost jockey chose to go. That horse which could distance the other won the race" ... (Holt White). The references to this kind of 'steeple-chase' are frequent in the old dramatists.

65, 6. was I ... goose? did I touch you there in my reference to the goose? did you feel that the cap fitted you when I mentioned the word goose? The expression, 'to be here, or there, with' a person seems to have been especially used of contemptuous exclamations, gestures, etc.; thus in W. T. i. 2. 217, "They're here with me already, whispering, rounding 'Silicia is a so-forth.'" In Cor. iii. 2. 73, "here be with them" means 'here salute them with a courteous wave of the bonnet.'

67, 8. Thou wast ... goose, you were never with me for any purpose except that of playing the part of a goose; the words with me being taken in their literal sense.

69. I will bite thee by the ear. "This odd mode of expressing pleasure, which seems to be taken from the practice of animals, who, in a playful mood, bite each other's ears, etc., is very common in our old dramatists" (Giffbrd on Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, v. 4). Cp. e.g. Chapman, Byron's Tragedy, V. 1, "let me draw Poison into me with this cursed air. If he bewitched me and transformed me not; He hit me by the ear and made me drink Enchanted waters."

70. bite not, according to Steevens a proverbial saying.

71. sweeting, an apple of that name, remarkable for its sweetness, which is still grown about Stratford. Often used as a term of endearment, as in Oth. ii. 3. 252, T. N. ii. 3. 43.

73. And is it not ... goose. An allusion to the apple sauce usual with roast goose.

74. cheveril, kid leather, i.e. something very pliant, capable of being stretched; O. F. chevrele, kid, diminutive of chevre, from capra, a she-goat. Cp. H. VIII. ii. 3. 32, "which gifts ... the capacity Of your soft cheveril conscience would receive, If you might please to stretch it."

76. for that word 'broad,' for the sake of bringing in that word 'broad.' "What Romeo means," says Collier, "is that Mercutio has proved himself 'far and wide abroad' a goose"; possibly as Singer suggests Romeo is playing on the term 'brood-goose,' i.e. a brooding-goose, which we have in Beaumont and Fletcher's Humorous Lieutenant, iii. 1. 54, "They have no more burden than a brood-goose, brother."

80. by art ... nature, not merely your natural self, but yourself improved by art, i.e. by the cultivation of your natural wit.

81. a great natural, a loutish idiot; one born a fool; cp. A. Y. L. i. 2. 52, "when Fortune makes Nature's natural the cutter-off of Nature's wit," referring to the professional Fool, Touchstone; also 1. 57, "hath sent this natural for our whetstone."

82. bauble, the Fool's sceptre, a short stick ornamented at the top with a fool's head, or a doll; or sometimes an inflated bladder with which the Fool belaboured those who offended him.

84. against the hair, against the grain, with a pun on the word tale (tail); T. C. i. 2. 27, "he is melancholy without cause, and merry against the hair"; M. W. ii. 3. 41, "if you should fight, you go against the hair of your professions."

88. to occupy the argument, to take part in the discussion; to occupy, a cant term; see ii. H. IV. ii. 4. 161, "these villains will make the word as odious as the word 'occupy'; which was an excellent good word before it was ill sorted."

89. Here's goodly gear! here's a pretty business! said as he sees the Nurse approaching; but also with a play on the word gear in the sense of 'dress,' here's a fine object! Cp. L. L. L. V. 2. 303, "Disguised like Muscovites, in shapeless gear." The original sense of the word is 'preparation,' hence 'dress,' 'harness,' 'tackle.'

90. A sail, a sail! the exclamation of the watch at sea when a strange vessel is seen approaching. Cp. Samson's sarcastic exclamation as he sees Dalila approaching in all her finery, Samson Agonistes, 710, et seqq., "But who is this, what thing of sea or land? Female of sex it seems. That, so bedecked, ornate, and gay, Comes this way, sailing Like a stately ship Of Tarsus, bound for the isles of Javan or Gadire, With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, Sails filled, and streamers waving," etc.

91. a shirt and a smock, a man and a woman; the undergarment of each being used for the persons.

93. Anon! here! present.

94. My fan. The commentators point out that the fans of those days were very large and might well require a man to carry them.

95. Good Peter, ... face, do, good Peter, give it to her, etc.

97. God ye ... gentlemen, see note on i. 2. 57.

99. Is it good den? is it so late as that? is it past noon, that one ought to say 'good even'?

105. I am the youngest ... worse, I am that young Romeo you seek, the youngest in fact of those who bear that name, in the absence of any less worthy of it. Romeo jestingly alters the ordinary form of excuse, 'for fault of a better.'

107. is the worst well? does this 'worst,' as Romeo by inference calls himself, satisfy you? took, understood.

109. confidence, conference; as in M. A. iii. 5. 3, "Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you that decerns you nearly" (Dogberry's speech); and again M. W. i. 4. 172.

110. indite, invite; which the first quarto reads, though the word is doubtless Benvolio's mocking imitation of the Nurse's "confidence."

113, 4. lady, lady, lady, the burden of the Ballad of Susanna, of which Staunton quotes a stanza from Percy's Reliques.

116. merchant, formerly used in a contemptuous sense, like the modern 'huckster': ropery, possibly only the Nurse's mistake for 'roguery,' though the word was commonly used for roguery, mischief, with an allusion to the hangman's rope; so also 'rope- tricks,' 'rope-ripe,' 'roper.'

118. stand to, maintain.

120. a', he; in Old English ha and a are sometimes found = he, she, it, they; a' is common in the old dramatists, and we even find 'am for them, e.g. Middleton, The Phoenix, ii. 2, "Should still affect 'am. "

120, 1. I'll take him down, I'll make him pay for it: an a' ... is, and would do so even if it were, etc.: Jacks, saucy fellows; so "a Jack-sauce," II. V. iv. 7. 148. Skeat quotes Tyrwhitt on Chaucer's 'Sir John': "I know not how it has happened that in the principal modern languages, John, or its equivalent, is a name of contempt, or at least of slight. So the Italians use Gianni, from whence Zani; the Spaniards Juan, as bobo Juan, a foolish John; the French Jean, with various additions; and in English, when we call a man a John, we do not mean it as a title of honour...."

122. Scurvy, literally afflicted with scurf, hence mean, vile.

123. flirt-gills. "An arbitrary transposition of the compound word gill-flirt, that is a flirting-gill, a woman of light behaviour ... Gill was a current and familiar term for a female"... (Nares): skains-mates. "The word skain, I am told by a Kentishman, was formerly a familiar term in parts of Kent to express what we now call a scape-grace, or ne'er-do-well .... Others derive the word from skean, a sword, and mate, companion, i.e. brothers of the sword, roystering companions, with which Schmidt compares the G. spiesgeselle.

124, 5. And thou ... pleasure, and you could stand there could you, and allow me to be insulted as any scoundrel chose! shame on you for your cowardice!

133. what she hade ... myself. Distrusting Romeo's attendant, the Nurse comes to the conclusion that she cannot better perform her errand than by keeping back the very object of that errand.

134. a fool's paradise, a state of fallacious happiness. Milton, P. L. iii. 495, has a "Paradise of Fools" which he makes identical with the Limbo to which he consigns all popish observances, insignia, and their wearers.

138. weak dealing. 'Wicked' has been suggested for weak, but the point seems to lie, as Clarke observes, in the Nurse's intending to use a most forcible expression, and blundering upon a most feeble one. Fleay, apud Daniel, suggests that, if any change is needed, the old word wicke, still in use in the midland counties in the sense of foul, wicked, should be adopted.

139. commend me, give my best compliments; literally recommend me to her favour (by bearing my loving greetings).

141. Good heart, my good fellow; a form of familiar address, like 'poor heart,' 'old heart,' 'noble heart.'

152. Go to, nonsense, you must.

156. a tackled stair, a rope ladder; like the ratlines or ratlins of a vessel, the small transverse ropes across the shrouds forming a ladder.

157, 8. which to the high ... secret, by which I must in the darkness of night convoy myself to the summit, pinnacle, of my happiness; the 'top-gallant sail' in a vessel is the sail above the top-sail, and the nautical figure in top-gallant and convoy is suggested to Romeo's mind by the "tackled stair."

159. quit, requite; as very frequently in Shakespeare, both in a good and a bad sense.

164. Two may keep ... away, two may keep a secret, if one is away.

168, 9. that would ... aboard, that would be only too glad to 'get a cut at her,' to make her his own: lieve, gladly; lieve, or lief, like "fain" in the previous line, is properly an adjective meaning dear, pleasing.

170. sometimes. "But a few hours have in fact elapsed since last night's interview between the lovers, yet the dramatic effect of a longer period is thus given to the interval by the introduction of the single word 'sometimes'" (Clarke): and tell her, by telling her: properer, handsomer; proper, Lat. proprius, one's own, then what becomes a man, and so handsome.

172. versal, universal.

173. Doth. An instance of the singular inflection preceding a plural subject: a letter, one and the same letter: rosemary, in Haml. ii. 5. 175, Ophelia says, "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance," to which adage Juliet in her "prettiest sententious of it" was probably referring; the word has nothing to do with either the flower or with the name Mary, being from the Lat. ros marinus, dew of the sea, i.e. the plant that delights in the spray of the sea.

175. that's the dog's name. From its resemblance to the snarling of a dog, the letter R was by the Romans called 'the dog's letter,' and Jonson in his English grammar says "R is the dog's letter, and hurreth in the sound." The Nurse having heard the adage, substitutes name for letter.

175, 6. R is for the — No; ...letter, R is for the dog, she was going to say, but breaks off and continues, I know your name does not begin with such an ugly sound. The old copies give "R is for the no," which Tyrwhitt emended "R is for the dog, No"; the reading in the text is Ritson's conjecture.

176, 7. she hath ... of it, she frames the prettiest sentences or sentiments about it.

182. apace, quickly; "at an earlier period the word was written as two words, a pas, as in Chaucer.... It is also to be remarked that the phrase has widely changed its meaning. In Chaucer ... it means 'a foot-pace,' and was originally used of horses when proceeding slowly, or at a walk. The phrase is composed of the Eng. indef. article a, and the M. E. pas, Mod. E. pace, a word of F. origin" (Skeat, Ety. Dict.).

How to cite the explanatory notes:
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Ed. K. Deighton. London: Macmillan, 1916. Shakespeare Online. 20 Dec. 2013. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/romeo_2_4.html >.

How to cite the sidebar:
Mabillard, Amanda. Notes on Shakespeare. Shakespeare Online. 20 Dec. 2013. < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/romeo_2_4.html >.

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Notes on the Nurse "A trusted member of a high-born household, she fancies her behaviour to be modelled on their example, plumes herself on decorum, in her walks abroad must be attended by her own servant, like her betters must be careful of the proprieties of the fan, with due self-respect must bridle at the familiarities of that 'saucy merchant,' Mercutio, 'so full of his ropery,' and let it be known to all men that she is 'none of his flirt-gills'". K. Deighton. Read on... ____

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Points for Discussion... "It may be said that in this more than in any other play Shakespeare comes near to being a commentator on himself, and to giving us his own authority for the true interpretation. In the prologue it is the author who speaks: this opening of the plot exhibits, not sin and its consequences, but a suggestion of entangling circumstance; when he speaks of the "fatal loins" of the parents, the "star-cross'd lovers," and their "misadventured piteous overthrows," Shakespeare is using the language of destiny and pathos. For what is spoken in the scenes the speakers alone are responsible; yet a succession of striking passages has the effect of carrying on the suggestion of the prologue - dramatic foreshadowings, unconscious finger-pointings to the final tragedy, just like the shocks of omen that in ancient drama brought out the irony of fate." (Richard G. Moulton, The Moral System of Shakespeare)

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