Good father, I beseech you on my knees, Hear me with patience but to speak one word! * * * * Ah, sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for a month,--a week! And, rejected by both, she throws herself upon her nurse in all the helplessness of anguish, of confiding affection, of habitual dependence-- O God! O nurse! how shall this be prevented? Some comfort, nurse! The old woman, true to her vocation, and fearful lest her share in these events should be discovered, counsels her to forget Romeo and marry Paris; and the moment which unveils to Juliet the weakness and baseness of her confidante, is the moment which reveals her to herself. She does not break into upbraidings; it is no moment for anger; it is incredulous amazement, succeeded by the extremity of scorn and abhorrence, which take possession of her mind. She assumes at once and asserts all her own superiority, and rises to majesty in the strength of her despair. JULIET. Speakest thou from thy heart? NURSE. Aye, and from my soul too;--or else Beshrew them both! JULIET. Amen! This final severing of all the old familiar ties of her childhood-- Go, counsellor! Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain! and the calm, concentrated force of her resolve, If all else fail,--myself have power to die; have a sublime pathos. It appears to me also an admirable touch of nature, considering the master-passion which, at this moment, rules in Juliet's soul, that she is as much shocked by the nurse's dispraise of her lover, as by her wicked, time-serving advice. This scene is the crisis in the character; and henceforth we see Juliet assume a new aspect. The fond, impatient, timid girl, puts on the wife and the woman: she has learned heroism from suffering, and subtlety from oppression. It is idle to criticize her dissembling submission to her father and mother; a higher duty has taken place of that which she owed to them; a more sacred tie has severed all others. Her parents are pictured as they are, that no feeling for them may interfere in the slightest degree with our sympathy for the lovers. In the mind of Juliet there is no struggle between her filial and her conjugal duties, and there ought to be none. The Friar, her spiritual director, dismisses her with these instructions:-- Go home,--be merry,--give consent To marry Paris;