The first three lines are spoken by Romeo to himself. They are a reflection, not a declamation,--a reflection upon which he instantly acts. He assumes the calmness of a man of his rank who is about to fight. More than this, Romeo, the man of words and moods, when once roused, as we shall see later, in a worser cause,--when once pledged to action,--Romeo shines with a sort of fatalistic spiritual power. He is now visibly dedicated to this quarrel. We feel sure that he will kill Tybalt in the encounter. The appeal to the supernatural is in his very gesture. The audience--nay, Tybalt himself--gazes with awe on this sudden apparition of Romeo as a man of action. This highly satisfactory conduct is soon swept away by his behavior on hearing the news of his banishment. The boy seems to be without much stamina, after all. He is a pitiable object, and does not deserve the love of fair lady. At Mantua the tide of his feelings has turned again, and by one of those natural reactions which he himself takes note of he wakes up unaccountably happy, "and all this day an unaccustom'd spirit lifts him above the ground with cheerful thoughts." It is the lightning before the thunderbolt. "Her body sleeps to Capel's monument, And her immortal part with angels lives. I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault, And presently took post to tell it you." Balthasar makes no attempt to break the news gently. The blow descends on Romeo when he least expects it. He is not spared. The conduct of Romeo on hearing of Juliet's death is so close to nature as to be nature itself, yet it happens to be conduct almost impossible to be given on the stage. _He does nothing._ He is stunned. He collapses. For fully five minutes he does not speak, and yet in these five minutes he must show to the audience that his nature has been shaken to its foundations. The delirium of miraculously beautiful poetry is broken. His words are gone. His emotion is paralyzed, but his mind is alert. He seems suddenly to be grown up,--a man, and not a boy,--and a man of action. "Is it even so?" is all he says. He orders post-horses, ink and paper, in a few rapid sentences; it is evident that before speaking at all he has determined what he will do, and from now on to the end of the play Romeo is different from his old self, for a new Romeo has appeared. He is in a state of intense and calm exultation. All his fluctuating emotions have been stilled or stunned. He gives his orders in staccato. We feel that he knows what he is going to do, and will certainly accomplish it. Meanwhile his mind is dominant. It is preternaturally active. His "asides," which before were lyrical, now become the comments of an acute intellect. His vivid and microscopic recollection of the apothecary shop, his philosophical bantering with the apothecary, his sudden violence to Balthasar at the entrance to the tomb, and his as sudden friendliness, his words and conflict with Paris, whom he kills