How great this girl is! If I were to meet her, how I should be awed! The Juliets I have seen on the stage fail here. They do not bend my knees in that adoration which is inspired by the sea and stars. The love of Romeo for Juliet and of Juliet for Romeo does not stimulate passion, but rather controls it. I never become hot in reading the play. What a solemnity there is in its movement! The lovers are not merely two human beings with no other meaning. The Eternal Powers are at work throughout. Romeo’s love for Rosaline is taken over from Brooke’s poem. Shakespeare adds the touch that it was not genuine. He makes Friar Laurence say: ‘O she knew well! Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell.’ The love for Rosaline is different altogether from the love for Juliet. ‘O heavy lightness! serious vanity!’ is artificial. Shakespeare also follows Brooke in Juliet’s momentary outburst against Romeo when she hears of Tybalt’s death, but the contradiction of the echo by the nurse is Shakespeare’s own: ‘Blister’d be thy tongue For such a wish! he was not born to shame.’ Apart from the quarrel between the Montagus and Capulets, we feel that the love between Romeo and Juliet could have no other than a tragic end. This world of ours conspires against such passion. * * * * * I _Henry IV._ v. 4— ‘O Harry, thou hast robb’d me of my youth! I better brook the loss of brittle life Than those proud titles thou hast won of me; They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh: But thought’s the slave of life, and life time’s fool; And time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop.’ The last three lines are not melancholy philosophising. As such they would be out of place coming from Hotspur. They are consolation and joy. Death will extinguish for us the memory of certain things suffered and done. That is a gain which is not outweighed by the loss of any pleasure life can give.