"A crowch, a crowch, why call you for a sword?" and the calm dignity of Romeo's mother-- "Thou shalt not stir one foote to seeke a foe." We are also shown the citizens hastily arming themselves to part the two houses, and hear for the first time their ominous shout: "Downe with the Capulets, downe with the Mountagues." It is heard on two subsequent occasions during the play, and is the death-knell of the lovers. The quarrel is abruptly terminated by the entrance of the Prince, who speaks with a precision and decision which throws every other character on the stage into insignificance, and stamps him at once in our eyes as a central figure. After the belligerents disperse, admonished by the Prince that death awaits the next offender against the peace, a scene follows to prepare us for Romeo's entrance, Shakespeare having wisely kept him out of the quarrel, that the audience may see him indifferent to every other passion but the one of love. Romeo, until he had been shot with Cupid's arrow, seems to have passed for a pleasant companion, as we learn from Mercutio's words, spoken to him in the third act: "Why is not this better now, than groning for loue; now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo: now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature." Romeo's romantic temperament naturally leads him into a love affair of a sufficiently compromising character to need being kept from the knowledge of his parents. Brooke narrates Rosaline's reception of Romeo's passion: "But she that from her youth was fostred euermore, With vertues foode, and taught in schole of wisdomes skillful lore: By aunswere did cutte of th' affections of his loue, That he no more occasion had so vayne a sute to moue." And Shakespeare gives to Romeo almost similar words: "And in strong proofe of chastitie well armd, From loues weak childish bow she liues uncharmd; Shee will not stay the siege of louing tearmes, Nor bide th' incounter of assailing eies, Nor ope her lap to sainct seducing gold." A note in the Irving stage-version, referring to Mercutio's words, "stabd with a white wenches blacke eye," states that "a pale woman with black eyes" is suggestive of a wanton nature. Is this Rosaline's character? If we are to accept seriously Mercutio's words as being the poet's description of Rosaline's personal appearance, we may also give a literal interpretation to the following lines: "I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes, By her high forehead, and her Scarlet lip." In Charlotte Bronte's opinion, a high forehead was an indication of conscientiousness; she could get on, she would say, with anyone "who had a lump at the top of the head." The reproaches of the Friar are, in my opinion, levelled against Romeo, and not Rosaline. Romeo says: "Thou chidst me oft for louing Rosaline." And the Friar replies: "For doting, not for louing, pupill mine."