The last act can be briefly dealt with. We anticipate the final catastrophe, though we do not know by what means it will be brought about. It is carried out, as it should be, effectively but simply. The children have loved and suffered, let them die easily and quickly. Romeo's costume in exile is described in the poem as that of a merchant venturer, which is certainly a more appropriate dress than the conventional black velvet of the stage. After hearing the fatal news, which provokes the boy to mutter, "Is it even so?" in the Lyceum version is inserted the stage-direction, "_He pauses, overcome with grief_." But as there is no similar stage-direction in the originals, the actor may, without violation to the author's intentions, pause _before_ the words are spoken. The blow is too sudden, too cruel, too overwhelming to allow of any immediate response in words. The colour would fly from Romeo's face, his teeth grip his under lip, his eyes gleam with a look of frenzy, _looks_ that "import some misadventure," but there is no action and no sound for a while, and afterwards only a muttering. The stillness of Romeo's desperation is very dramatic. There is nothing, in my opinion, unnatural in Romeo's description of the Apothecary's shop. All sorts of petty details float before our mental vision when the nerves are over-wrought, but the actor should be careful not to accentuate the description in any way; it is but introductory to the dominant words of the speech, "And if a man did need a poyson now." As Juliet's openly acknowledged lover, Paris occupies too prominent a place in the play to be lightly dismissed, and so he is involved in the final catastrophe. In Brooke's poem, Romeo, before dying, prays to Heaven for mercy and forgiveness, and the picture of the boy kneeling by his wife's side, with her hand clasped in his, pleading to his Redeemer to-- "Take pity on my sinnefull and my poore afflicted mynde!" would, on the stage, have been a supremely pathetic situation. But Shakespeare's stern love of dramatic truth rejects it. In Romeo's character he strikes but one note, love--and love as a passion. Love is Romeo's divinity, physical beauty his deity. The assertion that-- "In nature there's no blemish but the mind, None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind," would have sounded in Romeo's ears profanation. When he first sees Juliet he will by touching hers make _blessed_ his rude hand, and when he dies he will seal the doors of breath "with a _righteous_ kiss." To the Friar he cries: "Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then loue-deuouring death do what he dare. It is inough I may but call her _mine_."