Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/180

150 And then follows on the neck of her remorse and returning fondness, that wish treading almost on the brink of impiety, but still held back by the strength of her devotion to her lord, that "father, mother, nay, or both were dead," rather than Romeo banished. If she requires any other excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being banished from her.—Perhaps one of the finest pieces of acting that ever was witnessed on the stage, is Mr. Kean's manner of doing this scene and his repetition of the word, Banished. He treads close indeed upon the genius of his author.

A passage which this celebrated actor and able commentator on Shakespear (actors are the best commentators on the poets) did not give with equal truth or force of feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of Juliet, before he drinks the poison.

"Let me peruse this face Mercutio's kinsman! noble county Paris! What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode! I think, He told me, Paris should have marry'd Juliet! Said he not so? or did I dream it so? Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, To think it was so?O, give me thy hand, One writ with me in sour misfortune's book! I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave For here lies Juliet.