y 'havior light,
But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
Than those who have more cunning to be strange.
And the proud yet timid delicacy, with which she throws herself for
forbearance and pardon upon the tenderness of him she loves, even for
the love she bears him--
Therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love,
Which the dark night hath so discovered.
In the alternative, which she afterwards places before her lover with
such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity,
there is that jealousy of female honor which precept and education have
infused into her mind, without one real doubt of his truth, or the
slightest hesitation in her self-abandonment: for she does not even wait
to hear his asseverations;--
But if thou mean'st not well, I do beseech thee
To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief.
ROMEO.
So thrive my soul--
JULIET.
A thousand times, good night!
But all these flutterings between native impulses and maiden fears
become gradually absorbed, swept away, lost, and swallowed up in the
depth and enthusiasm of confiding love.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to you
The more I have--for both are _infinite_!
What a picture of the young heart, that sees no bound to its hopes, no
end to its affections! For "what was to hinder the thrilling tide of
pleasure which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without
stint or measure, but experience, which she was yet without? What was to
abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure which her heart
had just tasted, but indifference, to which she was yet a stranger? What
was there to check the ardor of hope, of faith, of constancy, just
rising in her breast, but disappointment, which she had never yet
felt?"[19]
Lord Byron's Haidee is a copy of Juliet in the Oriental costume, but the
development is epic, not dramatic.[20]
I remember no dramatic character, conveying the same impression of
singleness of purpose, and devotion of heart and soul, except the Thekla
of Schiller's Wallenstein; she is the German Juliet; far unequal,
indeed, but conceived, nevertheless, in a kindred spirit. I know not if
critics have ever compared them, or whether Schiller is supposed to have
had the English, or rather the Italian, Juliet in his fancy when he
portra
|