nd the
probabilities and facts in real life rather than the probabilities
demanded by the stage.

Romeo must be a man almost wholly made up of emotion, a creature very
young, a lyric poet in the intensity of his sensations, a child in his
helplessness beneath the ever-varying currents and whirlpools of his
feeling. He lives in a walking and frenzied dream, comes in contact with
real life only to injure himself and others, and finally drives with the
collected energy of his being into voluntary shipwreck upon the rocks of
the world.

This man must fall in love at first sight. He must marry clandestinely.
He must be banished for having taken part in a street fight, and must
return to slay himself upon the tomb of his beloved.

Shakespeare, with his passion for realism, devotes several scenes at the
opening of the play to the explanation of Romeo's state of mind. He will
give us a rationalistic account of love at first sight by bringing on
this young poet in a blind chaos of emotion owing to his rejection by a
woman not otherwise connected with the story. It is perfectly true that
this is the best and perhaps the only explanation of love at first
sight. The effect upon Romeo's very boyish, unreal, and almost
unpleasant lovesickness of the rejection (for which we must always
respect Rosaline) is to throw him, and all the unstable elements of
which he is made, into a giddy whirl, which, after a day or two, it will
require only the glance of a pair of eyes to precipitate into the very
elixir of true love.

All this is true, but no audience cares about the episode or requires
the explanation. Indeed, it jars upon the sentimental notion of many
persons to this day, and in many stage versions it is avoided.

These preparatory scenes bring out in a most subtle way the egoism at
the basis of Romeo's character,--the same lyrical egoism that is in all
his language and in all his conduct. When we first see Romeo, he is
already in an uneasy dream. He is wandering, aloof from his friends and
absorbed in himself. On meeting Juliet he passes from his first dream
into a second dream. On learning of the death of Juliet he passes into
still a third and quite different dream,--or stage of dream,--a stage in
which action is necessary, and in which he displays the calculating
intellect of a maniac. The mental abstraction of Romeo continues even
after he has met Juliet. In Capulet's garden, despite the directness of
Juliet, he is still in