ROMEO AND ROSALINE

One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sunNe’er saw her match since first the world begun.Romeo on Rosaline.Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene ii.

One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sunNe’er saw her match since first the world begun.

One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun

Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.

Romeo on Rosaline.Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene ii.

Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,So soon forsaken? Young men’s love then liesNot truly in their hearts but in their eyes.Jesu Maria! what a deal of brineHath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene ii.

Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,

So soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies

Not truly in their hearts but in their eyes.

Jesu Maria! what a deal of brine

Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!

Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene ii.

Verona.

My dear Olivia,

Thank you very much for your kind letter. I am only just beginning to be able to write letters,as you may well imagine after all that we have gone through, and I am still in half-mourning, althoughtheysay this is ridiculous. As a matter of fact, nobody has a better right to be in mourning for Romeo than I, considering that he would certainly have married me had it not been for a series of quite extraordinary accidents. Mamma says that I was to blame, but I will tell you exactly what happened, and you can judge for yourself.

I made Romeo’s acquaintance two years ago. We at once got on well together, and I never minded his childishness, which used to get on some people’s nerves. He was the kind of person whom it was really impossible to dislike, because he was so impetuous, so full of high spirits and good humour. Some people thought he was good looking; I never did. It was never his looks that attracted me, but I liked him forhimself. Wherever I went he used to be there, and whenever we met he always talked to me the whole time and never looked at any one else, so that we werepracticallyengaged although nothing was announced.

After this had gone on for some time Mamma became annoyed; she said we must do one thing or the other; we must either be engaged and announce our engagement or else that I must give upseeing Romeo altogether. This of course I refused to do. At last we made a compromise: in our own house I was allowed to see Romeo as much as I liked, but if I went out to banquets or masques I was to talk to other people and not to Romeo. Papa and Mamma had nothing against my marrying Romeo, because Mamma never liked the Capulets, although they are Papa’s relations. The result of this compromise, which was only arranged quite lately, was quite disastrous. Romeo could not understand it at all. He thought it was my fault, and that I was growing tired of him. It was then that he begged me to let our engagement be publicly announced. I did not want the announcement to be made public until the winter, because one never really has such fun once an engagement is known. However, I would no doubt have given in in the end. As it was, Romeo was annoyed, and just before the Capulets’ banquet we had a scene. I told him quite plainly that he had no business to treat me as if I belonged to him. I had given him to understand, however, that I should be at the Capulets’ banquet, and I fully expected him to come and to beg for a reconciliation.

He came to the banquet, and it so happened that Lady Capulet’s daughter, who was far too youngfor that kind of thing, was allowed to come down that night. A child of that age is of course allowed to do anything, as it is supposed not to matter what they do. And as she had been told that the one thing she was not to do was to speak to a Montague, out of sheer naughtiness and perverseness she went to Romeo and made the most outrageous advances to him. Romeo, out ofpiqueand simply to annoy me, kept up the farce, and they say that he even climbed over a wall that night, right into the house of the Capulets, and spoke to Juliet! All this time Juliet was betrothed to her cousin, the County Paris, and it was arranged that their marriage was to take place shortly.

What exactly happened we none of us know, but it is quite certain that Lady Capulet had found out what was going on, and having heard that Romeo had been climbing her garden wall and serenading Juliet under her very nose, she thought it would be an excellent opportunity to settle the old family quarrel and reconcile the two families by an alliance. So she forced Romeo topromiseher he would marry Juliet, and some people say that the marriage ceremony was actually performed in secret, but this isnot true, as I will tell you later. Of course, Lady Capulet did not dare tell her husband;on the contrary, every arrangement was made for Juliet’s marriage with Paris; but the day before it was to come off a put-up quarrel was brought about between Romeo and one of the Capulets, which ended in Romeo’s being banished to Mantua. He wrote to me every day, saying how miserable he was that all this tiresome business had happened, and how he was longing to see me again, and how it was not his fault.

Lady Capulet then gave Juliet a strong sleeping draught, which was to have the effect of making her like a corpse for forty-two hours. Every one was to think she was dead. She was to be taken to the vault of the Capulets and Romeo was to fetch her after the forty-two hours were over, when she should come to from her sleep. This was Lady Capulet’s plan, and Romeo of course could do nothing but accept it, much as he must have hated this kind of thing. Romeo had many faults, but I must say he was never deceitful. I did not know anything about it at the time. All we knew was that, owing to a street brawl which had ended unfortunately, Romeo had been banished to Mantua. He wrote from there every day. He said over and over again in his letters that he was in great difficulties, but that he hoped to be back soon and seeme again. I did not answer his letters because I was annoyed by the way in which he had spoken to Juliet at the ball. I had not then heard about the incident of the orchard, otherwise I should have been angrier still.

While things were in this state the whole matter took a tragic turn by the stupidity of Lady Capulet’s nurse, who gave Juliet the wrong sleeping draught. Instead of giving her a potion which made her sleep for forty-two hours, they gave her some very strong rat poison which happened to be lying about. She drank it, poor thing, and never woke again.

Romeo came back from Mantua to meet Juliet at the vault, where he no doubt intended to have a final explanation with her and her family, to explain the whole thing: his engagement to me, and the impossibility of his contracting any alliance with the Capulet family, especially as he had very strong principles on this point. But when he got to the tomb he found the County Paris, who was nominally engaged to Juliet, and of course extremely angry to find a Montague in such a place. They fought, and Paris killed Romeo, thus putting an end to all Lady Capulet’s intrigues. But she was not to be defeated thus. She had already bribed an oldFranciscan monk, called Friar Laurence, to say that he had secretlymarriedJuliet and Romeo, and her nurse (a horrible old woman) corroborated the friar’s evidence. And so, with very much solemnity and fuss, a reconciliation was brought about between the two families, and they say that Benvolio, Montague’s nephew, is to marry Katherine, Lady Capulet’s niece by marriage, and thus the quarrel between the families has finally been settled and Lady Capulet has got her way.

I don’t mind the two families being reconciled in the least; in fact we are all very glad of it, as life in Verona was made quite intolerable by their constant brawling and quarrelling. But what I do think is unfair, and what is particularly irritating tome, is that everybody, even Papa and Mamma, take it for granted that Romeo was really in love with Juliet, and had given up all thoughts of me. Nobody knows the truth except me, and I cannot tell it without making myself appear conceited and ridiculous. You can imagine how irritating this is. Of course, when all this happened I was so overcome by the shock that I was very ill and did not care what was said, one way or the other. Papa and Mamma had to take me to Venice for a fewdays, as I was in such a state of nerves. Now, the change of air has done me good, and I am slowly getting better again. I am told that everybody believes that Romeo and Juliet were married by Friar Laurence. Of course, once such a legend gets about nothing will ever make people think the contrary. But even if theyweremarried it would not really affect me, for it was a sheer case of coercion. If Romeo did marry Juliet he did it because he could not help himself, after having been discovered in her garden by that old cat Lady Capulet, who is a very, very wicked woman, and capable of anything. In fact I am not at all sure that she did not poison her daughter on purpose, and, so bring about the reconciliation between the two families without having all the trouble of facing and defeating her husband’s opposition to the match.

When you next come to see me I will show you Romeo’s letters. Fortunately I have kept them all. They are very beautiful, and some of them are in rime; and you will see for yourself whether he loved me or not. I cannot read them without crying. You have no idea what lovely things he says in them. For instance, one day he sent me a pairof silk gloves, and with them, written on a small scroll:

Oh that I were a glove upon thy hand,That I might touch thy cheek.

Oh that I were a glove upon thy hand,

That I might touch thy cheek.

His letters were full of lovely things like that, and I cannot think of them without crying.

Your lovingRosaline.

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