t Da Porta, in making Juliet
waken from her trance while Romeo yet lives, and in his terrible final
scene between the lovers, has departed from the old tradition, and as
a romance, has certainly improved it: but that which is effective in
a narrative is not always calculated for the drama; and I cannot but
agree with Schlegel, that Shakspeare has done well and wisely
in adhering to the old story.[8] Can we doubt for a moment that
Shakspeare, who has given us the catastrophe of Othello, and the
tempest scene in Lear, might also have adopted these additional
circumstances of horror in the fate of the lovers, and have so treated
them as to harrow up our very souls--had it been his object to do so?
But apparently it was _not_. The tale is one,

Such, as once heard, in gentle heart destroys
All pain but pity.

[7] The "Giulietta" of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520. In
a popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before
Shakspeare wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an
example of faithful love, and is thus explained by a note in the
margin. "Juliet, a noble maiden of the citie of Verona, which
loved Romeo, eldest son of the Lord Monteschi; and being privily
married together, he at last poisoned himself for love of her:
she, for sorrow of his death, slew herself with his dagger." This
note, which furnishes in brief, the whole argument of Shakspeare's
play, might possibly have made the first impression on his fancy.

[8] There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and
Juliet as to make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact.
"The Veronese," says Lord Byron, in one of his letters from
Verona, "are tenacious to a degree of the truth of Juliet's story,
insisting on the fact, giving the date 1303, and showing a tomb.
It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered
leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden--once a
cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The situation struck me
as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their
love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its
amphitheatre and its Palladian structures, lies level with the
earth, the very spot on which it stood will still be consecrated
by the memory of Juliet. When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who
being then "_dans le genre romantique_," wore a fragment of
Juliet's