s the evening of the twenty-first birthday of Romeo, and with love as
his guide and subject, he felt strong enough to attack a warring world.

Beneath the window of the fair Juliet, Romeo soliloquizes:

_"He jests at scars, that never felt a wound_--
(Juliet appears at an upper window.)
_But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks!
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she;
Be not her maid since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off--
It is my lady; O, it is my love;
O, that she knew she were!--
She speaks, yet she says nothing: What of that:
Her eye discourses, I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks;
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars.
As daylight doth a lamp; her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!"_

Juliet speaks, and finally out of her fevered, love-lit mind says:

_"O, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet!"_

Romeo replies:

_"I take thee at thy word;
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized,
Henceforth I never will be Romeo."_

She says:

_"How cam'st thou hither?
The orchard walls are too high and hard to climb;
And the place death, considering who thou art."_

Romeo quickly responds:

_"With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls;
For stony limits cannot hold love out;
And what love can do, that dares love attempt,
Therefore thy kinsmen are no hindrance to me!
I am no pilot, yet wert thou as far
As that vast shore washed with the further sea
I would adventure for such merchandise!"_

Then Juliet, with her fine Italian cunning makes the following declaration
of her love; and considering that she is