ing child to rejoice and solace in, cruel death had
snatched her from their sight, just as these careful parents were on the
point of seeing her advanced (as they thought) by a promising and
advantageous match. Now all things that were ordained for the festival
were turned from their properties to do the office of a black funeral.
The wedding cheer served for a sad burial feast, the bridal hymns were
changed for sullen dirges, the sprightly instruments to melancholy
bells, and the flowers that should have been strewed in the bride's
path, now served but to strew her corse. Now, instead of a priest to
marry her, a priest was needed to bury her; and she was borne to church
indeed, not to augment the cheerful hopes of the living, but to swell
the dreary numbers of the dead.

Bad news, which always travels faster than good, now brought the dismal
story of his Juliet's death to Romeo, at Mantua, before the messenger
could arrive, who was sent from Friar Lawrence to apprise him that these
were mock funerals only, and but the shadow and representation of death,
and that his dear lady lay in the tomb but for a short while, expecting
when Romeo would come to release her from that dreary mansion. Just
before, Romeo had been unusually joyful and light-hearted. He had
dreamed in the night that he was dead (a strange dream, that gave a dead
man leave to think), and that his lady came and found him dead, and
breathed such life with kisses in his lips, that he revived, and was an
emperor! And now that a messenger came from Verona, he thought surely it
was to confirm some good news which his dreams had presaged. But when
the contrary to this flattering vision appeared, and that it was his
lady who was dead in truth, whom he could not revive by any kisses, he
ordered horses to be got ready, for he determined that night to visit
Verona, and to see his lady in her tomb. And as mischief is swift to
enter into the thoughts of desperate men, he called to mind a poor
apothecary, whose shop in Mantua he had lately passed, and from the
beggarly appearance of the man, who seemed famished, and the wretched
show in his show of empty boxes ranged on dirty shelves, and other
tokens of extreme wretchedness, he had said at the time (perhaps having
some misgivings that his own disastrous life might haply meet with a
conclusion so desperate), "If a man were to need poison, which by the
law of Mantua it is death to sell, here lives a poor wretch who would