yet the wise way, recommended by the one wise man in the cast.
With a little patience, this way would lead the couple to happiness.
Impatience, the fever in the blood that began these coils, makes the way
lead them to death. Accident, or rather the possession by others of that
prudence wanting in himself, keeps Romeo from the knowledge of the
friar's plans. A too hasty servant tells him that Juliet is dead. He too
hastily believes the news. He takes horse at once in a state of frenzy,
hardly heeding what his man says. He comes to the tomb in Verona, and
finds there a lover as desperate as himself. They fight there, madly.
The less mad of the two is killed, the more frantic (Romeo) kills
himself. The friar, coming to this death-scene, comes a moment too late.
Juliet wakes from her trance a moment too late. Theirs are the only
delays in this drama of fever, in which everybody hurries so that he
stumbles. Their delays are atoned for an instant later, his, by his too
great haste to be gone, she by her thirst for death. The men of the
watch come too late to save her. The parents learn too late that they
have been blind. They have to clasp hands over dead bodies, that have
missed of life through their hurry to seize it.

The play tells the story of a feud greater than that of the Verona
houses. There is always feud where there is not understanding. There is
eternal feud between those two camps of misunderstanding, age and youth.
This play, written by a young man, shows the feud from the point of view
of youth. The play of King Lear shows it from the point of view of age.
This play of youth is as lovely and as feverish as love itself. Youth is
bright and beautiful, like the animals. Age is too tired to care for
brightness, too cold to care for beauty. The bright, beautiful
creatures dash themselves to pieces against the bars of age's forging,
against law, custom, duty, and those inventions of cold blood which
youth thinks cold and age knows to be wise.

Man cannot quote a minute from some hour of passion when the moon shone
and many nightingales were singing. He can hold out some flower that
blossomed then, saying, "this scent will tell you." The beauty of this
play is of that kind. The lines--

"Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black"--

and the most exquisite, unmatchable lines--

"Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: