ROMEO AND JULIET. This the first tragedy that Shakespeare wrote, was first printed in 1597 as °a garbled and imperfect rendering, made up partly from copies of por tions of the original, partly from recollection and from notes taken during the performance.'" The second quarto, a revised edition, °newly corrected, augmented and amended," was pub lished in 1599, a third quarto in 1609, and a fourth version in the first folio (1623). Al though there is no evidence that the play was acted before 1596, it is probable that it was written as early as 1594, although later revised. The immaturity of the play is indicated in the large number of conceits, puns and other forms of quibbling, such as we have in 'Love's Labors Lost' and 'Mid-Summer Night's Dream); in the preponderance of rhymed verse and in the decidedly lyrical character of many of the passages. On the other hand the excellence of the plot, the supreme beauty of the best scenes, the assured mastery of blank verse dis played in parts, indicate an excellence not found in the earlier plays and suggest, therefore, care ful revision of an earlier version. The story had long been a popular one in Italy and France when it was translated in a long narra tive poem entitled (The Tragical History of Romeo and Juliet) by Arthur Brooke (1562) and in a shorter prose version by William Painter in his (Palace of Pleasure) (1567).
There is no better evidence that Shakespeare conceived his task in handling sources as one of adapting and not originating plots than a detailed comparison of Brooke's poem and the play. Not only are the chief acters and practically all the minor one found in the poem, but entire scenes and many bits of psychological insight attributed to peare. The change of time from four or five months to as many days, the dramatic contrasts of characters and scenes and the heightened poetical language — all indicate Shakespeare's power of dramatization. What stirred the interest of Shakespeare in reading the old story was the dramatic situation sented by the lovers in conflict with their vironment. Tragedy has not become with him, as in his later plays, so much the inner conflict between the complex elements of a hero's soul. Romeo and Juliet are a pair of crossed who move somewhat tably toward their fate. Theirs is a love that knows no impediment; they bear it out even to the edge of doom. It is the great and typical love tragedy of English literature. The love that unites Romeo and Juliet springs from no worldly consideration; it is natural, ous, all-absorbing. There is no moral error
involved in their tragedy — at the best a tragic error. One of the best effects of the play is found in the contrast between these highly emotional lovers and Paris and Lady Capulet, to whom love is a mere conventional relationship; the Nurse, to whom it is a matter of able instinct and even vulgar comment; Friar Laurence, with his somewhat worldly counsels against the excess of it; and Mercutio, fixing it with the shafts of his reckless and cynical wit. In the blending of comedy and tragedy, which is more marked in this tragedy than in any of his others except perhaps let,' Shakespeare was following the demand of life in its more complex aspects rather than the laws of classic art. While the defects of the play already suggested tend to mar the complete unity, the final impression is that of the great scenes: The Scene with the beauty of the Italian sky at night and the softest music of lovers' tongues; the Dawn Scene, when the earth is a-quiver between night and day and the lovers breathe out in each other's arms the saddest of farewells; and the Grave Scene, where the old Friar unites above the graves of the lovers the two families from whose loins they sprang. Then we know that we are reading the greatest of love poems, if not the greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies. EDWIN MIMS. ROMER, rem'er, Ole, Danish astronomer: b. Aarhus, 25 Sept. 1644; d. Copenhagen, 19 Sept. 1710. After study at the University Of hagen he was in 1671-81 at Paris, where he made observations in the royal observatory and was elected to the Academy. In 1681 he was made professor of mathematics and director of the observatory at Copenhagen, and quently became a councilor of state. He is known chiefly as the discoverer of the velocity of light, which he determined by observation of the eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter. He found that when Jupiter and the earth were on opposite sides of the sun, the eclipse seemed to occur too late; when on the same side, too early. The extreme deviation from mean time he computed at 11 minutes; it is now known to be approximately 8 minutes 20 seconds, that is, light crosses the space between the earth and the sun (a little less than 93,000,000 miles) in about 8 minutes. (See LIGET). Romer in vented the transit instrument (1689) and meridian circle (transit and vertical circle com bined; 1690). Consult Grant, 'History of Physi cal Astronomy' (1852); Horrebow, Peter, 'Ad (1910).