own rashness or imprudence in yielding to the impulses of passion instead of obeying the dictates of reason. They think that the dramatist speaks through Friar Laurence when he warns them against haste in the marriage (ii. 6. 9 fol.):--
"These violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume; the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately, long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow."

But the venerable celibate speaks for himself and in keeping with the character, not for Shakespeare.

Neither does the poet, as some believe, intend to read a lesson against clandestine marriage and disregard for the authority or approval of parents in the match. The Friar, even at the first suggestion of the hurried and secret marriage, does not oppose or discourage it on any such grounds; nor, in the closing scene, does he blame either the lovers or himself on that account. Nowhere in the play is there the slightest suggestion of so-called "poetic justice" or retribution in the fate that overtakes the unhappy pair.

It is the parents, not the children, that have sinned, and the sin of the parents is visited upon their innocent offspring. This is the burden of the prologue; and it is most emphatically repeated at the close of the play.

The feud of the two households and the civil strife that it has caused are the first things to which the attention of those who are to witness the play is called. Next they are told that the children of these two foes become lovers--not foolish, rash, imprudent lovers, not victims of disobedience to their parents, not in any way responsible for what they afterwards suffer--but "star-cross'd lovers." The fault is not in themselves, but in their stars--in their fate as the offspring of these hostile parents. But their unfortunate and piteous overthrow is the means by which the fatal feud of the two families is brought to an end. The "death-mark'd love" of the children--love as pure as it was passionate, love true from first to last to the divine law of love--while by an evil destiny it brings death to themselves, involves also the death of the hate which was the primal cause of all the tragic consequences.

This is no less distinctly expressed in the last speeches of the play. After hearing the Friar's story, the Prince says:
"Where be these enemies?--Capulet!--Montague!
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your 

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