AN " ANCIENT MARKET-TOWNE " 181 



And once again : 



" For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, 

 From me far off, with others all too near." Ixi. 



At length, in the late autumn of the year 1598, the 

 lovers are married, and Shakespeare celebrates the 

 glad event in the words of the hundred and sixteenth 

 sonnet : 



" Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

 Admit impediments." 



And bearing in mind the interpretation of the earlier 

 sonnets an unexpected light is shed upon several 

 passages in Romeo and Juliet, which seem unmis- 

 takably to show that the story of his friend's courtship 

 was in Shakespeare's mind when he wrote the tragedy. 

 The striking simile employed in the twenty-seventh 

 sonnet, where Elizabeth Vernon's beauty is compared 

 to "a jewel hung in ghastly night," which " makes 

 black night beauteous," is again used in the tragedy, 

 where Romeo, on first seeing Juliet, exclaims : 



" It seems she hangs upon the cheeks of night 

 Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear ; 

 Beauty too rich for use." 



And remembering that Southampton's mother was the 

 daughter of "fair Viscount Montague," the question 

 of Juliet becomes at once significantly suggestive : 



" Art thou not Romeo and a Montague ? " 



Again, on the supposition that Southampton is the 

 original of Romeo, the following passage, which has 

 greatly perplexed commentators, becomes evident : 



" Nurse. Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with 

 a letter ? " 



Romeo. Ay, nurse ; what of that ? Both with an R. 



