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Chrysander tries to prove that this Vittoria was no other than the famous singer, Vittoria Tesi, "a contralto of masculine strength," as one listener describes her voice. She was very dramatic, and made her chief success in men's roles, singing bass songs transposed an octave higher. She was born at Florence in 1690, and would have been seventeen years old when Händel's "Roderigo" was produced there in 1707. That she should be capable of so ardent a love at that age need hardly be mentioned when we remember that Romeo's Juliet was only twelve at the time of her immortal amour. Love
Now, as it was impossible that Romeo's love, supposing him a reasonable being, could continue to subsist without hope, the poet has, with great art, seized the moment when he was reduced actually to despair to throw in his way an object more accomplished than her by whom he had been rejected, and who is disposed to repay his attachment.
To me they were Romeo and Juliet, and I was a dweller in Verona. The story, the music, the scenery, took a vivid hold upon my imagination. From the moment the curtain rose, I saw only the stage, and, except that I in some sort established a dim comparison between Romeo's sorrows and my own disquietude of mind, I seemed to lose all recollection of time and place, and almost of my own identity.
We had seen Romeo's house, towering picturesquely behind the Scaligers' tombs; but I wanted to see where Juliet had lived, and where she had been buried. "The Prince says it's all nonsense," exclaimed Aunt Kathryn. "If there was a slight foundation for the story in a great family scandal here about Shakspere's time, anyhow there's none for the houses or the tomb " Beechy stopped her ears.
The Eternal Powers are at work throughout. Romeo's love for Rosaline is taken over from Brooke's poem. Shakespeare adds the touch that it was not genuine. He makes Friar Laurence say: 'O she knew well! Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell. The love for Rosaline is different altogether from the love for Juliet. 'O heavy lightness! serious vanity! is artificial.
But when Romeo revealed his new passion for Juliet, and requested the assistance of the friar to marry them that day, the holy man lifted up his eyes and hands in a sort of wonder at the sudden change in Romeo's affections, for he had been privy to all Romeo's love for Rosaline, and his many complaints of her disdain: and he said, that young men's love lay not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
And fall in love he did; not hurriedly, but step by step, not blindly, but with critical discrimination; not in the fashion of Romeo, but, before he was done, with all Romeo's ardour and more than Romeo's faith.
But as a rule he just takes me by the arms and shakes me like a terrier. I'm all black and blue now." "Poor butterfly!" he murmured poetically. "Why did I tell you?" she murmured back with subtler poetry. The poet thrilled in every vein. "Love at first sight," of which he had often read and often written, was then a reality! It could be as mutual, too, as Romeo's and Juliet's.
Why am I condemned always to ride the desert alone?" "Mainly because you ride too hard," said Juliet. "None but you can keep up the pace. Ah!" She turned her head quickly, and the swift colour flooded her face. "Ah!" mocked Saltash softly, watching her. "Is it Romeo's step that I hear?"
But when Romeo revealed his new passion for Juliet, and requested the assistance of the friar to marry them that day, the holy man lifted up his eyes and hands in a sort of wonder at the sudden change in Romeo's affections, for he had been privy to all Romeo's love for Rosaline, and his many complaints of her disdain; and he said, that young men's love lay not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
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