ROMEO AND JULIET UP TO DATE

Evening Star, Issue 14515, 5 November 1910, Page 12

ROMEO AND JULIET UP TO DATE

Mam-ice Baring, in his ' Dead Letters,' just issued by Houghton Mifflin Company, attempts to depict the point of view of Rosalie, the girl wham Romeo forsakes for Juliet in Shakespeare's tragedy. The folio-sing passage is from a letter that Rosaline is proposed to have written to a friend.:--"-*..; a matter of fact, nobody has a better rifki to be in mourning for Romeo than I, conedcriii': that he would certainly have married mo. had it not been for a scries of quite cr.tracTdrriary accidents. I made Romoo's acquaintance iv.o years a<:o. We at or.ee got on vrc!l to;;eUHr, and I never minded his childishness, which used to pet on some, people's nerves. Wherever I went- he used to bo there, and whr.n----i ever we met he alwavs talked to me tho who!?, time, and never looked at anyone else, so thai we were practically engaged, although nothing was announced. I did rot want tho announcement to be mid? public until the winter, because one never really has such fun once an engagement is known. Romeo was an-, noyed, and just before the Capulet's banquet we had a Rcsne. I told him quite plajnhthat he had no business to treat me as if I belonged to him. He came to the banquet, and it so happened that Lady Capulet's daughter, who was far too youn? for that kind of thins, was allowed to came down that night. A child of that ape is, of course, allowed to do anything, as it is supposed not to matter what they do. And as she had been told that the one thins she was not, to do was to speak to a Montague, out of sheer naughtiness and pcrvcrscnoss she. went to TTomeo and made the most outraneous advances to hini. Romeo, out of pique, and simply to annoy me, I:ept up the farce, and they say that he even climbed ever a. wall that. m'jht, rieht into the house of the Caputct*. and spoke to Juliet." Oilier letters arc from Lady Macbeth trying to avert suspicion of the Kiiia's murder, from a Greek traveller who interviewed Nern. and from Helen about her experiences during the sic;'e of Troy.