The whole course of these last scenes of Romeo's life, which are
scarcely longer than this description of them, is in the highest degree
naturalistic; but the scenes are in the nature of things so difficult to
present on the stage as to be fairly impossible. The very long, the very
minute description of the apothecary's shop, given by a man whose heart
has stopped beating, but whose mind is at work more actively and more
accurately than it has ever worked before, is a thing highly sane as to
its words. It must be done quietly, rapidly, and yet the impression must
be created, which is created upon Balthasar, that Romeo is not in his
right mind. A friend seeing him would cross the street to ask what was
the matter.
The whole character of Romeo, from the beginning, has been imagined with
reference to this self-destroying consummation. From his first speech we
might have suspected that something destructive would come out of this
man.
There is a type of highly organized being, not well fitted for this
world, whose practical activities are drowned in a sea of feeling.
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