'Did My Heart Love Till Now?'
Act 1, Scene 5, lines 45-54
In this particular passage there are a number of minor stylistic changes that have been made over the last few hundred years. For example, the 1599 edition was written in Early Modern English, therefore, the language looks much different than our language today. In the 1599 edition there are no exclamation points, rather, colons after the words: “bright,” “night,” “deare,” and “showes”. The transition to the exclamation point behind these words could have possibly altered the actor’s take on the scene by inspiring the actor to perform this speech with more enthusiasm, delight, and passion as he describes Juliet’s appearance and asks himself if his heart has ever truly loved anyone until this moment. This change in punctuation could have essentially created a much more powerful speech for the actor. Further, in the 1599 edition, the words “Doue,” “Crowes,” and “Lady” are capitalized and they are not capitalized in the 2017 edition. Similar to the changes in punctuation, this is also a mere stylistic change. It is possible that these words were once capitalized because they are words that relate back to Juliet by describing her as a beautiful, white bird among other black crows but since today these words are seen as common nouns, they are lowercased in the 2017 edition.
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