Romeo and Juliet: The attitudes of Miss Fanny Kemble, as Juliet. Furness Collection

This "comic strip" set of pictures seems to show a series of scenes apparently culminating in the emergence from the tomb of both lovers still momentarily alive, as in the version of the play presented by the R.S.C. dramatization of Charles Dickens' "Nicholas Nickelby." In his "Book of the Play" Dutton Cook cites her following account of this revised scene, suggesting the correctness of Dicken's presentation:

Mrs. Fanny Kemble, in her "Journal" of her Tour in America, gives an amusing account of a performance of this last scene of "Romeo and Juliet," not as it seemed to the spectators, but as it really was, with the whispered communications of the actors:

ROMEO. Tear not my heart-strings thus!
They break! they crack! Juliet! Juliet! [Dies.]
JULIET [to corpse]. Am I smothering you?
CORPSE. Not at all. But could you, do you think, be so kind as to put my wig on again for me? It has fallen off.
JULIET [to corpse]. I'm afraid I can't, but I'll throw my muslin veil over it. You've broken the phial, haven't you? [Corpse nodded].
JULIET [to corpse] Where's your dagger?
CORPSE [to Juliet] 'Pon my soul I don't know.