Romeo and Juliet
By William Shakespeare.
Premiered between 1591 and 1595.
Contents
Dramatis Personae.
- ESCALUS, Prince of Verona.
- PARIS, a young Nobleman, Kinsman to the Prince.
- MONTAGUE & CAPULET, Heads of two Houses at variance with each other.
- Uncle to Capulet.
- ROMEO, son to Montague.
- MERCUTIO, Kinsman to the Prince,& BENVOLIO, Nephew to Montague, Friends to Romeo.
- TYBALT, Nephew to Lady Capulet.
- FRIAR LAURENCE, a Franciscan.
- FRIAR JOHN, of the same Order.
- BALTHASAR, Servant to Romeo.
- SAMPSON, & GREGORY, Servants to Capulet.
- PETER, Servant to Juliet's Nurse.
- ABRAHAM, Servant to Montague.
- An Apothecary.
- Three Musicians.
- Page to Mercutio; Page to Paris; another Page; an Officer.
- LADY MONTAGUE, Wife to Montague.
- LADY CAPULET, Wife to Capulet.
- JULIET, Daughter to Capulet.
- Nurse to Juliet.
- Citizens of Verona; male and female Kinsfolk to both Houses; Masquers, Guards, Watchmen and Attendants.
- Chorus.
Scene.
Verona: Once (in the Fifth Act), at Mantua.
Act I.
Prologue.
- Two households, both alike in dignity,
- In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
- From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
- Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
- From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
- A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
- Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
- Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
- The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
- And the continuance of their parents' rage,
- Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
- Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
- The which if you with patient ears attend,
- What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Scene i. Verona. A public place.
- Enter Sampson and Gregory, of the house of Capulet, armed with swords and bucklers
- Sampson: Gregory, o' my word, we'll not carry coals.
- Gregory: No, for then we should be colliers.
- Sampson: I mean, an we be in choler, we'll draw.
- Gregory: Ay, while you live, draw your neck out o' the collar.
- Sampson: I strike quickly, being moved.
- Gregory: But thou art not quickly moved to strike.
- Sampson: A dog of the house of Montague moves me.
- Gregory: To move is to stir; and to be valiant is to stand:
- therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn'st away.
- Sampson: A dog of that house shall move me to stand: I will
- take the wall of any man or maid of Montague's.
- Gregory: That shows thee a weak slave; for the weakest goes
- to the wall.
- Sampson: True; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels,
- are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push
- Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids
- to the wall.
- Gregory: The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.
- Sampson: 'Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I
- have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the
- maids, and cut off their heads.
- Gregory: The heads of the maids?
- Sampson: Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads;
- take it in what sense thou wilt.
- Gregory: They must take it in sense that feel it.
- Sampson: Me they shall feel while I am able to stand: and
- 'tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.
- Gregory: 'Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou
- hadst been poor John. Draw thy tool! here comes
- two of the house of the Montagues.
- Sampson: My naked weapon is out: quarrel, I will back thee.
- Gregory: How! turn thy back and run?
- Sampson: Fear me not.
- Gregory: No, marry; I fear thee!
- Sampson: Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.
- Gregory: I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as
- they list.
- Sampson: Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them;
- which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it.
- Enter Abraham and Balthasar
- Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
- Sampson: I do bite my thumb, sir.
- Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
- Sampson: [Aside to Gregory] Is the law of our side, if I say
- ay?
- Gregory: No.
- Sampson: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I
- bite my thumb, sir.
- Gregory: Do you quarrel, sir?
- Abraham: Quarrel sir! no, sir.
- Sampson: If you do, sir, I am for you: I serve as good a man as you.
- Abraham: No better.
- Sampson: Well, sir.
- Gregory: Say 'better:' here comes one of my master's kinsmen.
- Sampson: Yes, better, sir.
- Abraham: You lie.
- Sampson: Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.
- They fight
- Enter Benvolio
- Benvolio: Part, fools!
- Put up your swords; you know not what you do.
- Beats down their swords
- Enter Tybalt
- Tybalt: What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?
- Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.
- Benvolio: I do but keep the peace: put up thy sword,
- Or manage it to part these men with me.
- Tybalt: What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word,
- As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee:
- Have at thee, coward!
- They fight
- Enter, several of both houses, who join the fray; then enter Citizens, with clubs
- First Citizen: Clubs, bills, and partisans! strike! beat them down!
- Down with the Capulets! down with the Montagues!
- Enter Capulet in his gown, and Lady Capulet
- Capulet: What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!
- Lady Capulet: A crutch, a crutch! why call you for a sword?
- Capulet: My sword, I say! Old Montague is come,
- And flourishes his blade in spite of me.
- Enter Montague and Lady Montague
- Montague: Thou villain Capulet,—Hold me not, let me go.
- Lady Montague: Thou shalt not stir a foot to seek a foe.
- Enter Prince, with Attendants
- Prince: Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,
- Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel,—
- Will they not hear? What, ho! you men, you beasts,
- That quench the fire of your pernicious rage
- With purple fountains issuing from your veins,
- On pain of torture, from those bloody hands
- Throw your mistemper'd weapons to the ground,
- And hear the sentence of your moved prince.
- Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word,
- By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,
- Have thrice disturb'd the quiet of our streets,
- And made Verona's ancient citizens
- Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments,
- To wield old partisans, in hands as old,
- Canker'd with peace, to part your canker'd hate:
- If ever you disturb our streets again,
- Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.
- For this time, all the rest depart away:
- You Capulet; shall go along with me:
- And, Montague, come you this afternoon,
- To know our further pleasure in this case,
- To old Free-town, our common judgment-place.
- Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.
- Exeunt all but Montague, Lady Montague, and Benvolio
- Montague: Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?
- Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?
- Benvolio: Here were the servants of your adversary,
- And yours, close fighting ere I did approach:
- I drew to part them: in the instant came
- The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepared,
- Which, as he breathed defiance to my ears,
- He swung about his head and cut the winds,
- Who nothing hurt withal hiss'd him in scorn:
- While we were interchanging thrusts and blows,
- Came more and more and fought on part and part,
- Till the prince came, who parted either part.
- Lady Montague: O, where is Romeo? saw you him to-day?
- Right glad I am he was not at this fray.
- Benvolio: Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun
- Peer'd forth the golden window of the east,
- A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad;
- Where, underneath the grove of sycamore
- That westward rooteth from the city's side,
- So early walking did I see your son:
- Towards him I made, but he was ware of me
- And stole into the covert of the wood:
- I, measuring his affections by my own,
- That most are busied when they're most alone,
- Pursued my humour not pursuing his,
- And gladly shunn'd who gladly fled from me.
- Montague: Many a morning hath he there been seen,
- With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew.
- Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs;
- But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
- Should in the furthest east begin to draw
- The shady curtains from Aurora's bed,
- Away from the light steals home my heavy son,
- And private in his chamber pens himself,
- Shuts up his windows, locks far daylight out
- And makes himself an artificial night:
- Black and portentous must this humour prove,
- Unless good counsel may the cause remove.
- Benvolio: My noble uncle, do you know the cause?
- Montague: I neither know it nor can learn of him.
- Benvolio: Have you importuned him by any means?
- Montague: Both by myself and many other friends:
- But he, his own affections' counsellor,
- Is to himself—I will not say how true—
- But to himself so secret and so close,
- So far from sounding and discovery,
- As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
- Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
- Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
- Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow.
- We would as willingly give cure as know.
- Enter Romeo
- Benvolio: See, where he comes: so please you, step aside;
- I'll know his grievance, or be much denied.
- Montague: I would thou wert so happy by thy stay,
- To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let's away.
- Exeunt Montague and Lady Montague
- Benvolio: Good-morrow, cousin.
- Romeo: Is the day so young?
- Benvolio: But new struck nine.
- Romeo: Ay me! sad hours seem long.
- Was that my father that went hence so fast?
- Benvolio: It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?
- Romeo: Not having that, which, having, makes them short.
- Benvolio: In love?
- Romeo: Out—
- Benvolio: Of love?
- Romeo: Out of her favour, where I am in love.
- Benvolio: Alas, that love, so gentle in his view,
- Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!
- Romeo: Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,
- Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
- Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?
- Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
- Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.
- Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
- O any thing, of nothing first create!
- O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
- Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
- Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
- sick health!
- Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
- This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
- Dost thou not laugh?
- Benvolio: No, coz, I rather weep.
- Romeo: Good heart, at what?
- Benvolio: At thy good heart's oppression.
- Romeo: Why, such is love's transgression.
- Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,
- Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest
- With more of thine: this love that thou hast shown
- Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.
- Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
- Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
- Being vex'd a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
- What is it else? a madness most discreet,
- A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
- Farewell, my coz.
- Benvolio: Soft! I will go along;
- An if you leave me so, you do me wrong.
- Romeo: Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here;
- This is not Romeo, he's some other where.
- Benvolio: Tell me in sadness, who is that you love.
- Romeo: What, shall I groan and tell thee?
- Benvolio: Groan! why, no.
- But sadly tell me who.
- Romeo: Bid a sick man in sadness make his will:
- Ah, word ill urged to one that is so ill!
- In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.
- Benvolio: I aim'd so near, when I supposed you loved.
- Romeo: A right good mark-man! And she's fair I love.
- Benvolio: A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
- Romeo: Well, in that hit you miss: she'll not be hit
- With Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit;
- And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd,
- From love's weak childish bow she lives unharm'd.
- She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
- Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,
- Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold:
- O, she is rich in beauty, only poor,
- That when she dies with beauty dies her store.
- Benvolio: Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?
- Romeo: She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste,
- For beauty starved with her severity
- Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
- She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,
- To merit bliss by making me despair:
- She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
- Do I live dead that live to tell it now.
- Benvolio: Be ruled by me, forget to think of her.
- Romeo: O, teach me how I should forget to think.
- Benvolio: By giving liberty unto thine eyes;
- Examine other beauties.
- Romeo: 'Tis the way
- To call hers exquisite, in question more:
- These happy masks that kiss fair ladies' brows
- Being black put us in mind they hide the fair;
- He that is strucken blind cannot forget
- The precious treasure of his eyesight lost:
- Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
- What doth her beauty serve, but as a note
- Where I may read who pass'd that passing fair?
- Farewell: thou canst not teach me to forget.
- Benvolio: I'll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.
- Exeunt
Scene ii. A street.
- Enter Capulet, Paris, and Servant
- Capulet: But Montague is bound as well as I,
- In penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, I think,
- For men so old as we to keep the peace.
- Paris: Of honourable reckoning are you both;
- And pity 'tis you lived at odds so long.
- But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?
- Capulet: But saying o'er what I have said before:
- My child is yet a stranger in the world;
- She hath not seen the change of fourteen years,
- Let two more summers wither in their pride,
- Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
- Paris: Younger than she are happy mothers made.
- Capulet: And too soon marr'd are those so early made.
- The earth hath swallow'd all my hopes but she,
- She is the hopeful lady of my earth:
- But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart,
- My will to her consent is but a part;
- An she agree, within her scope of choice
- Lies my consent and fair according voice.
- This night I hold an old accustom'd feast,
- Whereto I have invited many a guest,
- Such as I love; and you, among the store,
- One more, most welcome, makes my number more.
- At my poor house look to behold this night
- Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light:
- Such comfort as do lusty young men feel
- When well-apparell'd April on the heel
- Of limping winter treads, even such delight
- Among fresh female buds shall you this night
- Inherit at my house; hear all, all see,
- And like her most whose merit most shall be:
- Which on more view, of many mine being one
- May stand in number, though in reckoning none,
- Come, go with me.
- To Servant, giving a paper
- Go, sirrah, trudge about
- Through fair Verona; find those persons out
- Whose names are written there, and to them say,
- My house and welcome on their pleasure stay.
- Exeunt Capulet and Paris
- Servant: Find them out whose names are written here! It is
- written, that the shoemaker should meddle with his
- yard, and the tailor with his last, the fisher with
- his pencil, and the painter with his nets; but I am
- sent to find those persons whose names are here
- writ, and can never find what names the writing
- person hath here writ. I must to the learned.—In good time.
- Enter Benvolio and Romeo
- Benvolio: Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning,
- One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish;
- Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;
- One desperate grief cures with another's languish:
- Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
- And the rank poison of the old will die.
- Romeo: Your plaintain-leaf is excellent for that.
- Benvolio: For what, I pray thee?
- Romeo: For your broken shin.
- Benvolio: Why, Romeo, art thou mad?
- Romeo: Not mad, but bound more than a mad-man is;
- Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
- Whipp'd and tormented and—God-den, good fellow.
- Servant: God gi' god-den. I pray, sir, can you read?
- Romeo: Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.
- Servant: Perhaps you have learned it without book: but, I
- pray, can you read any thing you see?
- Romeo: Ay, if I know the letters and the language.
- Servant: Ye say honestly: rest you merry!
- Romeo: Stay, fellow; I can read.
- Reads
- 'Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;
- County Anselme and his beauteous sisters; the lady
- widow of Vitravio; Signior Placentio and his lovely
- nieces; Mercutio and his brother Valentine; mine
- uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters; my fair niece
- Rosaline; Livia; Signior Valentio and his cousin
- Tybalt, Lucio and the lively Helena.' A fair
- assembly: whither should they come?
- Servant: Up.
- Romeo: Whither?
- Servant: To supper; to our house.
- Romeo: Whose house?
- Servant: My master's.
- Romeo: Indeed, I should have ask'd you that before.
- Servant: Now I'll tell you without asking: my master is the
- great rich Capulet; and if you be not of the house
- of Montagues, I pray, come and crush a cup of wine.
- Rest you merry!
- Exit
- Benvolio: At this same ancient feast of Capulet's
- Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lovest,
- With all the admired beauties of Verona:
- Go thither; and, with unattainted eye,
- Compare her face with some that I shall show,
- And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.
- Romeo: When the devout religion of mine eye
- Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;
- And these, who often drown'd could never die,
- Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!
- One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun
- Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.
- Benvolio: Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by,
- Herself poised with herself in either eye:
- But in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd
- Your lady's love against some other maid
- That I will show you shining at this feast,
- And she shall scant show well that now shows best.
- Romeo: I'll go along, no such sight to be shown,
- But to rejoice in splendor of mine own.
- Exeunt
Scene iii. A room in Capulet's house.
- Enter Lady Capulet and Nurse
- Lady Capulet: Nurse, where's my daughter? call her forth to me.
- Nurse: Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old,
- I bade her come. What, lamb! what, ladybird!
- God forbid! Where's this girl? What, Juliet!
- Enter Juliet
- Juliet: How now! who calls?
- Nurse: Your mother.
- Juliet: Madam, I am here.
- What is your will?
- Lady Capulet: This is the matter:—Nurse, give leave awhile,
- We must talk in secret:—nurse, come back again;
- I have remember'd me, thou's hear our counsel.
- Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.
- Nurse: Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
- Lady Capulet: She's not fourteen.
- Nurse: I'll lay fourteen of my teeth,—
- And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four—
- She is not fourteen. How long is it now
- To Lammas-tide?
- Lady Capulet: A fortnight and odd days.
- Nurse: Even or odd, of all days in the year,
- Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.
- Susan and she—God rest all Christian souls!—
- Were of an age: well, Susan is with God;
- She was too good for me: but, as I said,
- On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;
- That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
- 'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
- And she was wean'd,—I never shall forget it,—
- Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
- For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
- Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall;
- My lord and you were then at Mantua:—
- Nay, I do bear a brain:—but, as I said,
- When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
- Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
- To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!
- Shake quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow,
- To bid me trudge:
- And since that time it is eleven years;
- For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,
- She could have run and waddled all about;
- For even the day before, she broke her brow:
- And then my husband—God be with his soul!
- A' was a merry man—took up the child:
- 'Yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face?
- Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;
- Wilt thou not, Jule?' and, by my holidame,
- The pretty wretch left crying and said 'Ay.'
- To see, now, how a jest shall come about!
- I warrant, an I should live a thousand years,
- I never should forget it: 'Wilt thou not, Jule?' quoth he;
- And, pretty fool, it stinted and said 'Ay.'
- Lady Capulet: Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy peace.
- Nurse: Yes, madam: yet I cannot choose but laugh,
- To think it should leave crying and say 'Ay.'
- And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow
- A bump as big as a young cockerel's stone;
- A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly:
- 'Yea,' quoth my husband,'fall'st upon thy face?
- Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;
- Wilt thou not, Jule?' it stinted and said 'Ay.'
- Juliet: And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I.
- Nurse: Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace!
- Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nursed:
- An I might live to see thee married once,
- I have my wish.
- Lady Capulet: Marry, that 'marry' is the very theme
- I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,
- How stands your disposition to be married?
- Juliet: It is an honour that I dream not of.
- Nurse: An honour! were not I thine only nurse,
- I would say thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat.
- Lady Capulet: Well, think of marriage now; younger than you,
- Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
- Are made already mothers: by my count,
- I was your mother much upon these years
- That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief:
- The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.
- Nurse: A man, young lady! lady, such a man
- As all the world—why, he's a man of wax.
- Lady Capulet: Verona's summer hath not such a flower.
- Nurse: Nay, he's a flower; in faith, a very flower.
- Lady Capulet: What say you? can you love the gentleman?
- This night you shall behold him at our feast;
- Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,
- And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
- Examine every married lineament,
- And see how one another lends content
- And what obscured in this fair volume lies
- Find written in the margent of his eyes.
- This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
- To beautify him, only lacks a cover:
- The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride
- For fair without the fair within to hide:
- That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
- That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;
- So shall you share all that he doth possess,
- By having him, making yourself no less.
- Nurse: No less! nay, bigger; women grow by men.
- Lady Capulet: Speak briefly, can you like of Paris' love?
- Juliet: I'll look to like, if looking liking move:
- But no more deep will I endart mine eye
- Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
- Enter a Servant
- Servant: Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you
- called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in
- the pantry, and every thing in extremity. I must
- hence to wait; I beseech you, follow straight.
- Lady Capulet: We follow thee.
- Exit Servant
- Juliet, the county stays.
- Nurse: Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.
- Exeunt
Scene iv. A street.
- Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six Maskers, Torch-bearers, and others
- Romeo: What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
- Or shall we on without a apology?
- Benvolio: The date is out of such prolixity:
- We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf,
- Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath,
- Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
- Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
- After the prompter, for our entrance:
- But let them measure us by what they will;
- We'll measure them a measure, and be gone.
- Romeo: Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling;
- Being but heavy, I will bear the light.
- Mercutio: Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.
- Romeo: Not I, believe me: you have dancing shoes
- With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead
- So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
- Mercutio: You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,
- And soar with them above a common bound.
- Romeo: I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
- To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,
- I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe:
- Under love's heavy burden do I sink.
- Mercutio: And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
- Too great oppression for a tender thing.
- Romeo: Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,
- Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.
- Mercutio: If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
- Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
- Give me a case to put my visage in:
- A visor for a visor! what care I
- What curious eye doth quote deformities?
- Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.
- Benvolio: Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in,
- But every man betake him to his legs.
- Romeo: A torch for me: let wantons light of heart
- Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels,
- For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase;
- I'll be a candle-holder, and look on.
- The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done.
- Mercutio: Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word:
- If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire
- Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'st
- Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!
- Romeo: Nay, that's not so.
- Mercutio: I mean, sir, in delay
- We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.
- Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits
- Five times in that ere once in our five wits.
- Romeo: And we mean well in going to this mask;
- But 'tis no wit to go.
- Mercutio: Why, may one ask?
- Romeo: I dream'd a dream to-night.
- Mercutio: And so did I.
- Romeo: Well, what was yours?
- Mercutio: That dreamers often lie.
- Romeo: In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
- Mercutio: O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
- She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
- In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
- On the fore-finger of an alderman,
- Drawn with a team of little atomies
- Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
- Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
- The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
- The traces of the smallest spider's web,
- The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
- Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
- Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
- Not so big as a round little worm
- Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
- Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
- Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
- Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
- And in this state she gallops night by night
- Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
- O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
- O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
- O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
- Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
- Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
- Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
- And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
- And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
- Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
- Then dreams, he of another benefice:
- Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
- And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
- Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
- Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
- Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
- And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
- And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
- That plats the manes of horses in the night,
- And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
- Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
- This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
- That presses them and learns them first to bear,
- Making them women of good carriage:
- This is she—
- Romeo: Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
- Thou talk'st of nothing.
- Mercutio: True, I talk of dreams,
- Which are the children of an idle brain,
- Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
- Which is as thin of substance as the air
- And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
- Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
- And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
- Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
- Benvolio: This wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves;
- Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
- Romeo: I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
- Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
- Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
- With this night's revels and expire the term
- Of a despised life closed in my breast
- By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
- But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
- Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.
- Benvolio: Strike, drum.
- Exeunt
Scene v. A hall in Capulet's house.
- Musicians waiting. Enter Servingmen with napkins
- First Servant: Where's Potpan, that he helps not to take away? He
- shift a trencher? he scrape a trencher!
- Second Servant: When good manners shall lie all in one or two men's
- hands and they unwashed too, 'tis a foul thing.
- First Servant: Away with the joint-stools, remove the
- court-cupboard, look to the plate. Good thou, save
- me a piece of marchpane; and, as thou lovest me, let
- the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell.
- Antony, and Potpan!
- Second Servant: Ay, boy, ready.
- First Servant: You are looked for and called for, asked for and
- sought for, in the great chamber.
- Second Servant: We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys; be
- brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all.
- Enter Capulet, with Juliet and others of his house, meeting the Guests and Maskers
- Capulet: Welcome, gentlemen! ladies that have their toes
- Unplagued with corns will have a bout with you.
- Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all
- Will now deny to dance? she that makes dainty,
- She, I'll swear, hath corns; am I come near ye now?
- Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day
- That I have worn a visor and could tell
- A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear,
- Such as would please: 'tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone:
- You are welcome, gentlemen! come, musicians, play.
- A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls.
- Music plays, and they dance
- More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up,
- And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.
- Ah, sirrah, this unlook'd-for sport comes well.
- Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet;
- For you and I are past our dancing days:
- How long is't now since last yourself and I
- Were in a mask?
- Second Capulet: By'r lady, thirty years.
- Capulet: What, man! 'tis not so much, 'tis not so much:
- 'Tis since the nuptials of Lucentio,
- Come pentecost as quickly as it will,
- Some five and twenty years; and then we mask'd.
- Second Capulet: 'Tis more, 'tis more, his son is elder, sir;
- His son is thirty.
- Capulet: Will you tell me that?
- His son was but a ward two years ago.
- Romeo: [To a Servingman] What lady is that, which doth
- enrich the hand
- Of yonder knight?
- Servant: I know not, sir.
- Romeo: O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
- It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
- Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
- Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
- So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
- As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
- The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
- And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
- Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
- For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
- Tybalt: This, by his voice, should be a Montague.
- Fetch me my rapier, boy. What dares the slave
- Come hither, cover'd with an antic face,
- To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?
- Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,
- To strike him dead, I hold it not a sin.
- Capulet: Why, how now, kinsman! wherefore storm you so?
- Tybalt: Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe,
- A villain that is hither come in spite,
- To scorn at our solemnity this night.
- Capulet: Young Romeo is it?
- Tybalt: 'Tis he, that villain Romeo.
- Capulet: Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone;
- He bears him like a portly gentleman;
- And, to say truth, Verona brags of him
- To be a virtuous and well-govern'd youth:
- I would not for the wealth of all the town
- Here in my house do him disparagement:
- Therefore be patient, take no note of him:
- It is my will, the which if thou respect,
- Show a fair presence and put off these frowns,
- And ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.
- Tybalt: It fits, when such a villain is a guest:
- I'll not endure him.
- Capulet: He shall be endured:
- What, goodman boy! I say, he shall: go to;
- Am I the master here, or you? go to.
- You'll not endure him! God shall mend my soul!
- You'll make a mutiny among my guests!
- You will set cock-a-hoop! you'll be the man!
- Tybalt: Why, uncle, 'tis a shame.
- Capulet: Go to, go to;
- You are a saucy boy: is't so, indeed?
- This trick may chance to scathe you, I know what:
- You must contrary me! marry, 'tis time.
- Well said, my hearts! You are a princox; go:
- Be quiet, or—More light, more light! For shame!
- I'll make you quiet. What, cheerly, my hearts!
- Tybalt: Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting
- Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.
- I will withdraw: but this intrusion shall
- Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall.
- Exit
- Romeo: [To Juliet] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
- This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
- My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
- To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
- Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
- Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
- For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
- And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
- Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
- Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
- Romeo: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
- They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
- Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
- Romeo: Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
- Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
- Juliet: Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
- Romeo: Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
- Give me my sin again.
- Juliet: You kiss by the book.
- Nurse: Madam, your mother craves a word with you.
- Romeo: What is her mother?
- Nurse: Marry, bachelor,
- Her mother is the lady of the house,
- And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous
- I nursed her daughter, that you talk'd withal;
- I tell you, he that can lay hold of her
- Shall have the chinks.
- Romeo: Is she a Capulet?
- O dear account! my life is my foe's debt.
- Benvolio: Away, begone; the sport is at the best.
- Romeo: Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest.
- Capulet: Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone;
- We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.
- Is it e'en so? why, then, I thank you all
- I thank you, honest gentlemen; good night.
- More torches here! Come on then, let's to bed.
- Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late:
- I'll to my rest.
- Exeunt all but Juliet and Nurse
- Juliet: Come hither, nurse. What is yond gentleman?
- Nurse: The son and heir of old Tiberio.
- Juliet: What's he that now is going out of door?
- Nurse: Marry, that, I think, be young Petrucio.
- Juliet: What's he that follows there, that would not dance?
- Nurse: I know not.
- Juliet: Go ask his name: if he be married.
- My grave is like to be my wedding bed.
- Nurse: His name is Romeo, and a Montague;
- The only son of your great enemy.
- Juliet: My only love sprung from my only hate!
- Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
- Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
- That I must love a loathed enemy.
- Nurse: What's this? what's this?
- Juliet: A rhyme I learn'd even now
- Of one I danced withal.
- One calls within 'Juliet.'
- Nurse: Anon, anon!
- Come, let's away; the strangers all are gone.
- Exeunt
Act II.
Prologue.
- Enter Chorus
- Chorus: Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie,
- And young affection gapes to be his heir;
- That fair for which love groan'd for and would die,
- With tender Juliet match'd, is now not fair.
- Now Romeo is beloved and loves again,
- Alike betwitched by the charm of looks,
- But to his foe supposed he must complain,
- And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks:
- Being held a foe, he may not have access
- To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear;
- And she as much in love, her means much less
- To meet her new-beloved any where:
- But passion lends them power, time means, to meet
- Tempering extremities with extreme sweet.
- Exit
Scene i. A lane by the wall of Capulet's orchard.
- Enter Romeo
- Romeo: Can I go forward when my heart is here?
- Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.
- He climbs the wall, and leaps down within it
- Enter Benvolio and Mercutio
- Benvolio: Romeo! my cousin Romeo!
- Mercutio: He is wise;
- And, on my lie, hath stol'n him home to bed.
- Benvolio: He ran this way, and leap'd this orchard wall:
- Call, good Mercutio.
- Mercutio: Nay, I'll conjure too.
- Romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover!
- Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh:
- Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied;
- Cry but 'Ay me!' pronounce but 'love' and 'dove;'
- Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,
- One nick-name for her purblind son and heir,
- Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim,
- When King Cophetua loved the beggar-maid!
- He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not;
- The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.
- I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes,
- By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,
- By her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh
- And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,
- That in thy likeness thou appear to us!
- Benvolio: And if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.
- Mercutio: This cannot anger him: 'twould anger him
- To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle
- Of some strange nature, letting it there stand
- Till she had laid it and conjured it down;
- That were some spite: my invocation
- Is fair and honest, and in his mistres s' name
- I conjure only but to raise up him.
- Benvolio: Come, he hath hid himself among these trees,
- To be consorted with the humorous night:
- Blind is his love and best befits the dark.
- Mercutio: If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
- Now will he sit under a medlar tree,
- And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
- As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.
- Romeo, that she were, O, that she were
- An open et caetera, thou a poperin pear!
- Romeo, good night: I'll to my truckle-bed;
- This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep:
- Come, shall we go?
- Benvolio: Go, then; for 'tis in vain
- To seek him here that means not to be found.
- Exeunt
Scene ii. Capulet's orchard.
- Enter Romeo
- Romeo: He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
- Juliet appears above at a window
- But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
- It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
- Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
- Who is already sick and pale with grief,
- That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
- Be not her maid, since she is envious;
- Her vestal livery is but sick and green
- And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
- It is my lady, O, it is my love!
- O, that she knew she were!
- She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that?
- Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
- I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks:
- Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
- Having some business, do entreat her eyes
- To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
- What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
- The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
- As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
- Would through the airy region stream so bright
- That birds would sing and think it were not night.
- See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
- O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
- That I might touch that cheek!
- Juliet: Ay me!
- Romeo: She speaks:
- O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
- As glorious to this night, being o'er my head
- As is a winged messenger of heaven
- Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
- Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
- When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds
- And sails upon the bosom of the air.
- Juliet: O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
- Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
- Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
- And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
- Romeo: [Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
- Juliet: 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
- Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
- What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
- Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
- Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
- What's in a name? that which we call a rose
- By any other name would smell as sweet;
- So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
- Retain that dear perfection which he owes
- Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
- And for that name which is no part of thee
- Take all myself.
- Romeo: I take thee at thy word:
- Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized;
- Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
- Juliet: What man art thou that thus bescreen'd in night
- So stumblest on my counsel?
- Romeo: By a name
- I know not how to tell thee who I am:
- My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
- Because it is an enemy to thee;
- Had I it written, I would tear the word.
- Juliet: My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words
- Of that tongue's utterance, yet I know the sound:
- Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?
- Romeo: Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.
- Juliet: How camest thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?
- The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,
- And the place death, considering who thou art,
- If any of my kinsmen find thee here.
- Romeo: With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls;
- For stony limits cannot hold love out,
- And what love can do that dares love attempt;
- Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.
- Juliet: If they do see thee, they will murder thee.
- Romeo: Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
- Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet,
- And I am proof against their enmity.
- Juliet: I would not for the world they saw thee here.
- Romeo: I have night's cloak to hide me from their sight;
- And but thou love me, let them find me here:
- My life were better ended by their hate,
- Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.
- Juliet: By whose direction found'st thou out this place?
- Romeo: By love, who first did prompt me to inquire;
- He lent me counsel and I lent him eyes.
- I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far
- As that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea,
- I would adventure for such merchandise.
- Juliet: Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,
- Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
- For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night
- Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny
- What I have spoke: but farewell compliment!
- Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say 'Ay,'
- And I will take thy word: yet if thou swear'st,
- Thou mayst prove false; at lovers' perjuries
- Then say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
- If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully:
- Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,
- I'll frown and be perverse an say thee nay,
- So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.
- In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
- And therefore thou mayst think my 'havior light:
- But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
- Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
- I should have been more strange, I must confess,
- But that thou overheard'st, ere I was ware,
- My true love's passion: therefore pardon me,
- And not impute this yielding to light love,
- Which the dark night hath so discovered.
- Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear
- That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—
- Juliet: O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
- That monthly changes in her circled orb,
- Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
- Romeo: What shall I swear by?
- Juliet: Do not swear at all;
- Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
- Which is the god of my idolatry,
- And I'll believe thee.
- Romeo: If my heart's dear love—
- Juliet: Well, do not swear: although I joy in thee,
- I have no joy of this contract to-night:
- It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
- Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
- Ere one can say 'It lightens.' Sweet, good night!
- This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
- May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
- Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest
- Come to thy heart as that within my breast!
- Romeo: O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
- Juliet: What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?
- Romeo: The exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine.
- Juliet: I gave thee mine before thou didst request it:
- And yet I would it were to give again.
- Romeo: Wouldst thou withdraw it? for what purpose, love?
- Juliet: But to be frank, and give it thee again.
- And yet I wish but for the thing I have:
- My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
- My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
- The more I have, for both are infinite.
- Nurse calls within
- I hear some noise within; dear love, adieu!
- Anon, good nurse! Sweet Montague, be true.
- Stay but a little, I will come again.
- Exit, above
- Romeo: O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard.
- Being in night, all this is but a dream,
- Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
- Re-enter Juliet, above
- Juliet: Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed.
- If that thy bent of love be honourable,
- Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,
- By one that I'll procure to come to thee,
- Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;
- And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay
- And follow thee my lord throughout the world.
- Nurse: [Within] Madam!
- Juliet: I come, anon.—But if thou mean'st not well,
- I do beseech thee—
- Nurse: [Within] Madam!
- Juliet: By and by, I come:—
- To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief:
- To-morrow will I send.
- Romeo: So thrive my soul—
- Juliet: A thousand times good night!
- Exit, above
- Romeo: A thousand times the worse, to want thy light.
- Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from
- their books,
- But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.
- Retiring
- Re-enter Juliet, above
- Juliet: Hist! Romeo, hist! O, for a falconer's voice,
- To lure this tassel-gentle back again!
- Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud;
- Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,
- And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine,
- With repetition of my Romeo's name.
- Romeo: It is my soul that calls upon my name:
- How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,
- Like softest music to attending ears!
- Juliet: Romeo!
- Romeo: My dear?
- Juliet: At what o'clock to-morrow
- Shall I send to thee?
- Romeo: At the hour of nine.
- Juliet: I will not fail: 'tis twenty years till then.
- I have forgot why I did call thee back.
- Romeo: Let me stand here till thou remember it.
- Juliet: I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,
- Remembering how I love thy company.
- Romeo: And I'll still stay, to have thee still forget,
- Forgetting any other home but this.
- Juliet: 'Tis almost morning; I would have thee gone:
- And yet no further than a wanton's bird;
- Who lets it hop a little from her hand,
- Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,
- And with a silk thread plucks it back again,
- So loving-jealous of his liberty.
- Romeo: I would I were thy bird.
- Juliet: Sweet, so would I:
- Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
- Good night, good night! parting is such
- sweet sorrow,
- That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
- Exit above
- Romeo: Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast!
- Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!
- Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell,
- His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell.
- Exit
Scene iii. Friar Laurence's cell.
- Enter Friar Laurence, with a basket
- Friar Laurence: The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
- Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
- And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
- From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels:
- Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
- The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,
- I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
- With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
- The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
- What is her burying grave that is her womb,
- And from her womb children of divers kind
- We sucking on her natural bosom find,
- Many for many virtues excellent,
- None but for some and yet all different.
- O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
- In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
- For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
- But to the earth some special good doth give,
- Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use
- Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
- Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
- And vice sometimes by action dignified.
- Within the infant rind of this small flower
- Poison hath residence and medicine power:
- For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
- Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
- Two such opposed kings encamp them still
- In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
- And where the worser is predominant,
- Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.
- Enter Romeo
- Romeo: Good morrow, father.
- Friar Laurence: Benedicite!
- What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?
- Young son, it argues a distemper'd head
- So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed:
- Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
- And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;
- But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain
- Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign:
- Therefore thy earliness doth me assure
- Thou art up-roused by some distemperature;
- Or if not so, then here I hit it right,
- Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.
- Romeo: That last is true; the sweeter rest was mine.
- Friar Laurence: God pardon sin! wast thou with Rosaline?
- Romeo: With Rosaline, my ghostly father? no;
- I have forgot that name, and that name's woe.
- Friar Laurence: That's my good son: but where hast thou been, then?
- Romeo: I'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again.
- I have been feasting with mine enemy,
- Where on a sudden one hath wounded me,
- That's by me wounded: both our remedies
- Within thy help and holy physic lies:
- I bear no hatred, blessed man, for, lo,
- My intercession likewise steads my foe.
- Friar Laurence: Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;
- Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.
- Romeo: Then plainly know my heart's dear love is set
- On the fair daughter of rich Capulet:
- As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;
- And all combined, save what thou must combine
- By holy marriage: when and where and how
- We met, we woo'd and made exchange of vow,
- I'll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,
- That thou consent to marry us to-day.
- Friar Laurence: Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!
- Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,
- So soon forsaken? young men's love then lies
- Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
- Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine
- Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
- How much salt water thrown away in waste,
- To season love, that of it doth not taste!
- The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,
- Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears;
- Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
- Of an old tear that is not wash'd off yet:
- If e'er thou wast thyself and these woes thine,
- Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline:
- And art thou changed? pronounce this sentence then,
- Women may fall, when there's no strength in men.
- Romeo: Thou chid'st me oft for loving Rosaline.
- Friar Laurence: For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.
- Romeo: And bad'st me bury love.
- Friar Laurence: Not in a grave,
- To lay one in, another out to have.
- Romeo: I pray thee, chide not; she whom I love now
- Doth grace for grace and love for love allow;
- The other did not so.
- Friar Laurence: O, she knew well
- Thy love did read by rote and could not spell.
- But come, young waverer, come, go with me,
- In one respect I'll thy assistant be;
- For this alliance may so happy prove,
- To turn your households' rancour to pure love.
- Romeo: O, let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.
- Friar Laurence: Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.
- Exeunt
Scene iv. A street.
- Enter Benvolio and Mercutio
- Mercutio: Where the devil should this Romeo be?
- Came he not home to-night?
- Benvolio: Not to his father's; I spoke with his man.
- Mercutio: Ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline.
- Torments him so, that he will sure run mad.
- Benvolio: Tybalt, the kinsman of old Capulet,
- Hath sent a letter to his father's house.
- Mercutio: A challenge, on my life.
- Benvolio: Romeo will answer it.
- Mercutio: Any man that can write may answer a letter.
- Benvolio: Nay, he will answer the letter's master, how he
- dares, being dared.
- Mercutio: Alas poor Romeo! he is already dead; stabbed with a
- white wench's black eye; shot through the ear with a
- love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the
- blind bow-boy's butt-shaft: and is he a man to
- encounter Tybalt?
- Benvolio: Why, what is Tybalt?
- Mercutio: More than prince of cats, I can tell you. O, he is
- the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as
- you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and
- proportion; rests me his minim rest, one, two, and
- the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk
- button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the
- very first house, of the first and second cause:
- ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverso! the
- hai!
- Benvolio: The what?
- Mercutio: The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting
- fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents! 'By Jesu,
- a very good blade! a very tall man! a very good
- whore!' Why, is not this a lamentable thing,
- grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with
- these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these
- perdona-mi's, who stand so much on the new form,
- that they cannot at ease on the old bench? O, their
- bones, their bones!
- Enter Romeo
- Benvolio: Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo.
- Mercutio: Without his roe, like a dried herring: flesh, flesh,
- how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers
- that Petrarch flowed in: Laura to his lady was but a
- kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love to
- be-rhyme her; Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gipsy;
- Helen and Hero hildings and harlots; Thisbe a grey
- eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior
- Romeo, bon jour! there's a French salutation
- to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit
- fairly last night.
- Romeo: Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?
- Mercutio: The ship, sir, the slip; can you not conceive?
- Romeo: Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great; and in
- such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy.
- Mercutio: That's as much as to say, such a case as yours
- constrains a man to bow in the hams.
- Romeo: Meaning, to court'sy.
- Mercutio: Thou hast most kindly hit it.
- Romeo: A most courteous exposition.
- Mercutio: Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.
- Romeo: Pink for flower.
- Mercutio: Right.
- Romeo: Why, then is my pump well flowered.
- Mercutio: Well said: follow me this jest now till thou hast
- worn out thy pump, that when the single sole of it
- is worn, the jest may remain after the wearing sole singular.
- Romeo: O single-soled jest, solely singular for the
- singleness.
- Mercutio: Come between us, good Benvolio; my wits faint.
- Romeo: Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or I'll cry a match.
- Mercutio: Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have
- done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of
- thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five:
- was I with you there for the goose?
- Romeo: Thou wast never with me for any thing when thou wast
- not there for the goose.
- Mercutio: I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.
- Romeo: Nay, good goose, bite not.
- Mercutio: Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most
- sharp sauce.
- Romeo: And is it not well served in to a sweet goose?
- Mercutio: O here's a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an
- inch narrow to an ell broad!
- Romeo: I stretch it out for that word 'broad;' which added
- to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.
- Mercutio: Why, is not this better now than groaning for love?
- now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art
- thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature:
- for this drivelling love is like a great natural,
- that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.
- Benvolio: Stop there, stop there.
- Mercutio: Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.
- Benvolio: Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.
- Mercutio: O, thou art deceived; I would have made it short:
- for I was come to the whole depth of my tale; and
- meant, indeed, to occupy the argument no longer.
- Romeo: Here's goodly gear!
- Enter Nurse and Peter
- Mercutio: A sail, a sail!
- Benvolio: Two, two; a shirt and a smock.
- Nurse: Peter!
- Peter: Anon!
- Nurse: My fan, Peter.
- Mercutio: Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan's the
- fairer face.
- Nurse: God ye good morrow, gentlemen.
- Mercutio: God ye good den, fair gentlewoman.
- Nurse: Is it good den?
- Mercutio: 'Tis no less, I tell you, for the bawdy hand of the
- dial is now upon the prick of noon.
- Nurse: Out upon you! what a man are you!
- Romeo: One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for himself to
- mar.
- Nurse: By my troth, it is well said; 'for himself to mar,'
- quoth a'? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I
- may find the young Romeo?
- Romeo: I can tell you; but young Romeo will be older when
- you have found him than he was when you sought him:
- I am the youngest of that name, for fault of a worse.
- Nurse: You say well.
- Mercutio: Yea, is the worst well? very well took, i' faith;
- wisely, wisely.
- Nurse: if you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with
- you.
- Benvolio: She will indite him to some supper.
- Mercutio: A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! so ho!
- Romeo: What hast thou found?
- Mercutio: No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie,
- that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent.
- Sings
- An old hare hoar,
- And an old hare hoar,
- Is very good meat in lent
- But a hare that is hoar
- Is too much for a score,
- When it hoars ere it be spent.
- Romeo, will you come to your father's? we'll
- to dinner, thither.
- Romeo: I will follow you.
- Mercutio: Farewell, ancient lady; farewell,
- Singing
- 'lady, lady, lady.'
- Exeunt Mercutio and Benvolio
- Nurse: Marry, farewell! I pray you, sir, what saucy
- merchant was this, that was so full of his ropery?
- Romeo: A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk,
- and will speak more in a minute than he will stand
- to in a month.
- Nurse: An a' speak any thing against me, I'll take him
- down, an a' were lustier than he is, and twenty such
- Jacks; and if I cannot, I'll find those that shall.
- Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills; I am
- none of his skains-mates. And thou must stand by
- too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure?
- Peter: I saw no man use you a pleasure; if I had, my weapon
- should quickly have been out, I warrant you: I dare
- draw as soon as another man, if I see occasion in a
- good quarrel, and the law on my side.
- Nurse: Now, afore God, I am so vexed, that every part about
- me quivers. Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word:
- and as I told you, my young lady bade me inquire you
- out; what she bade me say, I will keep to myself:
- but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her into
- a fool's paradise, as they say, it were a very gross
- kind of behavior, as they say: for the gentlewoman
- is young; and, therefore, if you should deal double
- with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered
- to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.
- Romeo: Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I
- protest unto thee—
- Nurse: Good heart, and, i' faith, I will tell her as much:
- Lord, Lord, she will be a joyful woman.
- Romeo: What wilt thou tell her, nurse? thou dost not mark me.
- Nurse: I will tell her, sir, that you do protest; which, as
- I take it, is a gentlemanlike offer.
- Romeo: Bid her devise
- Some means to come to shrift this afternoon;
- And there she shall at Friar Laurence' cell
- Be shrived and married. Here is for thy pains.
- Nurse: No truly sir; not a penny.
- Romeo: Go to; I say you shall.
- Nurse: This afternoon, sir? well, she shall be there.
- Romeo: And stay, good nurse, behind the abbey wall:
- Within this hour my man shall be with thee
- And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair;
- Which to the high top-gallant of my joy
- Must be my convoy in the secret night.
- Farewell; be trusty, and I'll quit thy pains:
- Farewell; commend me to thy mistress.
- Nurse: Now God in heaven bless thee! Hark you, sir.
- Romeo: What say'st thou, my dear nurse?
- Nurse: Is your man secret? Did you ne'er hear say,
- Two may keep counsel, putting one away?
- Romeo: I warrant thee, my man's as true as steel.
- Nurse: Well, sir; my mistress is the sweetest lady—Lord,
- Lord! when 'twas a little prating thing:—O, there
- is a nobleman in town, one Paris, that would fain
- lay knife aboard; but she, good soul, had as lief
- see a toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger her
- sometimes and tell her that Paris is the properer
- man; but, I'll warrant you, when I say so, she looks
- as pale as any clout in the versal world. Doth not
- rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter?
- Romeo: Ay, nurse; what of that? both with an R.
- Nurse: Ah. mocker! that's the dog's name; R is for
- the—No; I know it begins with some other
- letter:—and she hath the prettiest sententious of
- it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good
- to hear it.
- Romeo: Commend me to thy lady.
- Nurse: Ay, a thousand times.
- Exit Romeo
- Peter!
- Peter: Anon!
- Nurse: Peter, take my fan, and go before and apace.
- Exeunt
Scene v. Capulet's orchard.
- Enter Juliet
- Juliet: The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse;
- In half an hour she promised to return.
- Perchance she cannot meet him: that's not so.
- O, she is lame! love's heralds should be thoughts,
- Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams,
- Driving back shadows over louring hills:
- Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw love,
- And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.
- Now is the sun upon the highmost hill
- Of this day's journey, and from nine till twelve
- Is three long hours, yet she is not come.
- Had she affections and warm youthful blood,
- She would be as swift in motion as a ball;
- My words would bandy her to my sweet love,
- And his to me:
- But old folks, many feign as they were dead;
- Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.
- O God, she comes!
- Enter Nurse and Peter
- O honey nurse, what news?
- Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.
- Nurse: Peter, stay at the gate.
- Exit Peter
- Juliet: Now, good sweet nurse,—O Lord, why look'st thou sad?
- Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily;
- If good, thou shamest the music of sweet news
- By playing it to me with so sour a face.
- Nurse: I am a-weary, give me leave awhile:
- Fie, how my bones ache! what a jaunt have I had!
- Juliet: I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news:
- Nay, come, I pray thee, speak; good, good nurse, speak.
- Nurse: Jesu, what haste? can you not stay awhile?
- Do you not see that I am out of breath?
- Juliet: How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath
- To say to me that thou art out of breath?
- The excuse that thou dost make in this delay
- Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse.
- Is thy news good, or bad? answer to that;
- Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance:
- Let me be satisfied, is't good or bad?
- Nurse: Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not
- how to choose a man: Romeo! no, not he; though his
- face be better than any man's, yet his leg excels
- all men's; and for a hand, and a foot, and a body,
- though they be not to be talked on, yet they are
- past compare: he is not the flower of courtesy,
- but, I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy
- ways, wench; serve God. What, have you dined at home?
- Juliet: No, no: but all this did I know before.
- What says he of our marriage? what of that?
- Nurse: Lord, how my head aches! what a head have I!
- It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.
- My back o' t' other side,—O, my back, my back!
- Beshrew your heart for sending me about,
- To catch my death with jaunting up and down!
- Juliet: I' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well.
- Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?
- Nurse: Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a
- courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, and, I
- warrant, a virtuous,—Where is your mother?
- Juliet: Where is my mother! why, she is within;
- Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest!
- 'Your love says, like an honest gentleman,
- Where is your mother?'
- Nurse: O God's lady dear!
- Are you so hot? marry, come up, I trow;
- Is this the poultice for my aching bones?
- Henceforward do your messages yourself.
- Juliet: Here's such a coil! come, what says Romeo?
- Nurse: Have you got leave to go to shrift to-day?
- Juliet: I have.
- Nurse: Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence' cell;
- There stays a husband to make you a wife:
- Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks,
- They'll be in scarlet straight at any news.
- Hie you to church; I must another way,
- To fetch a ladder, by the which your love
- Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark:
- I am the drudge and toil in your delight,
- But you shall bear the burden soon at night.
- Go; I'll to dinner: hie you to the cell.
- Juliet: Hie to high fortune! Honest nurse, farewell.
- Exeunt
Scene vi. Friar Laurence's cell.
- Enter Friar Laurence and Romeo
- Friar Laurence: So smile the heavens upon this holy act,
- That after hours with sorrow chide us not!
- Romeo: Amen, amen! but come what sorrow can,
- It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
- That one short minute gives me in her sight:
- Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
- Then love-devouring death do what he dare;
- It is enough I may but call her mine.
- Friar Laurence: These violent delights have violent ends
- And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
- Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
- Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
- And in the taste confounds the appetite:
- Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
- Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
- Enter Juliet
- Here comes the lady: O, so light a foot
- Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint:
- A lover may bestride the gossamer
- That idles in the wanton summer air,
- And yet not fall; so light is vanity.
- Juliet: Good even to my ghostly confessor.
- Friar Laurence: Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.
- Juliet: As much to him, else is his thanks too much.
- Romeo: Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy
- Be heap'd like mine and that thy skill be more
- To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath
- This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue
- Unfold the imagined happiness that both
- Receive in either by this dear encounter.
- Juliet: Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,
- Brags of his substance, not of ornament:
- They are but beggars that can count their worth;
- But my true love is grown to such excess
- I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.
- Friar Laurence: Come, come with me, and we will make short work;
- For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone
- Till holy church incorporate two in one.
- Exeunt
Act III.
Scene i. A public place.
- Enter Mercutio, Benvolio, Page, and Servants
- Benvolio: I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire:
- The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,
- And, if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl;
- For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
- Mercutio: Thou art like one of those fellows that when he
- enters the confines of a tavern claps me his sword
- upon the table and says 'God send me no need of
- thee!' and by the operation of the second cup draws
- it on the drawer, when indeed there is no need.
- Benvolio: Am I like such a fellow?
- Mercutio: Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as
- any in Italy, and as soon moved to be moody, and as
- soon moody to be moved.
- Benvolio: And what to?
- Mercutio: Nay, an there were two such, we should have none
- shortly, for one would kill the other. Thou! why,
- thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more,
- or a hair less, in his beard, than thou hast: thou
- wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no
- other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes: what
- eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel?
- Thy head is as fun of quarrels as an egg is full of
- meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as
- an egg for quarrelling: thou hast quarrelled with a
- man for coughing in the street, because he hath
- wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun:
- didst thou not fall out with a tailor for wearing
- his new doublet before Easter? with another, for
- tying his new shoes with old riband? and yet thou
- wilt tutor me from quarrelling!
- Benvolio: An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man
- should buy the fee-simple of my life for an hour and a quarter.
- Mercutio: The fee-simple! O simple!
- Benvolio: By my head, here come the Capulets.
- Mercutio: By my heel, I care not.
- Enter Tybalt and others
- Tybalt: Follow me close, for I will speak to them.
- Gentlemen, good den: a word with one of you.
- Mercutio: And but one word with one of us? couple it with
- something; make it a word and a blow.
- Tybalt: You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, an you
- will give me occasion.
- Mercutio: Could you not take some occasion without giving?
- Tybalt: Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo,—
- Mercutio: Consort! what, dost thou make us minstrels? an
- thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but
- discords: here's my fiddlestick; here's that shall
- make you dance. 'Zounds, consort!
- Benvolio: We talk here in the public haunt of men:
- Either withdraw unto some private place,
- And reason coldly of your grievances,
- Or else depart; here all eyes gaze on us.
- Mercutio: Men's eyes were made to look, and let them gaze;
- I will not budge for no man's pleasure, I.
- Enter Romeo
- Tybalt: Well, peace be with you, sir: here comes my man.
- Mercutio: But I'll be hanged, sir, if he wear your livery:
- Marry, go before to field, he'll be your follower;
- Your worship in that sense may call him 'man.'
- Tybalt: Romeo, the hate I bear thee can afford
- No better term than this,—thou art a villain.
- Romeo: Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee
- Doth much excuse the appertaining rage
- To such a greeting: villain am I none;
- Therefore farewell; I see thou know'st me not.
- Tybalt: Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries
- That thou hast done me; therefore turn and draw.
- Romeo: I do protest, I never injured thee,
- But love thee better than thou canst devise,
- Till thou shalt know the reason of my love:
- And so, good Capulet,—which name I tender
- As dearly as my own,—be satisfied.
- Mercutio: O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!
- Alla stoccata carries it away.
- Draws
- Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?
- Tybalt: What wouldst thou have with me?
- Mercutio: Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine
- lives; that I mean to make bold withal, and as you
- shall use me hereafter, drybeat the rest of the
- eight. Will you pluck your sword out of his pitcher
- by the ears? make haste, lest mine be about your
- ears ere it be out.
- Tybalt: I am for you.
- Drawing
- Romeo: Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.
- Mercutio: Come, sir, your passado.
- They fight
- Romeo: Draw, Benvolio; beat down their weapons.
- Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage!
- Tybalt, Mercutio, the prince expressly hath
- Forbidden bandying in Verona streets:
- Hold, Tybalt! good Mercutio!
- Tybalt under Romeo's arm stabs Mercutio, and flies with his followers
- Mercutio: I am hurt.
- A plague o' both your houses! I am sped.
- Is he gone, and hath nothing?
- Benvolio: What, art thou hurt?
- Mercutio: Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough.
- Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon.
- Exit Page
- Romeo: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
- Mercutio: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
- church-door; but 'tis enough,'twill serve: ask for
- me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I
- am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o'
- both your houses! 'Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a
- cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a
- rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of
- arithmetic! Why the devil came you between us? I
- was hurt under your arm.
- Romeo: I thought all for the best.
- Mercutio: Help me into some house, Benvolio,
- Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses!
- They have made worms' meat of me: I have it,
- And soundly too: your houses!
- Exeunt Mercutio and Benvolio
- Romeo: This gentleman, the prince's near ally,
- My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt
- In my behalf; my reputation stain'd
- With Tybalt's slander,—Tybalt, that an hour
- Hath been my kinsman! O sweet Juliet,
- Thy beauty hath made me effeminate
- And in my temper soften'd valour's steel!
- Re-enter Benvolio
- Benvolio: O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio's dead!
- That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds,
- Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.
- Romeo: This day's black fate on more days doth depend;
- This but begins the woe, others must end.
- Benvolio: Here comes the furious Tybalt back again.
- Romeo: Alive, in triumph! and Mercutio slain!
- Away to heaven, respective lenity,
- And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now!
- Re-enter Tybalt
- Now, Tybalt, take the villain back again,
- That late thou gavest me; for Mercutio's soul
- Is but a little way above our heads,
- Staying for thine to keep him company:
- Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him.
- Tybalt: Thou, wretched boy, that didst consort him here,
- Shalt with him hence.
- Romeo: This shall determine that.
- They fight; Tybalt falls
- Benvolio: Romeo, away, be gone!
- The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain.
- Stand not amazed: the prince will doom thee death,
- If thou art taken: hence, be gone, away!
- Romeo: O, I am fortune's fool!
- Benvolio: Why dost thou stay?
- Exit Romeo
- Enter Citizens, & c
- First Citizen: Which way ran he that kill'd Mercutio?
- Tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he?
- Benvolio: There lies that Tybalt.
- First Citizen: Up, sir, go with me;
- I charge thee in the princes name, obey.
- Enter Prince, attended; Montague, Capulet, their Wives, and others
- Prince: Where are the vile beginners of this fray?
- Benvolio: O noble prince, I can discover all
- The unlucky manage of this fatal brawl:
- There lies the man, slain by young Romeo,
- That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.
- Lady Capulet: Tybalt, my cousin! O my brother's child!
- O prince! O cousin! husband! O, the blood is spilt
- O my dear kinsman! Prince, as thou art true,
- For blood of ours, shed blood of Montague.
- O cousin, cousin!
- Prince: Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?
- Benvolio: Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo's hand did slay;
- Romeo that spoke him fair, bade him bethink
- How nice the quarrel was, and urged withal
- Your high displeasure: all this uttered
- With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow'd,
- Could not take truce with the unruly spleen
- Of Tybalt deaf to peace, but that he tilts
- With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast,
- Who all as hot, turns deadly point to point,
- And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats
- Cold death aside, and with the other sends
- It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity,
- Retorts it: Romeo he cries aloud,
- 'Hold, friends! friends, part!' and, swifter than
- his tongue,
- His agile arm beats down their fatal points,
- And 'twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm
- An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life
- Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled;
- But by and by comes back to Romeo,
- Who had but newly entertain'd revenge,
- And to 't they go like lightning, for, ere I
- Could draw to part them, was stout Tybalt slain.
- And, as he fell, did Romeo turn and fly.
- This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.
- Lady Capulet: He is a kinsman to the Montague;
- Affection makes him false; he speaks not true:
- Some twenty of them fought in this black strife,
- And all those twenty could but kill one life.
- I beg for justice, which thou, prince, must give;
- Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.
- Prince: Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio;
- Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?
- Montague: Not Romeo, prince, he was Mercutio's friend;
- His fault concludes but what the law should end,
- The life of Tybalt.
- Prince: And for that offence
- Immediately we do exile him hence:
- I have an interest in your hate's proceeding,
- My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding;
- But I'll amerce you with so strong a fine
- That you shall all repent the loss of mine:
- I will be deaf to pleading and excuses;
- Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses:
- Therefore use none: let Romeo hence in haste,
- Else, when he's found, that hour is his last.
- Bear hence this body and attend our will:
- Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.
- Exeunt
Scene ii. Capulet's orchard.
- Enter Juliet
- Juliet: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
- Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner
- As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
- And bring in cloudy night immediately.
- Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
- That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
- Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
- Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
- By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
- It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
- Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
- And learn me how to lose a winning match,
- Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
- Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
- With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
- Think true love acted simple modesty.
- Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
- For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
- Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
- Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
- Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
- Take him and cut him out in little stars,
- And he will make the face of heaven so fine
- That all the world will be in love with night
- And pay no worship to the garish sun.
- O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
- But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
- Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
- As is the night before some festival
- To an impatient child that hath new robes
- And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,
- And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks
- But Romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence.
- Enter Nurse, with cords
- Now, nurse, what news? What hast thou there? the cords
- That Romeo bid thee fetch?
- Nurse: Ay, ay, the cords.
- Throws them down
- Juliet: Ay me! what news? why dost thou wring thy hands?
- Nurse: Ah, well-a-day! he's dead, he's dead, he's dead!
- We are undone, lady, we are undone!
- Alack the day! he's gone, he's kill'd, he's dead!
- Juliet: Can heaven be so envious?
- Nurse: Romeo can,
- Though heaven cannot: O Romeo, Romeo!
- Who ever would have thought it? Romeo!
- Juliet: What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus?
- This torture should be roar'd in dismal hell.
- Hath Romeo slain himself? say thou but 'I,'
- And that bare vowel 'I' shall poison more
- Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice:
- I am not I, if there be such an I;
- Or those eyes shut, that make thee answer 'I.'
- If he be slain, say 'I'; or if not, no:
- Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.
- Nurse: I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes,—
- God save the mark!—here on his manly breast:
- A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse;
- Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub'd in blood,
- All in gore-blood; I swounded at the sight.
- Juliet: O, break, my heart! poor bankrupt, break at once!
- To prison, eyes, ne'er look on liberty!
- Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here;
- And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!
- Nurse: O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had!
- O courteous Tybalt! honest gentleman!
- That ever I should live to see thee dead!
- Juliet: What storm is this that blows so contrary?
- Is Romeo slaughter'd, and is Tybalt dead?
- My dear-loved cousin, and my dearer lord?
- Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom!
- For who is living, if those two are gone?
- Nurse: Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished;
- Romeo that kill'd him, he is banished.
- Juliet: O God! did Romeo's hand shed Tybalt's blood?
- Nurse: It did, it did; alas the day, it did!
- Juliet: O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
- Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
- Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
- Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
- Despised substance of divinest show!
- Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,
- A damned saint, an honourable villain!
- O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell,
- When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
- In moral paradise of such sweet flesh?
- Was ever book containing such vile matter
- So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell
- In such a gorgeous palace!
- Nurse: There's no trust,
- No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured,
- All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.
- Ah, where's my man? give me some aqua vitae:
- These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.
- Shame come to Romeo!
- Juliet: Blister'd be thy tongue
- For such a wish! he was not born to shame:
- Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit;
- For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd
- Sole monarch of the universal earth.
- O, what a beast was I to chide at him!
- Nurse: Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin?
- Juliet: Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
- Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
- When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?
- But, wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?
- That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband:
- Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring;
- Your tributary drops belong to woe,
- Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.
- My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain;
- And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband:
- All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then?
- Some word there was, worser than Tybalt's death,
- That murder'd me: I would forget it fain;
- But, O, it presses to my memory,
- Like damned guilty deeds to sinners' minds:
- 'Tybalt is dead, and Romeo—banished;'
- That 'banished,' that one word 'banished,'
- Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt's death
- Was woe enough, if it had ended there:
- Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship
- And needly will be rank'd with other griefs,
- Why follow'd not, when she said 'Tybalt's dead,'
- Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both,
- Which modern lamentations might have moved?
- But with a rear-ward following Tybalt's death,
- 'Romeo is banished,' to speak that word,
- Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
- All slain, all dead. 'Romeo is banished!'
- There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
- In that word's death; no words can that woe sound.
- Where is my father, and my mother, nurse?
- Nurse: Weeping and wailing over Tybalt's corse:
- Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.
- Juliet: Wash they his wounds with tears: mine shall be spent,
- When theirs are dry, for Romeo's banishment.
- Take up those cords: poor ropes, you are beguiled,
- Both you and I; for Romeo is exiled:
- He made you for a highway to my bed;
- But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.
- Come, cords, come, nurse; I'll to my wedding-bed;
- And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!
- Nurse: Hie to your chamber: I'll find Romeo
- To comfort you: I wot well where he is.
- Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night:
- I'll to him; he is hid at Laurence' cell.
- Juliet: O, find him! give this ring to my true knight,
- And bid him come to take his last farewell.
- Exeunt
Scene iii. Friar Laurence's cell.
- Enter Friar Laurence
- Friar Laurence: Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man:
- Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts,
- And thou art wedded to calamity.
- Enter Romeo
- Romeo: Father, what news? what is the prince's doom?
- What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand,
- That I yet know not?
- Friar Laurence: Too familiar
- Is my dear son with such sour company:
- I bring thee tidings of the prince's doom.
- Romeo: What less than dooms-day is the prince's doom?
- Friar Laurence: A gentler judgment vanish'd from his lips,
- Not body's death, but body's banishment.
- Romeo: Ha, banishment! be merciful, say 'death;'
- For exile hath more terror in his look,
- Much more than death: do not say 'banishment.'
- Friar Laurence: Hence from Verona art thou banished:
- Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.
- Romeo: There is no world without Verona walls,
- But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
- Hence-banished is banish'd from the world,
- And world's exile is death: then banished,
- Is death mis-term'd: calling death banishment,
- Thou cutt'st my head off with a golden axe,
- And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.
- Friar Laurence: O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness!
- Thy fault our law calls death; but the kind prince,
- Taking thy part, hath rush'd aside the law,
- And turn'd that black word death to banishment:
- This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not.
- Romeo: 'Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven is here,
- Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog
- And little mouse, every unworthy thing,
- Live here in heaven and may look on her;
- But Romeo may not: more validity,
- More honourable state, more courtship lives
- In carrion-flies than Romeo: they my seize
- On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand
- And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
- Who even in pure and vestal modesty,
- Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin;
- But Romeo may not; he is banished:
- Flies may do this, but I from this must fly:
- They are free men, but I am banished.
- And say'st thou yet that exile is not death?
- Hadst thou no poison mix'd, no sharp-ground knife,
- No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean,
- But 'banished' to kill me?—'banished'?
- O friar, the damned use that word in hell;
- Howlings attend it: how hast thou the heart,
- Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,
- A sin-absolver, and my friend profess'd,
- To mangle me with that word 'banished'?
- Friar Laurence: Thou fond mad man, hear me but speak a word.
- Romeo: O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.
- Friar Laurence: I'll give thee armour to keep off that word:
- Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy,
- To comfort thee, though thou art banished.
- Romeo: Yet 'banished'? Hang up philosophy!
- Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
- Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
- It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more.
- Friar Laurence: O, then I see that madmen have no ears.
- Romeo: How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?
- Friar Laurence: Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.
- Romeo: Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel:
- Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,
- An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,
- Doting like me and like me banished,
- Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,
- And fall upon the ground, as I do now,
- Taking the measure of an unmade grave.
- Knocking within
- Friar Laurence: Arise; one knocks; good Romeo, hide thyself.
- Romeo: Not I; unless the breath of heartsick groans,
- Mist-like, infold me from the search of eyes.
- Knocking
- Friar Laurence: Hark, how they knock! Who's there? Romeo, arise;
- Thou wilt be taken. Stay awhile! Stand up;
- Knocking
- Run to my study. By and by! God's will,
- What simpleness is this! I come, I come!
- Knocking
- Who knocks so hard? whence come you? what's your will?
- Nurse: [Within] Let me come in, and you shall know
- my errand;
- I come from Lady Juliet.
- Friar Laurence: Welcome, then.
- Enter Nurse
- Nurse: O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar,
- Where is my lady's lord, where's Romeo?
- Friar Laurence: There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.
- Nurse: O, he is even in my mistress' case,
- Just in her case! O woful sympathy!
- Piteous predicament! Even so lies she,
- Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering.
- Stand up, stand up; stand, and you be a man:
- For Juliet's sake, for her sake, rise and stand;
- Why should you fall into so deep an O?
- Romeo: Nurse!
- Nurse: Ah sir! ah sir! Well, death's the end of all.
- Romeo: Spakest thou of Juliet? how is it with her?
- Doth she not think me an old murderer,
- Now I have stain'd the childhood of our joy
- With blood removed but little from her own?
- Where is she? and how doth she? and what says
- My conceal'd lady to our cancell'd love?
- Nurse: O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps;
- And now falls on her bed; and then starts up,
- And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,
- And then down falls again.
- Romeo: As if that name,
- Shot from the deadly level of a gun,
- Did murder her; as that name's cursed hand
- Murder'd her kinsman. O, tell me, friar, tell me,
- In what vile part of this anatomy
- Doth my name lodge? tell me, that I may sack
- The hateful mansion.
- Drawing his sword
- Friar Laurence: Hold thy desperate hand:
- Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art:
- Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote
- The unreasonable fury of a beast:
- Unseemly woman in a seeming man!
- Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!
- Thou hast amazed me: by my holy order,
- I thought thy disposition better temper'd.
- Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself?
- And stay thy lady too that lives in thee,
- By doing damned hate upon thyself?
- Why rail'st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth?
- Since birth, and heaven, and earth, all three do meet
- In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose.
- Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit;
- Which, like a usurer, abound'st in all,
- And usest none in that true use indeed
- Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit:
- Thy noble shape is but a form of wax,
- Digressing from the valour of a man;
- Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,
- Killing that love which thou hast vow'd to cherish;
- Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
- Misshapen in the conduct of them both,
- Like powder in a skitless soldier's flask,
- Is set afire by thine own ignorance,
- And thou dismember'd with thine own defence.
- What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive,
- For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead;
- There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee,
- But thou slew'st Tybalt; there are thou happy too:
- The law that threaten'd death becomes thy friend
- And turns it to exile; there art thou happy:
- A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back;
- Happiness courts thee in her best array;
- But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
- Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love:
- Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
- Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed,
- Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her:
- But look thou stay not till the watch be set,
- For then thou canst not pass to Mantua;
- Where thou shalt live, till we can find a time
- To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,
- Beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back
- With twenty hundred thousand times more joy
- Than thou went'st forth in lamentation.
- Go before, nurse: commend me to thy lady;
- And bid her hasten all the house to bed,
- Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto:
- Romeo is coming.
- Nurse: O Lord, I could have stay'd here all the night
- To hear good counsel: O, what learning is!
- My lord, I'll tell my lady you will come.
- Romeo: Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.
- Nurse: Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir:
- Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.
- Exit
- Romeo: How well my comfort is revived by this!
- Friar Laurence: Go hence; good night; and here stands all your state:
- Either be gone before the watch be set,
- Or by the break of day disguised from hence:
- Sojourn in Mantua; I'll find out your man,
- And he shall signify from time to time
- Every good hap to you that chances here:
- Give me thy hand; 'tis late: farewell; good night.
- Romeo: But that a joy past joy calls out on me,
- It were a grief, so brief to part with thee: Farewell.
- Exeunt
Scene iv. A room in Capulet's house.
- Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, and Paris
- Capulet: Things have fall'n out, sir, so unluckily,
- That we have had no time to move our daughter:
- Look you, she loved her kinsman Tybalt dearly,
- And so did I:—Well, we were born to die.
- 'Tis very late, she'll not come down to-night:
- I promise you, but for your company,
- I would have been a-bed an hour ago.
- Paris: These times of woe afford no time to woo.
- Madam, good night: commend me to your daughter.
- Lady Capulet: I will, and know her mind early to-morrow;
- To-night she is mew'd up to her heaviness.
- Capulet: Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender
- Of my child's love: I think she will be ruled
- In all respects by me; nay, more, I doubt it not.
- Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed;
- Acquaint her here of my son Paris' love;
- And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday next—
- But, soft! what day is this?
- Paris: Monday, my lord,
- Capulet: Monday! ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon,
- O' Thursday let it be: o' Thursday, tell her,
- She shall be married to this noble earl.
- Will you be ready? do you like this haste?
- We'll keep no great ado,—a friend or two;
- For, hark you, Tybalt being slain so late,
- It may be thought we held him carelessly,
- Being our kinsman, if we revel much:
- Therefore we'll have some half a dozen friends,
- And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?
- Paris: My lord, I would that Thursday were to-morrow.
- Capulet: Well get you gone: o' Thursday be it, then.
- Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed,
- Prepare her, wife, against this wedding-day.
- Farewell, my lord. Light to my chamber, ho!
- Afore me! it is so very very late,
- That we may call it early by and by.
- Good night.
- Exeunt
Scene v. Capulet's orchard.
- Enter Romeo and Juliet above, at the window
- Juliet: Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
- It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
- That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
- Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
- Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
- Romeo: It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
- No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
- Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
- Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
- Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
- I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
- Juliet: Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I:
- It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
- To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
- And light thee on thy way to Mantua:
- Therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone.
- Romeo: Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
- I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
- I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye,
- 'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
- Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
- The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
- I have more care to stay than will to go:
- Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
- How is't, my soul? let's talk; it is not day.
- Juliet: It is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away!
- It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
- Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
- Some say the lark makes sweet division;
- This doth not so, for she divideth us:
- Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes,
- O, now I would they had changed voices too!
- Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
- Hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day,
- O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.
- Romeo: More light and light; more dark and dark our woes!
- Enter Nurse, to the chamber
- Nurse: Madam!
- Juliet: Nurse?
- Nurse: Your lady mother is coming to your chamber:
- The day is broke; be wary, look about.
- Exit
- Juliet: Then, window, let day in, and let life out.
- Romeo: Farewell, farewell! one kiss, and I'll descend.
- He goeth down
- Juliet: Art thou gone so? love, lord, ay, husband, friend!
- I must hear from thee every day in the hour,
- For in a minute there are many days:
- O, by this count I shall be much in years
- Ere I again behold my Romeo!
- Romeo: Farewell!
- I will omit no opportunity
- That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
- Juliet: O think'st thou we shall ever meet again?
- Romeo: I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve
- For sweet discourses in our time to come.
- Juliet: O God, I have an ill-divining soul!
- Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,
- As one dead in the bottom of a tomb:
- Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale.
- Romeo: And trust me, love, in my eye so do you:
- Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu!
- Exit
- Juliet: O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle:
- If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him.
- That is renown'd for faith? Be fickle, fortune;
- For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long,
- But send him back.
- Lady Capulet: [Within] Ho, daughter! are you up?
- Juliet: Who is't that calls? is it my lady mother?
- Is she not down so late, or up so early?
- What unaccustom'd cause procures her hither?
- Enter Lady Capulet
- Lady Capulet: Why, how now, Juliet!
- Juliet: Madam, I am not well.
- Lady Capulet: Evermore weeping for your cousin's death?
- What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
- An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live;
- Therefore, have done: some grief shows much of love;
- But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
- Juliet: Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
- Lady Capulet: So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend
- Which you weep for.
- Juliet: Feeling so the loss,
- Cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
- Lady Capulet: Well, girl, thou weep'st not so much for his death,
- As that the villain lives which slaughter'd him.
- Juliet: What villain madam?
- Lady Capulet: That same villain, Romeo.
- Juliet: [Aside] Villain and he be many miles asunder.—
- God Pardon him! I do, with all my heart;
- And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.
- Lady Capulet: That is, because the traitor murderer lives.
- Juliet: Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands:
- Would none but I might venge my cousin's death!
- Lady Capulet: We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not:
- Then weep no more. I'll send to one in Mantua,
- Where that same banish'd runagate doth live,
- Shall give him such an unaccustom'd dram,
- That he shall soon keep Tybalt company:
- And then, I hope, thou wilt be satisfied.
- Juliet: Indeed, I never shall be satisfied
- With Romeo, till I behold him—dead—
- Is my poor heart for a kinsman vex'd.
- Madam, if you could find out but a man
- To bear a poison, I would temper it;
- That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof,
- Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors
- To hear him named, and cannot come to him.
- To wreak the love I bore my cousin
- Upon his body that slaughter'd him!
- Lady Capulet: Find thou the means, and I'll find such a man.
- But now I'll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.
- Juliet: And joy comes well in such a needy time:
- What are they, I beseech your ladyship?
- Lady Capulet: Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child;
- One who, to put thee from thy heaviness,
- Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy,
- That thou expect'st not nor I look'd not for.
- Juliet: Madam, in happy time, what day is that?
- Lady Capulet: Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn,
- The gallant, young and noble gentleman,
- The County Paris, at Saint Peter's Church,
- Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.
- Juliet: Now, by Saint Peter's Church and Peter too,
- He shall not make me there a joyful bride.
- I wonder at this haste; that I must wed
- Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo.
- I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam,
- I will not marry yet; and, when I do, I swear,
- It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,
- Rather than Paris. These are news indeed!
- Lady Capulet: Here comes your father; tell him so yourself,
- And see how he will take it at your hands.
- Enter Capulet and Nurse
- Capulet: When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;
- But for the sunset of my brother's son
- It rains downright.
- How now! a conduit, girl? what, still in tears?
- Evermore showering? In one little body
- Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind;
- For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
- Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,
- Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs;
- Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them,
- Without a sudden calm, will overset
- Thy tempest-tossed body. How now, wife!
- Have you deliver'd to her our decree?
- Lady Capulet: Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks.
- I would the fool were married to her grave!
- Capulet: Soft! take me with you, take me with you, wife.
- How! will she none? doth she not give us thanks?
- Is she not proud? doth she not count her blest,
- Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought
- So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom?
- Juliet: Not proud, you have; but thankful, that you have:
- Proud can I never be of what I hate;
- But thankful even for hate, that is meant love.
- Capulet: How now, how now, chop-logic! What is this?
- 'Proud,' and 'I thank you,' and 'I thank you not;'
- And yet 'not proud,' mistress minion, you,
- Thank me no thankings, nor, proud me no prouds,
- But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,
- To go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church,
- Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
- Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage!
- You tallow-face!
- Lady Capulet: Fie, fie! what, are you mad?
- Juliet: Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
- Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
- Capulet: Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!
- I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thursday,
- Or never after look me in the face:
- Speak not, reply not, do not answer me;
- My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest
- That God had lent us but this only child;
- But now I see this one is one too much,
- And that we have a curse in having her:
- Out on her, hilding!
- Nurse: God in heaven bless her!
- You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.
- Capulet: And why, my lady wisdom? hold your tongue,
- Good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go.
- Nurse: I speak no treason.
- Capulet: O, God ye god-den.
- Nurse: May not one speak?
- Capulet: Peace, you mumbling fool!
- Utter your gravity o'er a gossip's bowl;
- For here we need it not.
- Lady Capulet: You are too hot.
- Capulet: God's bread! it makes me mad:
- Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play,
- Alone, in company, still my care hath been
- To have her match'd: and having now provided
- A gentleman of noble parentage,
- Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd,
- Stuff'd, as they say, with honourable parts,
- Proportion'd as one's thought would wish a man;
- And then to have a wretched puling fool,
- A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender,
- To answer 'I'll not wed; I cannot love,
- I am too young; I pray you, pardon me.'
- But, as you will not wed, I'll pardon you:
- Graze where you will you shall not house with me:
- Look to't, think on't, I do not use to jest.
- Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise:
- An you be mine, I'll give you to my friend;
- And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in
- the streets,
- For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee,
- Nor what is mine shall never do thee good:
- Trust to't, bethink you; I'll not be forsworn.
- Exit
- Juliet: Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
- That sees into the bottom of my grief?
- O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!
- Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
- Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
- In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.
- Lady Capulet: Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word:
- Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.
- Exit
- Juliet: O God!—O nurse, how shall this be prevented?
- My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven;
- How shall that faith return again to earth,
- Unless that husband send it me from heaven
- By leaving earth? comfort me, counsel me.
- Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems
- Upon so soft a subject as myself!
- What say'st thou? hast thou not a word of joy?
- Some comfort, nurse.
- Nurse: Faith, here it is.
- Romeo is banish'd; and all the world to nothing,
- That he dares ne'er come back to challenge you;
- Or, if he do, it needs must be by stealth.
- Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,
- I think it best you married with the county.
- O, he's a lovely gentleman!
- Romeo's a dishclout to him: an eagle, madam,
- Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye
- As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
- I think you are happy in this second match,
- For it excels your first: or if it did not,
- Your first is dead; or 'twere as good he were,
- As living here and you no use of him.
- Juliet: Speakest thou from thy heart?
- Nurse: And from my soul too;
- Or else beshrew them both.
- Juliet: Amen!
- Nurse: What?
- Juliet: Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.
- Go in: and tell my lady I am gone,
- Having displeased my father, to Laurence' cell,
- To make confession and to be absolved.
- Nurse: Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.
- Exit
- Juliet: Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!
- Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,
- Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue
- Which she hath praised him with above compare
- So many thousand times? Go, counsellor;
- Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.
- I'll to the friar, to know his remedy:
- If all else fail, myself have power to die.
- Exit
Act IV.
Scene i. Friar Laurence's cell.
- Enter Friar Laurence and Paris
- Friar Laurence: On Thursday, sir? the time is very short.
- Paris: My father Capulet will have it so;
- And I am nothing slow to slack his haste.
- Friar Laurence: You say you do not know the lady's mind:
- Uneven is the course, I like it not.
- Paris: Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt's death,
- And therefore have I little talk'd of love;
- For Venus smiles not in a house of tears.
- Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous
- That she doth give her sorrow so much sway,
- And in his wisdom hastes our marriage,
- To stop the inundation of her tears;
- Which, too much minded by herself alone,
- May be put from her by society:
- Now do you know the reason of this haste.
- Friar Laurence: [Aside] I would I knew not why it should be slow'd.
- Look, sir, here comes the lady towards my cell.
- Enter Juliet
- Paris: Happily met, my lady and my wife!
- Juliet: That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.
- Paris: That may be must be, love, on Thursday next.
- Juliet: What must be shall be.
- Friar Laurence: That's a certain text.
- Paris: Come you to make confession to this father?
- Juliet: To answer that, I should confess to you.
- Paris: Do not deny to him that you love me.
- Juliet: I will confess to you that I love him.
- Paris: So will ye, I am sure, that you love me.
- Juliet: If I do so, it will be of more price,
- Being spoke behind your back, than to your face.
- Paris: Poor soul, thy face is much abused with tears.
- Juliet: The tears have got small victory by that;
- For it was bad enough before their spite.
- Paris: Thou wrong'st it, more than tears, with that report.
- Juliet: That is no slander, sir, which is a truth;
- And what I spake, I spake it to my face.
- Paris: Thy face is mine, and thou hast slander'd it.
- Juliet: It may be so, for it is not mine own.
- Are you at leisure, holy father, now;
- Or shall I come to you at evening mass?
- Friar Laurence: My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now.
- My lord, we must entreat the time alone.
- Paris: God shield I should disturb devotion!
- Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye:
- Till then, adieu; and keep this holy kiss.
- Exit
- Juliet: O shut the door! and when thou hast done so,
- Come weep with me; past hope, past cure, past help!
- Friar Laurence: Ah, Juliet, I already know thy grief;
- It strains me past the compass of my wits:
- I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it,
- On Thursday next be married to this county.
- Juliet: Tell me not, friar, that thou hear'st of this,
- Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it:
- If, in thy wisdom, thou canst give no help,
- Do thou but call my resolution wise,
- And with this knife I'll help it presently.
- God join'd my heart and Romeo's, thou our hands;
- And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd,
- Shall be the label to another deed,
- Or my true heart with treacherous revolt
- Turn to another, this shall slay them both:
- Therefore, out of thy long-experienced time,
- Give me some present counsel, or, behold,
- 'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
- Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that
- Which the commission of thy years and art
- Could to no issue of true honour bring.
- Be not so long to speak; I long to die,
- If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy.
- Friar Laurence: Hold, daughter: I do spy a kind of hope,
- Which craves as desperate an execution.
- As that is desperate which we would prevent.
- If, rather than to marry County Paris,
- Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,
- Then is it likely thou wilt undertake
- A thing like death to chide away this shame,
- That copest with death himself to scape from it:
- And, if thou darest, I'll give thee remedy.
- Juliet: O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
- From off the battlements of yonder tower;
- Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk
- Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears;
- Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,
- O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,
- With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;
- Or bid me go into a new-made grave
- And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;
- Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble;
- And I will do it without fear or doubt,
- To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love.
- Friar Laurence: Hold, then; go home, be merry, give consent
- To marry Paris: Wednesday is to-morrow:
- To-morrow night look that thou lie alone;
- Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber:
- Take thou this vial, being then in bed,
- And this distilled liquor drink thou off;
- When presently through all thy veins shall run
- A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse
- Shall keep his native progress, but surcease:
- No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;
- The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade
- To paly ashes, thy eyes' windows fall,
- Like death, when he shuts up the day of life;
- Each part, deprived of supple government,
- Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death:
- And in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death
- Thou shalt continue two and forty hours,
- And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.
- Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes
- To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead:
- Then, as the manner of our country is,
- In thy best robes uncover'd on the bier
- Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault
- Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.
- In the mean time, against thou shalt awake,
- Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift,
- And hither shall he come: and he and I
- Will watch thy waking, and that very night
- Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.
- And this shall free thee from this present shame;
- If no inconstant toy, nor womanish fear,
- Abate thy valour in the acting it.
- Juliet: Give me, give me! O, tell not me of fear!
- Friar Laurence: Hold; get you gone, be strong and prosperous
- In this resolve: I'll send a friar with speed
- To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.
- Juliet: Love give me strength! and strength shall help afford.
- Farewell, dear father!
- Exeunt
Scene ii. Hall in Capulet's house.
- Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, Nurse, and two Servingmen
- Capulet: So many guests invite as here are writ.
- Exit First Servant
- Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.
- Second Servant: You shall have none ill, sir; for I'll try if they
- can lick their fingers.
- Capulet: How canst thou try them so?
- Second Servant: Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his
- own fingers: therefore he that cannot lick his
- fingers goes not with me.
- Capulet: Go, be gone.
- Exit Second Servant
- We shall be much unfurnished for this time.
- What, is my daughter gone to Friar Laurence?
- Nurse: Ay, forsooth.
- Capulet: Well, he may chance to do some good on her:
- A peevish self-will'd harlotry it is.
- Nurse: See where she comes from shrift with merry look.
- Enter Juliet
- Capulet: How now, my headstrong! where have you been gadding?
- Juliet: Where I have learn'd me to repent the sin
- Of disobedient opposition
- To you and your behests, and am enjoin'd
- By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here,
- And beg your pardon: pardon, I beseech you!
- Henceforward I am ever ruled by you.
- Capulet: Send for the county; go tell him of this:
- I'll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning.
- Juliet: I met the youthful lord at Laurence' cell;
- And gave him what becomed love I might,
- Not step o'er the bounds of modesty.
- Capulet: Why, I am glad on't; this is well: stand up:
- This is as't should be. Let me see the county;
- Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.
- Now, afore God! this reverend holy friar,
- Our whole city is much bound to him.
- Juliet: Nurse, will you go with me into my closet,
- To help me sort such needful ornaments
- As you think fit to furnish me to-morrow?
- Lady Capulet: No, not till Thursday; there is time enough.
- Capulet: Go, nurse, go with her: we'll to church to-morrow.
- Exeunt Juliet and Nurse
- Lady Capulet: We shall be short in our provision:
- 'Tis now near night.
- Capulet: Tush, I will stir about,
- And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife:
- Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her;
- I'll not to bed to-night; let me alone;
- I'll play the housewife for this once. What, ho!
- They are all forth. Well, I will walk myself
- To County Paris, to prepare him up
- Against to-morrow: my heart is wondrous light,
- Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim'd.
- Exeunt
Scene iii. Juliet's chamber.
- Enter Juliet and Nurse
- Juliet: Ay, those attires are best: but, gentle nurse,
- I pray thee, leave me to my self to-night,
- For I have need of many orisons
- To move the heavens to smile upon my state,
- Which, well thou know'st, is cross, and full of sin.
- Enter Lady Capulet
- Lady Capulet: What, are you busy, ho? need you my help?
- Juliet: No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries
- As are behoveful for our state to-morrow:
- So please you, let me now be left alone,
- And let the nurse this night sit up with you;
- For, I am sure, you have your hands full all,
- In this so sudden business.
- Lady Capulet: Good night:
- Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.
- Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse
- Juliet: Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.
- I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
- That almost freezes up the heat of life:
- I'll call them back again to comfort me:
- Nurse! What should she do here?
- My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
- Come, vial.
- What if this mixture do not work at all?
- Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?
- No, no: this shall forbid it: lie thou there.
- Laying down her dagger
- What if it be a poison, which the friar
- Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,
- Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
- Because he married me before to Romeo?
- I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not,
- For he hath still been tried a holy man.
- How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
- I wake before the time that Romeo
- Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
- Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,
- To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
- And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
- Or, if I live, is it not very like,
- The horrible conceit of death and night,
- Together with the terror of the place,—
- As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
- Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
- Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
- Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
- Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
- At some hours in the night spirits resort;—
- Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
- So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
- And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
- That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:—
- O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
- Environed with all these hideous fears?
- And madly play with my forefather's joints?
- And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
- And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
- As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
- O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
- Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
- Upon a rapier's point: stay, Tybalt, stay!
- Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
- She falls upon her bed, within the curtains
Scene iv. Hall in Capulet's house.
- Enter Lady Capulet and Nurse
- Lady Capulet: Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse.
- Nurse: They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.
- Enter Capulet
- Capulet: Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow'd,
- The curfew-bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock:
- Look to the baked meats, good Angelica:
- Spare not for the cost.
- Nurse: Go, you cot-quean, go,
- Get you to bed; faith, You'll be sick to-morrow
- For this night's watching.
- Capulet: No, not a whit: what! I have watch'd ere now
- All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick.
- Lady Capulet: Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time;
- But I will watch you from such watching now.
- Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse
- Capulet: A jealous hood, a jealous hood!
- Enter three or four Servingmen, with spits, logs, and baskets
- Now, fellow,
- What's there?
- First Servant: Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what.
- Capulet: Make haste, make haste.
- Exit First Servant
- Sirrah, fetch drier logs:
- Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.
- Second Servant: I have a head, sir, that will find out logs,
- And never trouble Peter for the matter.
- Exit
- Capulet: Mass, and well said; a merry whoreson, ha!
- Thou shalt be logger-head. Good faith, 'tis day:
- The county will be here with music straight,
- For so he said he would: I hear him near.
- Music within
- Nurse! Wife! What, ho! What, nurse, I say!
- Re-enter Nurse
- Go waken Juliet, go and trim her up;
- I'll go and chat with Paris: hie, make haste,
- Make haste; the bridegroom he is come already:
- Make haste, I say.
- Exeunt
Scene v. Juliet's chamber.
- Enter Nurse
- Nurse: Mistress! what, mistress! Juliet! fast, I warrant her, she:
- Why, lamb! why, lady! fie, you slug-a-bed!
- Why, love, I say! madam! sweet-heart! why, bride!
- What, not a word? you take your pennyworths now;
- Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant,
- The County Paris hath set up his rest,
- That you shall rest but little. God forgive me,
- Marry, and amen, how sound is she asleep!
- I must needs wake her. Madam, madam, madam!
- Ay, let the county take you in your bed;
- He'll fright you up, i' faith. Will it not be?
- Undraws the curtains
- What, dress'd! and in your clothes! and down again!
- I must needs wake you; Lady! lady! lady!
- Alas, alas! Help, help! my lady's dead!
- O, well-a-day, that ever I was born!
- Some aqua vitae, ho! My lord! my lady!
- Enter Lady Capulet
- Lady Capulet: What noise is here?
- Nurse: O lamentable day!
- Lady Capulet: What is the matter?
- Nurse: Look, look! O heavy day!
- Lady Capulet: O me, O me! My child, my only life,
- Revive, look up, or I will die with thee!
- Help, help! Call help.
- Enter Capulet
- Capulet: For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord is come.
- Nurse: She's dead, deceased, she's dead; alack the day!
- Lady Capulet: Alack the day, she's dead, she's dead, she's dead!
- Capulet: Ha! let me see her: out, alas! she's cold:
- Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;
- Life and these lips have long been separated:
- Death lies on her like an untimely frost
- Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
- Nurse: O lamentable day!
- Lady Capulet: O woful time!
- Capulet: Death, that hath ta'en her hence to make me wail,
- Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak.
- Enter Friar Laurence and Paris, with Musicians
- Friar Laurence: Come, is the bride ready to go to church?
- Capulet: Ready to go, but never to return.
- O son! the night before thy wedding-day
- Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies,
- Flower as she was, deflowered by him.
- Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir;
- My daughter he hath wedded: I will die,
- And leave him all; life, living, all is Death's.
- Paris: Have I thought long to see this morning's face,
- And doth it give me such a sight as this?
- Lady Capulet: Accursed, unhappy, wretched, hateful day!
- Most miserable hour that e'er time saw
- In lasting labour of his pilgrimage!
- But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,
- But one thing to rejoice and solace in,
- And cruel death hath catch'd it from my sight!
- Nurse: O woe! O woful, woful, woful day!
- Most lamentable day, most woful day,
- That ever, ever, I did yet behold!
- O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!
- Never was seen so black a day as this:
- O woful day, O woful day!
- Paris: Beguiled, divorced, wronged, spited, slain!
- Most detestable death, by thee beguil'd,
- By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown!
- O love! O life! not life, but love in death!
- Capulet: Despised, distressed, hated, martyr'd, kill'd!
- Uncomfortable time, why camest thou now
- To murder, murder our solemnity?
- O child! O child! my soul, and not my child!
- Dead art thou! Alack! my child is dead;
- And with my child my joys are buried.
- Friar Laurence: Peace, ho, for shame! confusion's cure lives not
- In these confusions. Heaven and yourself
- Had part in this fair maid; now heaven hath all,
- And all the better is it for the maid:
- Your part in her you could not keep from death,
- But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.
- The most you sought was her promotion;
- For 'twas your heaven she should be advanced:
- And weep ye now, seeing she is advanced
- Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
- O, in this love, you love your child so ill,
- That you run mad, seeing that she is well:
- She's not well married that lives married long;
- But she's best married that dies married young.
- Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary
- On this fair corse; and, as the custom is,
- In all her best array bear her to church:
- For though fond nature bids us an lament,
- Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment.
- Capulet: All things that we ordained festival,
- Turn from their office to black funeral;
- Our instruments to melancholy bells,
- Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,
- Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,
- Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
- And all things change them to the contrary.
- Friar Laurence: Sir, go you in; and, madam, go with him;
- And go, Sir Paris; every one prepare
- To follow this fair corse unto her grave:
- The heavens do lour upon you for some ill;
- Move them no more by crossing their high will.
- Exeunt Capulet, Lady Capulet, Paris, and Friar Laurence
- First Musician: Faith, we may put up our pipes, and be gone.
- Nurse: Honest goodfellows, ah, put up, put up;
- For, well you know, this is a pitiful case.
- Exit
- First Musician: Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.
- Enter Peter
- Peter: Musicians, O, musicians, 'Heart's ease, Heart's
- ease:' O, an you will have me live, play 'Heart's ease.'
- First Musician: Why 'Heart's ease?'
- Peter: O, musicians, because my heart itself plays 'My
- heart is full of woe:' O, play me some merry dump,
- to comfort me.
- First Musician: Not a dump we; 'tis no time to play now.
- Peter: You will not, then?
- First Musician: No.
- Peter: I will then give it you soundly.
- First Musician: What will you give us?
- Peter: No money, on my faith, but the gleek;
- I will give you the minstrel.
- First Musician: Then I will give you the serving-creature.
- Peter: Then will I lay the serving-creature's dagger on
- your pate. I will carry no crotchets: I'll re you,
- I'll fa you; do you note me?
- First Musician: An you re us and fa us, you note us.
- Second Musician: Pray you, put up your dagger, and put out your wit.
- Peter: Then have at you with my wit! I will dry-beat you
- with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger. Answer
- me like men:
- 'When griping grief the heart doth wound,
- And doleful dumps the mind oppress,
- Then music with her silver sound'—
- why 'silver sound'? why 'music with her silver
- sound'? What say you, Simon Catling?
- Musician: Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound.
- Peter: Pretty! What say you, Hugh Rebeck?
- Second Musician: I say 'silver sound,' because musicians sound for silver.
- Peter: Pretty too! What say you, James Soundpost?
- Third Musician: Faith, I know not what to say.
- Peter: O, I cry you mercy; you are the singer: I will say
- for you. It is 'music with her silver sound,'
- because musicians have no gold for sounding:
- 'Then music with her silver sound
- With speedy help doth lend redress.'
- Exit
- First Musician: What a pestilent knave is this same!
- Second Musician: Hang him, Jack! Come, we'll in here; tarry for the
- mourners, and stay dinner.
- Exeunt
Act V.
Scene i. Mantua. A street.
- Enter Romeo
- Romeo: If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep,
- My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:
- My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne;
- And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit
- Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
- I dreamt my lady came and found me dead—
- Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave
- to think!—
- And breathed such life with kisses in my lips,
- That I revived, and was an emperor.
- Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd,
- When but love's shadows are so rich in joy!
- Enter Balthasar, booted
- News from Verona!—How now, Balthasar!
- Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar?
- How doth my lady? Is my father well?
- How fares my Juliet? that I ask again;
- For nothing can be ill, if she be well.
- Balthasar: Then she is well, and nothing can be ill:
- Her body sleeps in Capel's monument,
- And her immortal part with angels lives.
- I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault,
- And presently took post to tell it you:
- O, pardon me for bringing these ill news,
- Since you did leave it for my office, sir.
- Romeo: Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!
- Thou know'st my lodging: get me ink and paper,
- And hire post-horses; I will hence to-night.
- Balthasar: I do beseech you, sir, have patience:
- Your looks are pale and wild, and do import
- Some misadventure.
- Romeo: Tush, thou art deceived:
- Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do.
- Hast thou no letters to me from the friar?
- Balthasar: No, my good lord.
- Romeo: No matter: get thee gone,
- And hire those horses; I'll be with thee straight.
- Exit Balthasar
- Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.
- Let's see for means: O mischief, thou art swift
- To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
- I do remember an apothecary,—
- And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted
- In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
- Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,
- Sharp misery had worn him to the bones:
- And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
- An alligator stuff'd, and other skins
- Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
- A beggarly account of empty boxes,
- Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
- Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,
- Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show.
- Noting this penury, to myself I said
- 'An if a man did need a poison now,
- Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
- Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.'
- O, this same thought did but forerun my need;
- And this same needy man must sell it me.
- As I remember, this should be the house.
- Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut.
- What, ho! apothecary!
- Enter Apothecary
- Apothecary: Who calls so loud?
- Romeo: Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor:
- Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have
- A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear
- As will disperse itself through all the veins
- That the life-weary taker may fall dead
- And that the trunk may be discharged of breath
- As violently as hasty powder fired
- Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.
- Apothecary: Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law
- Is death to any he that utters them.
- Romeo: Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
- And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks,
- Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
- Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back;
- The world is not thy friend nor the world's law;
- The world affords no law to make thee rich;
- Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
- Apothecary: My poverty, but not my will, consents.
- Romeo: I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.
- Apothecary: Put this in any liquid thing you will,
- And drink it off; and, if you had the strength
- Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.
- Romeo: There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
- Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
- Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
- I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none.
- Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh.
- Come, cordial and not poison, go with me
- To Juliet's grave; for there must I use thee.
- Exeunt
Scene ii. Friar Laurence's cell.
- Enter Friar John
- Friar John: Holy Franciscan friar! brother, ho!
- Enter Friar Laurence
- Friar Laurence: This same should be the voice of
- Friar John: .
- Welcome from Mantua: what says Romeo?
- Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.
- Friar John: Going to find a bare-foot brother out
- One of our order, to associate me,
- Here in this city visiting the sick,
- And finding him, the searchers of the town,
- Suspecting that we both were in a house
- Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
- Seal'd up the doors, and would not let us forth;
- So that my speed to Mantua there was stay'd.
- Friar Laurence: Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo?
- Friar John: I could not send it,—here it is again,—
- Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
- So fearful were they of infection.
- Friar Laurence: Unhappy fortune! by my brotherhood,
- The letter was not nice but full of charge
- Of dear import, and the neglecting it
- May do much danger.
- Friar John: , go hence;
- Get me an iron crow, and bring it straight
- Unto my cell.
- Friar John: Brother, I'll go and bring it thee.
- Exit
- Friar Laurence: Now must I to the monument alone;
- Within three hours will fair Juliet wake:
- She will beshrew me much that Romeo
- Hath had no notice of these accidents;
- But I will write again to Mantua,
- And keep her at my cell till Romeo come;
- Poor living corse, closed in a dead man's tomb!
- Exit
Scene iii. A churchyard; in it a tomb belonging to the Capulets.
- Enter Paris, and his Page bearing flowers and a torch
- Paris: Give me thy torch, boy: hence, and stand aloof:
- Yet put it out, for I would not be seen.
- Under yond yew-trees lay thee all along,
- Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground;
- So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread,
- Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves,
- But thou shalt hear it: whistle then to me,
- As signal that thou hear'st something approach.
- Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee, go.
- Page: [Aside] I am almost afraid to stand alone
- Here in the churchyard; yet I will adventure.
- Retires
- Paris: Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew,—
- O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones;—
- Which with sweet water nightly I will dew,
- Or, wanting that, with tears distill'd by moans:
- The obsequies that I for thee will keep
- Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep.
- The Page whistles
- The boy gives warning something doth approach.
- What cursed foot wanders this way to-night,
- To cross my obsequies and true love's rite?
- What with a torch! muffle me, night, awhile.
- Retires
- Enter Romeo and Balthasar, with a torch, mattock, & c
- Romeo: Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.
- Hold, take this letter; early in the morning
- See thou deliver it to my lord and father.
- Give me the light: upon thy life, I charge thee,
- Whate'er thou hear'st or seest, stand all aloof,
- And do not interrupt me in my course.
- Why I descend into this bed of death,
- Is partly to behold my lady's face;
- But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger
- A precious ring, a ring that I must use
- In dear employment: therefore hence, be gone:
- But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry
- In what I further shall intend to do,
- By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint
- And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs:
- The time and my intents are savage-wild,
- More fierce and more inexorable far
- Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.
- Balthasar: I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.
- Romeo: So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that:
- Live, and be prosperous: and farewell, good fellow.
- Balthasar: [Aside] For all this same, I'll hide me hereabout:
- His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.
- Retires
- Romeo: Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
- Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,
- Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
- And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food!
- Opens the tomb
- Paris: This is that banish'd haughty Montague,
- That murder'd my love's cousin, with which grief,
- It is supposed, the fair creature died;
- And here is come to do some villanous shame
- To the dead bodies: I will apprehend him.
- Comes forward
- Stop thy unhallow'd toil, vile Montague!
- Can vengeance be pursued further than death?
- Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee:
- Obey, and go with me; for thou must die.
- Romeo: I must indeed; and therefore came I hither.
- Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man;
- Fly hence, and leave me: think upon these gone;
- Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,
- Put not another sin upon my head,
- By urging me to fury: O, be gone!
- By heaven, I love thee better than myself;
- For I come hither arm'd against myself:
- Stay not, be gone; live, and hereafter say,
- A madman's mercy bade thee run away.
- Paris: I do defy thy conjurations,
- And apprehend thee for a felon here.
- Romeo: Wilt thou provoke me? then have at thee, boy!
- They fight
- Page: O Lord, they fight! I will go call the watch.
- Exit
- Paris: O, I am slain!
- Falls
- If thou be merciful,
- Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet.
- Dies
- Romeo: In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face.
- Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris!
- What said my man, when my betossed soul
- Did not attend him as we rode? I think
- He told me Paris should have married Juliet:
- Said he not so? or did I dream it so?
- Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,
- To think it was so? O, give me thy hand,
- One writ with me in sour misfortune's book!
- I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave;
- A grave? O no! a lantern, slaughter'd youth,
- For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
- This vault a feasting presence full of light.
- Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd.
- Laying Paris in the tomb
- How oft when men are at the point of death
- Have they been merry! which their keepers call
- A lightning before death: O, how may I
- Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife!
- Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
- Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
- Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
- Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
- And death's pale flag is not advanced there.
- Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
- O, what more favour can I do to thee,
- Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
- To sunder his that was thine enemy?
- Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,
- Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
- That unsubstantial death is amorous,
- And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
- Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
- For fear of that, I still will stay with thee;
- And never from this palace of dim night
- Depart again: here, here will I remain
- With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
- Will I set up my everlasting rest,
- And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
- From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
- Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
- The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
- A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
- Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
- Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
- The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
- Here's to my love!
- Drinks
- O true apothecary!
- Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
- Dies
- Enter, at the other end of the churchyard, Friar Laurence, with a lantern, crow, and spade
- Friar Laurence: Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night
- Have my old feet stumbled at graves! Who's there?
- Balthasar: Here's one, a friend, and one that knows you well.
- Friar Laurence: Bliss be upon you! Tell me, good my friend,
- What torch is yond, that vainly lends his light
- To grubs and eyeless skulls? as I discern,
- It burneth in the Capel's monument.
- Balthasar: It doth so, holy sir; and there's my master,
- One that you love.
- Friar Laurence: Who is it?
- Balthasar: Romeo.
- Friar Laurence: How long hath he been there?
- Balthasar: Full half an hour.
- Friar Laurence: Go with me to the vault.
- Balthasar: I dare not, sir
- My master knows not but I am gone hence;
- And fearfully did menace me with death,
- If I did stay to look on his intents.
- Friar Laurence: Stay, then; I'll go alone. Fear comes upon me:
- O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing.
- Balthasar: As I did sleep under this yew-tree here,
- I dreamt my master and another fought,
- And that my master slew him.
- Friar Laurence: Romeo!
- Advances
- Alack, alack, what blood is this, which stains
- The stony entrance of this sepulchre?
- What mean these masterless and gory swords
- To lie discolour'd by this place of peace?
- Enters the tomb
- Romeo! O, pale! Who else? what, Paris too?
- And steep'd in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour
- Is guilty of this lamentable chance!
- The lady stirs.
- Juliet wakes
- Juliet: O comfortable friar! where is my lord?
- I do remember well where I should be,
- And there I am. Where is my Romeo?
- Noise within
- Friar Laurence: I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest
- Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep:
- A greater power than we can contradict
- Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away.
- Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead;
- And Paris too. Come, I'll dispose of thee
- Among a sisterhood of holy nuns:
- Stay not to question, for the watch is coming;
- Come, go, good Juliet,
- Noise again
- I dare no longer stay.
- Juliet: Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.
- Exit Friar Laurence
- What's here? a cup, closed in my true love's hand?
- Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:
- O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop
- To help me after? I will kiss thy lips;
- Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,
- To make die with a restorative.
- Kisses him
- Thy lips are warm.
- First Watchman: [Within] Lead, boy: which way?
- Juliet: Yea, noise? then I'll be brief. O happy dagger!
- Snatching Romeo's dagger
- This is thy sheath;
- Stabs herself
- there rust, and let me die.
- Falls on Romeo's body, and dies
- Enter Watch, with the Page of Paris
- Page: This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn.
- First Watchman: The ground is bloody; search about the churchyard:
- Go, some of you, whoe'er you find attach.
- Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain,
- And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,
- Who here hath lain these two days buried.
- Go, tell the prince: run to the Capulets:
- Raise up the Montagues: some others search:
- We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;
- But the true ground of all these piteous woes
- We cannot without circumstance descry.
- Re-enter some of the Watch, with Balthasar
- Second Watchman: Here's Romeo's man; we found him in the churchyard.
- First Watchman: Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither.
- Re-enter others of the Watch, with Friar Laurence
- Third Watchman: Here is a friar, that trembles, sighs and weeps:
- We took this mattock and this spade from him,
- As he was coming from this churchyard side.
- First Watchman: A great suspicion: stay the friar too.
- Enter the Prince and Attendants
- Prince: What misadventure is so early up,
- That calls our person from our morning's rest?
- Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, and others
- Capulet: What should it be, that they so shriek abroad?
- Lady Capulet: The people in the street cry Romeo,
- Some Juliet, and some Paris; and all run,
- With open outcry toward our monument.
- Prince: What fear is this which startles in our ears?
- First Watchman: Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain;
- And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,
- Warm and new kill'd.
- Prince: Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.
- First Watchman: Here is a friar, and slaughter'd Romeo's man;
- With instruments upon them, fit to open
- These dead men's tombs.
- Capulet: O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!
- This dagger hath mista'en—for, lo, his house
- Is empty on the back of Montague,—
- And it mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom!
- Lady Capulet: O me! this sight of death is as a bell,
- That warns my old age to a sepulchre.
- Enter Montague and others
- Prince: Come, Montague; for thou art early up,
- To see thy son and heir more early down.
- Montague: Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night;
- Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath:
- What further woe conspires against mine age?
- Prince: Look, and thou shalt see.
- Montague: O thou untaught! what manners is in this?
- To press before thy father to a grave?
- Prince: Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,
- Till we can clear these ambiguities,
- And know their spring, their head, their
- true descent;
- And then will I be general of your woes,
- And lead you even to death: meantime forbear,
- And let mischance be slave to patience.
- Bring forth the parties of suspicion.
- Friar Laurence: I am the greatest, able to do least,
- Yet most suspected, as the time and place
- Doth make against me of this direful murder;
- And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
- Myself condemned and myself excused.
- Prince: Then say at once what thou dost know in this.
- Friar Laurence: I will be brief, for my short date of breath
- Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
- Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
- And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife:
- I married them; and their stol'n marriage-day
- Was Tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely death
- Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from the city,
- For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
- You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
- Betroth'd and would have married her perforce
- To County Paris: then comes she to me,
- And, with wild looks, bid me devise some mean
- To rid her from this second marriage,
- Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
- Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
- A sleeping potion; which so took effect
- As I intended, for it wrought on her
- The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
- That he should hither come as this dire night,
- To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
- Being the time the potion's force should cease.
- But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
- Was stay'd by accident, and yesternight
- Return'd my letter back. Then all alone
- At the prefixed hour of her waking,
- Came I to take her from her kindred's vault;
- Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
- Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
- But when I came, some minute ere the time
- Of her awaking, here untimely lay
- The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
- She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
- And bear this work of heaven with patience:
- But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
- And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
- But, as it seems, did violence on herself.
- All this I know; and to the marriage
- Her nurse is privy: and, if aught in this
- Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
- Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,
- Unto the rigour of severest law.
- Prince: We still have known thee for a holy man.
- Where's Romeo's man? what can he say in this?
- Balthasar: I brought my master news of Juliet's death;
- And then in post he came from Mantua
- To this same place, to this same monument.
- This letter he early bid me give his father,
- And threatened me with death, going in the vault,
- I departed not and left him there.
- Prince: Give me the letter; I will look on it.
- Where is the county's page, that raised the watch?
- Sirrah, what made your master in this place?
- Page: He came with flowers to strew his lady's grave;
- And bid me stand aloof, and so I did:
- Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb;
- And by and by my master drew on him;
- And then I ran away to call the watch.
- Prince: This letter doth make good the friar's words,
- Their course of love, the tidings of her death:
- And here he writes that he did buy a poison
- Of a poor 'pothecary, and therewithal
- Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.
- Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
- See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
- That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
- And I for winking at your discords too
- Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.
- Capulet: O brother Montague, give me thy hand:
- This is my daughter's jointure, for no more
- Can I demand.
- Montague: But I can give thee more:
- For I will raise her statue in pure gold;
- That while Verona by that name is known,
- There shall no figure at such rate be set
- As that of true and faithful Juliet.
- Capulet: As rich shall Romeo's by his lady's lie;
- Poor sacrifices of our enmity!
- Prince: A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
- The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
- Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
- Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
- For never was a story of more woe
- Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
- Exeunt
- --oOo-- -