ACT I
ACT I, (PROLOGUE)
Chorus:
- 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;
- Whose 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.
ACT I, 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?
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.
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?
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.
GREGORY:
- Say 'better:' here comes one of my master's kinsmen.
SAMPSON:
- Yes, better, sir.
SAMPSON:
- Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.
-
[They fight]
-
[Enter BENVOLIO]
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.
CAPULET:
- What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!
LADY CAPULET:
- A crutch, a crutch! why call you for a sword?
MONTAGUE:
- Thou villain Capulet,--Hold me not, let me go.
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.
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.
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]
ACT I, 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.
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:
- To supper; to our house.
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]
ACT I, 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?
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]
ACT I, 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.
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]
ACT I, 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 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.
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?
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 III
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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]
ACT III, SCENE II. Capulet's orchard.
[Enter JULIET]
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]
ACT III, 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?
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]
ACT III, 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?
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]
ACT III, 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.
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!
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:
- 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
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]
ACT IV, 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?
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.
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]
ACT IV, 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.
ACT IV, 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.
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]
ACT IV, 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?
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.
LADY CAPULET:
- O woful time!
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.
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?
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]