Omeo and Uliet: L V IVB IX

VOLUME IV BOOK IX
ROMEO AND JULIET
By William Shakespeare
Dramatis Personae
BALTHASAR servant to Romeo.

ESCALUS prince of Verona. (PRINCE) SAMPSON
servants to Capulet.
PARIS a young nobleman, kinsman to the prince. GREGORY
MONTAGUE heads of two houses PETER servant to Juliet’s nurse.

at variance with
CAPULET each other. ABRAHAM servant to Montague.
An Apothecary. (APOTHECARY)
An old man, cousin to Capulet. (SECOND CAPULET)
Three Musicians.
ROMEO son to Montague.
(FIRST MUSICIAN)
MERCUTIO kinsman to the prince, and friend to Romeo. (SECOND MUSICIAN)
(THIRD MUSICIAN)
BENVOLIO nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo.
Page to Paris; (PAGE) another Page; an Officer.
TYBALT nephew to Lady Capulet.
LADY MONTAGUE wife to Montague.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Franciscans. LADY CAPULET wife to Capulet.
FRIAR JOHN
JULIET daughter to Capulet.
Nurse to Juliet. (NURSE)
Citizens of Verona; several Men and Women,
relations to both houses; Maskers,
Guards, Watchmen, and Attendants.

(FIRST CITIZEN), (SERVANT), (FIRST SERVANT), (SECOND SERVANT), (FIRST WATCHMAN), (SECOND
WATCHMAN), (THIRD WATCHMAN), Chorus.
SCENE Verona: Mantua.
Romeo and Juliet
PROLOGUE
Two households, both alike in dignity, Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; The which if you with patient ears attend,
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
ACT I
SCENE I SAMPSON A dog of that house shall move me to stand:
Verona. A public place. I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s.
GREGORY That shows thee a weak slave; for the weakest
[Enter SAMPSON and GREGORY, of the house
goes to the wall.
of CAPULET, armed with swords and bucklers]
SAMPSON True; and therefore women, being the
SAMPSON Gregory, o’ my word, we’ll not carry coals.
weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I
GREGORY No, for then we should be colliers. will push Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust his
maids to the wall.
SAMPSON I mean, an we be in choler, we’ll draw.
GREGORY The quarrel is between our masters and us
GREGORY Ay, while you live, draw your neck out their men.
o’ the collar.
SAMPSON ’Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when
SAMPSON I strike quickly, being moved. I have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the
maids, and cut off their heads.
GREGORY But thou art not quickly moved to strike.
GREGORY The heads of the maids?
SAMPSON A dog of the house of Montague moves me.
SAMPSON Ay, the heads of the maids, or their
GREGORY To move is to stir; and to be valiant is to maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt.
stand: therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn’st away.
GREGORY They must take it in sense that feel it.
Volume III Book IX 5

Romeo and Juliet: ACT I
SAMPSON Me they shall feel while I am able to stand: [They fight]

and’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.
[Enter BENVOLIO]
GREGORY ’Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou
hadst been poor John. Draw thy tool! here comes BENVOLIO Part, fools!
two of the house of the Montagues. Put up your swords; you know not what you do.
SAMPSON My naked weapon is out: quarrel, [Beats down their swords]
I will back thee.
[Enter TYBALT]
GREGORY How! turn thy back and run?
TYBALT What, art thou drawn among these
SAMPSON Fear me not. heartless hinds?
GREGORY No, marry; I fear thee! Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.
SAMPSON Let us take the law of our sides; BENVOLIOI do but keep the peace: put up thy sword,
let them begin. Or manage it to part these men with me.
GREGORY I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it TYBALT What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate
as they list. the word,
As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee:
SAMPSON Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at Have at thee, coward!
them; which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it.
[They fight]
[Enter ABRAHAM and BALTHASAR]
[Enter, several of both houses, who join the fray;
ABRAHAM Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? then enter Citizens, with clubs]
SAMPSON I do bite my thumb, sir. Clubs, bills, and partisans! strike! beat
FIRST CITIZEN
ABRAHAM Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? them down!

Down with the Capulets! down with the Montagues!
SAMPSON [Aside to GREGORY] Is the law of our side,
if I say ay? [Enter CAPULET in his gown, and LADY
CAPULET]
GREGORY No.
CAPULET What noise is this? Give me my
SAMPSON No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, long sword, ho!
but I bite my thumb, sir.
LADY CAPULET A crutch, a crutch! why call you
GREGORY Do you quarrel, sir? for a sword?
ABRAHAM Quarrel sir! no, sir. CAPULET My sword, I say! Old Montague is come,
And flourishes his blade in spite of me.
SAMPSON If you do, sir, I am for you: I serve as good a
man as you. [Enter MONTAGUE and LADY MONTAGUE]
ABRAHAM No better. MONTAGUE Thou villain Capulet,—Hold me not, let
SAMPSON Well, sir. me go.
GREGORY Say “better”: here comes one of my LADY MONTAGUE Thou shalt not stir a foot to seek a foe.
master’s kinsmen.
[Enter PRINCE, with Attendants]
SAMPSON Yes, better, sir.
PRINCE Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,
ABRAHAM You lie. Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel,—
Will they not hear? What, ho! you men, you beasts,
SAMPSON Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy That quench the fire of your pernicious rage
swashing blow.
6 Volume III Book IX

With purple fountains issuing from your veins, MONTAGUE Many a morning hath he there been seen,
On pain of torture, from those bloody hands With tears augmenting the fresh morning’s dew.
Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground, Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs;
And hear the sentence of your moved prince. But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word, Should in the furthest east begin to draw
By thee, old Capulet, and Montague, The shady curtains from Aurora’s bed,
Have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets, Away from light steals home my heavy son,
And made Verona’s ancient citizens And private in his chamber pens himself,
Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments, Shuts up his windows, locks far daylight out
To wield old partisans, in hands as old, And makes himself an artificial night:
Canker’d with peace, to part your canker’d hate: Black and portentous must this humour prove,
If ever you disturb our streets again, Unless good counsel may the cause remove.
Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.
For this time, all the rest depart away: BENVOLIO My noble uncle, do you know the cause?
You, Capulet, shall go along with me: MONTAGUE I neither know it nor can learn of him.
And, Montague, come you this afternoon,
To know our further pleasure in this case, BENVOLIO Have you importuned him by any means?
To old Free-town, our common judgement-place.
Once more, on pain of death, all men depart. MONTAGUE Both by myself and many other friends:
But he, his own affections’ counsellor,
[Exeunt all but MONTAGUE, LADY Is to himself—I will not say how true—
MONTAGUE, and BENVOLIO] But to himself so secret and so close,
So far from sounding and discovery,
MONTAGUE Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach? As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
Speak, nephew, were you by when it began? Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
BENVOLIO Here were the servants of your adversary, Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow.
And yours, close fighting ere I did approach: We would as willingly give cure as know.
I drew to part them: in the instant came
The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepared, [Enter ROMEO]
Which, as he breathed defiance to my ears,
He swung about his head and cut the winds, BENVOLIO See, where he comes: so please you,
Who nothing hurt withal hiss’d him in scorn: step aside;
While we were interchanging thrusts and blows, I’ll know his grievance, or be much denied.
Came more and more and fought on part and part,
Till the prince came, who parted either part. MONTAGUE I would thou wert so happy by thy stay,
To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let’s away.
LADY MONTAGUE O, where is Romeo? saw you
him to-day? [Exeunt MONTAGUE and LADY MONTAGUE]
Right glad I am he was not at this fray.
BENVOLIO Good morrow, cousin.
BENVOLIO Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun
Peer’d forth the golden window of the east, ROMEO Is the day so young?
A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad; BENVOLIO But new struck nine.
Where, underneath the grove of sycamore
That westward rooteth from the city’s side, ROMEO Ay me! sad hours seem long.
So early walking did I see your son: Was that my father that went hence so fast?
Towards him I made, but he was ware of me
And stole into the covert of the wood: BENVOLIO It was. What sadness lengthens
I, measuring his affections by my own, Romeo’s hours?
That most are busied when they’re most alone, ROMEO Not having that, which, having, makes
Pursued my humour not pursuing his, them short.
And gladly shunn’d who gladly fled from me.
BENVOLIO In love?

ROMEO Out— BENVOLIO I aim’d so near, when I supposed you loved.

BENVOLIO Of love? ROMEO A right good mark-man! And she’s fair I love.
ROMEO Out of her favour, where I am in love. BENVOLIO A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
BENVOLIO Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, ROMEO Well, in that hit you miss: she’ll not be hit
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof! With Cupid’s arrow; she hath Dian’s wit;
And, in strong proof of chastity well arm’d,
ROMEO Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still, From love’s weak childish bow she lives unharm’d.
Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will! She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here? Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold:
Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love. O, she is rich in beauty, only poor,
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! That when she dies with beauty dies her store.
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity! BENVOLIO Then she hath sworn that she will still
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! live chaste?
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
sick health! ROMEO She hath, and in that sparing makes
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! huge waste,
This love feel I, that feel no love in this. For beauty starved with her severity
Dost thou not laugh? Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,
BENVOLIO No, coz, I rather weep. To merit bliss by making me despair:
She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
ROMEO Good heart, at what? Do I live dead that live to tell it now.
BENVOLIO At thy good heart’s oppression. BENVOLIO Be ruled by me, forget to think of her.
ROMEO Why, such is love’s transgression. ROMEO O, teach me how I should forget to think.
Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,
Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest BENVOLIO By giving liberty unto thine eyes;
With more of thine: this love that thou hast shown Examine other beauties.
Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.
Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; ROMEO ’Tis the way
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes; To call hers exquisite, in question more:
Being vex’d a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears: These happy masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows
What is it else? a madness most discreet, Being black put us in mind they hide the fair;
A choking gall and a preserving sweet. He that is strucken blind cannot forget
Farewell, my coz. The precious treasure of his eyesight lost:
Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
BENVOLIO Soft! I will go along; What doth her beauty serve, but as a note
An if you leave me so, you do me wrong. Where I may read who pass’d that passing fair?
Farewell: thou canst not teach me to forget.
ROMEO Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here;
This is not Romeo, he’s some other where. BENVOLIO I’ll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.
BENVOLIO Tell me in sadness, who is that you love. [Exeunt]
ROMEO What, shall I groan and tell thee? SCENE II
BENVOLIO Groan! why, no; A street.
But sadly tell me who.
[Enter CAPULET, PARIS, and Servant]
ROMEO Bid a sick man in sadness make his will:
Ah, word ill urged to one that is so ill! CAPULET But Montague is bound as well as I,
In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman. 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; BENVOLIO Tut, man, one fire burns out
And pity ’tis you lived at odds so long. another’s burning,
But now, my lord, what say you to my suit? One pain is lessen’d by another’s anguish;
Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;
CAPULET But saying o’er what I have said before: One desperate grief cures with another’s languish:
My child is yet a stranger in the world; Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years; And the rank poison of the old will die.
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride. ROMEO Your plaintain-leaf is excellent for that.
PARIS Younger than she are happy mothers made. BENVOLIO For what, I pray thee?
CAPULET And too soon marr’d are those so early made. ROMEO For your broken shin.
The earth hath swallow’d all my hopes but she,
She is the hopeful lady of my earth: BENVOLIO Why, Romeo, art thou mad?
But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart, ROMEO Not mad, but bound more than a mad-man is;
My will to her consent is but a part; Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
An she agree, within her scope of choice Whipp’d and tormented and—God-den, good fellow.
Lies my consent and fair according voice.
This night I hold an old accustom’d feast, SERVANT God gi’ god-den. I pray, sir, can you read?
Whereto I have invited many a guest,
Such as I love; and you, among the store, ROMEO Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.
One more, most welcome, makes my number more.
SERVANT Perhaps you have learned it without book:
At my poor house look to behold this night
but, I pray, can you read any thing you see?
Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light:
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel ROMEO Ay, if I know the letters and the language.
When well-apparell’d April on the heel
Of limping winter treads, even such delight SERVANT Ye say honestly: rest you merry!
Among fresh female buds shall you this night
Inherit at my house; hear all, all see, ROMEO Stay, fellow; I can read.
And like her most whose merit most shall be:
[Reads]
Which on more view, of many mine being one
May stand in number, though in reckoning none, “Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;
Come, go with me. County Anselme and his beauteous sisters; the lady
widow of Vitravio; Signior Placentio and his lovely
[To Servant, giving a paper] nieces; Mercutio and his brother Valentine; mine
Go, sirrah, trudge about uncle Capulet, his wife—and daughters; my fair niece
Through fair Verona; find those persons out Rosaline; Livia; Signior Valentio and his cousin
Whose names are written there, and to them say, Tybalt; Lucio and the lively Helena.”
My house and welcome on their pleasure stay. A fair
assembly: whither should they come?
[Exeunt CAPULET and PARIS] SERVANT Up.
SERVANT Find them out whose names are written here! ROMEO Whither?
It is written, that the shoemaker should meddle with
his yard, and the tailor with his last, the fisher with SERVANT To supper; to our house.
his pencil, and the painter with his nets; but I am
sent to find those persons whose names are here ROMEO Whose house?
writ, and can never find what names the writing
SERVANT My master’s.
person hath here writ. I must to the learned.—
In good time. ROMEO Indeed, I should have ask’d you that before.
[Enter BENVOLIO and ROMEO] 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. NURSE Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
Rest you merry!
LADY CAPULET She’s not fourteen.
[Exit] NURSE I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth,—
BENVOLIO At this same ancient feast of Capulet’s And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four—
Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lovest, She is not fourteen. How long is it now
With all the admired beauties of Verona: To Lammas-tide?
Go thither; and, with unattainted eye,
LADY CAPULET A fortnight and odd days.
Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow. NURSE Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.
ROMEO When the devout religion of mine eye
Susan and she—God rest all Christian souls!—
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;
Were of an age: well, Susan is with God;
And these, who often drown’d could never die,
She was too good for me: but, as I said,
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!
On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;
One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.
’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
BENVOLIO Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by, And she was wean’d,—I never shall forget it,—
Herself poised with herself in either eye: Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
But in that crystal scales let there be weigh’d For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Your lady’s love against some other maid Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall;
That I will show you shining at this feast, My lord and you were then at Mantua:—
And she shall scant show well that now shows best. Nay, I do bear a brain:—but, as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
ROMEO I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown, Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
But to rejoice in splendor of mine own. To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!
Shake quoth the dove-house: ’twas no need, I trow,
[Exeunt] To bid me trudge:
And since that time it is eleven years;
SCENE III For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,
A room in CAPULET’s house. She could have run and waddled all about;
For even the day before, she broke her brow:
[Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse] And then my husband—God be with his soul!
LADY CAPULET Nurse, where’s my daughter? call her A’was a merry man—took up the child:
forth to me. “Yea,”quoth he, “dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;
NURSE Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old, Wilt thou not, Jule?” and, by my holidame,
I bade her come. What, lamb! what, lady bird! The pretty wretch left crying and said “Ay.”
God forbid! Where’s this girl? What, Juliet! To see, now, how a jest shall come about!
I warrant, an I should live a thousand years,
[Enter JULIET] I never should forget it: “Wilt thou not, Jule?”
quoth he;
JULIET How now! who calls? And, pretty fool, it stinted and said “Ay.”
NURSE Your mother. LADY CAPULET Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy
JULIETMadam, I am here. peace.
What is your will? NURSE Yes, madam: yet I cannot choose but laugh,
LADY CAPULET This is the matter:—Nurse, give To think it should leave crying and say “Ay.”
leave awhile, And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow
We must talk in secret:—nurse, come back again; A bump as big as a young cockerel’s stone;
I have remember’d me, thou’s hear our counsel. A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly:
Thou know’st my daughter’s of a pretty age. “Yea,”quoth my husband, “fall’st upon thy face?

Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age; JULIETI’ll look to like, if looking liking move:
Wilt thou not, Jule?” it stinted and said “Ay.” But no more deep will I endart mine eye
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
JULIET And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I.
NURSE Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace! [Enter a Servant]
Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nursed: SERVANT Madam, the guests are come, supper served
An I might live to see thee married once, up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse
I have my wish. cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity. I
LADY CAPULET Marry, that “marry” is the very theme must hence to wait; I beseech you, follow straight.
I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet, LADY CAPULET We follow thee.
How stands your disposition to be married?
JULIET It is an honour that I dream not of. [Exit Servant]
NURSE An honour! were not I thine only nurse, Juliet, the county stays.
I would say thou hadst suck’d wisdom from thy teat. NURSE Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.
LADY CAPULET Well, think of marriage now; younger
[Exeunt]
than you,
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, SCENE IV
Are made already mothers: by my count,
A street.
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief: [Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with
The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.
five or six Maskers, Torch-bearers, and others]
NURSE A man, young lady! lady, such a man
ROMEO What, shall this speech be spoke for
As all the world—why, he’s a man of wax.
our excuse?
LADY CAPULET Verona’s summer hath not such a Or shall we on without a apology?
flower.
BENVOLIO The date is out of such prolixity:
NURSE Nay, he’s a flower; in faith, a very flower. We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,
LADY CAPULET What say you? can you love the Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
gentleman? Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
This night you shall behold him at our feast; After the prompter, for our entrance:
Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face, But let them measure us by what they will;
And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen; We’ll measure them a measure, and be gone.
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content ROMEO Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling;
And what obscured in this fair volume lies Being but heavy, I will bear the light.
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
MERCUTIO Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
you dance.
To beautify him, only lacks a cover:
The fish lives in the sea, and ’tis much pride ROMEO Not I, believe me: you have dancing shoes
For fair without the fair within to hide: With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead
That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory, So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;
So shall you share all that he doth possess, MERCUTIO You are a lover; borrow Cupid’s wings,
By having him, making yourself no less. And soar with them above a common bound.
NURSE No less! nay, bigger; women grow by men. ROMEO I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,
LADY CAPULET Speak briefly, can you like of Paris’ love? 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; The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
Too great oppression for a tender thing. The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
ROMEO Is love a tender thing? it is too rough, Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn. Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
MERCUTIO If love be rough with you, be rough
Not so big as a round little worm
with love; Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Give me a case to put my visage in: Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
A visor for a visor! what care I Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
What curious eye doth quote deformities? And in this state she gallops night by night
Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me. Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies straight,
BENVOLIO Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in, O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,
But every man betake him to his legs. O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
ROMEO A torch for me: let wantons light of heart Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels, Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase; And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
I’ll be a candle-holder, and look on. And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail
The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done. Tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
MERCUTIO Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s
Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
own word:
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
If thou art dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick’st
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
ROMEO Nay, that’s not so. And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
MERCUTIO I mean, sir, in delay That plats the manes of horses in the night,
We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Take our good meaning, for our judgement sits Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
Five times in that ere once in our five wits. This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
ROMEO And we mean well in going to this mask;
Making them women of good carriage:
But ’tis no wit to go. This is she—
MERCUTIO Why, may one ask? ROMEO Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
ROMEO I dream’d a dream to-night. Thou talk’st of nothing.
MERCUTIO And so did I. MERCUTIO True, I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,
ROMEO Well, what was yours? Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
MERCUTIO That dreamers often lie. And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
ROMEO In bed asleep, while they do dream things true. Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
MERCUTIO O, then, I see Queen Mab Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes BENVOLIO This wind, you talk of, blows us
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone from ourselves;
On the fore-finger of an alderman, Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
Drawn with a team of little atomies ROMEO I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep; Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders’ legs, Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels and expire the term More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up,
Of a despised life closed in my breast And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.
By some vile forfeit of untimely death. Ah, sirrah, this unlook’d-for sport comes well.
But He, that hath the steerage of my course, Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet;
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen. For you and I are past our dancing days:
How long is’t now since last yourself and I
BENVOLIO Strike, drum. Were in a mask?
[Exeunt] SECOND CAPULET By’r lady, thirty years.
SCENE V CAPULET What, man! ’tis not so much, ’tis not

A hall in CAPULET’s house. so much:
’Tis since the nuptials of Lucentio,
[Musicians waiting. Enter Servingmen Come pentecost as quickly as it will,
with napkins] Some five and twenty years; and then we mask’d.
FIRST SERVANT Where’s Potpan, that he helps not to SECOND CAPULET ’Tis more, ’tis more, his son is
take away? He shift a trencher? he scrape a trencher! elder, sir;
His son is thirty.
SECOND SERVANT When good manners shall lie all in
one or two men’s hands and they unwashed too, ’tis a CAPULET Will you tell me that?
foul thing. His son was but a ward two years ago.
FIRST SERVANT Away with the joint-stools, remove the ROMEO [To a Servingman] What lady is that, which
court-cupboard, look to the plate. Good thou, save doth enrich the hand
me a piece of marchpane; and, as thou lovest me, let Of yonder knight?
the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell.
SERVANT I know not, sir.
Antony, and Potpan!
ROMEO O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
SECOND SERVANT Ay, boy, ready.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
FIRST SERVANT You are looked for and called for, asked Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear;
for and sought for, in the great chamber. Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
SECOND SERVANT We cannot be here and there too. As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.
Cheerly, boys; be brisk awhile, and the longer liver The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,
take all. And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
[Enter CAPULET, with JULIET and others of his For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.
house, meeting the Guests and Maskers]
TYBALT This, by his voice, should be a Montague.
CAPULET Welcome, gentlemen! ladies that Fetch me my rapier, boy. What dares the slave
have their toes Come hither, cover’d with an antic face,
Unplagued with corns will have a bout with you. To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?
Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,
Will now deny to dance? she that makes dainty, To strike him dead, I hold it not a sin.
She, I’ll swear, hath corns; am I come near ye now?
Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day CAPULET Why, how now, kinsman! wherefore storm
That I have worn a visor and could tell you so?
A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear,
TYBALT Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe,
Such as would please: ’tis gone,’tis gone,’tis gone:
A villain that is hither come in spite,
You are welcome, gentlemen! come, musicians, play.
To scorn at our solemnity this night.
A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls.
CAPULET Young Romeo is it?
[Music plays, and they dance]
TYBALT ’Tis he, that villain Romeo.

CAPULET Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone; JULIET Saints do not move, though grant for
He bears him like a portly gentleman; prayers’ sake.
And, to say truth, Verona brags of him
To be a virtuous and well-govern’d youth: ROMEO Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
I would not for the wealth of all the town Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
Here in my house do him disparagement: JULIET Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Therefore be patient, take no note of him:
It is my will, the which if thou respect, ROMEO Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Show a fair presence and put off these frowns, Give me my sin again.
And ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.
JULIET You kiss by the book.
TYBALT It fits, when such a villain is a guest:
I’ll not endure him. NURSE Madam, your mother craves a word with you.
CAPULET He shall be endured: ROMEO What is her mother?

What, goodman boy! I say, he shall: go to;
NURSE Marry, bachelor,
Am I the master here, or you? go to.
Her mother is the lady of the house,
You’ll not endure him! God shall mend my soul!
And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous
You’ll make a mutiny among my guests!
I nursed her daughter, that you talk’d withal;
You will set cock-a-hoop! you’ll be the man!
I tell you, he that can lay hold of her
TYBALT Why, uncle, ’tis a shame. Shall have the chinks.
CAPULET Go to, go to; ROMEO Is she a Capulet?

You are a saucy boy: is’t so, indeed? O dear account! my life is my foe’s debt.
This trick may chance to scathe you, I know what:
BENVOLIO Away, begone; the sport is at the best.
You must contrary me! marry, ’tis time.
Well said, my hearts! You are a princox; go: ROMEO Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest.
Be quiet, or—More light, more light! For shame!
I’ll make you quiet. What, cheerly, my hearts! CAPULET Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone;
We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.
TYBALT Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting Is it e’en so? why, then, I thank you all
Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. I thank you, honest gentlemen; good night.
I will withdraw: but this intrusion shall More torches here! Come on then, let’s to bed.
Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall. Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late:
I’ll to my rest.
[Exit]
[Exeunt all but JULIET and Nurse]
ROMEO [To JULIET] If I profane with my
unworthiest hand JULIET Come hither, nurse. What is yond gentleman?
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand NURSE The son and heir of old Tiberio.
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET What’s he that now is going out of door?
JULIET Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand
too much, NURSE Marry, that, I think, be young Petrucio.
Which mannerly devotion shows in this; JULIETWhat’s he that follows there, that would
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, not dance?
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
NURSE I know not.
ROMEO Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIETGo ask his name: if he be married.
JULIET Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. My grave is like to be my wedding bed.
ROMEO O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Romeo and Juliet: ACT II
NURSE His name is Romeo, and a Montague; JULIETA rhyme I learn’d even now
The only son of your great enemy. Of one I danced withal.
JULIET My only love sprung from my only hate! [One calls within “Juliet.”]
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me, NURSE Anon, anon!
That I must love a loathed enemy. Come, let’s away; the strangers all are gone.
NURSE What’s this? what’s this? [Exeunt]
ACT II
PROLOGUE MERCUTIO Nay, I’ll conjure too.

Romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover!
[Enter Chorus] Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh:
Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied;
CHORUS Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie, Cry but “Ay me!” pronounce but “ ove” and “dove;”
And young affection gapes to be his heir; Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,
That fair for which love groan’d for and would die, One nick-name for her purblind son and heir,
With tender Juliet match’d, is now not fair. Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim,
Now Romeo is beloved and loves again, When King Cophetua loved the beggar-maid!
Alike betwitched by the charm of looks, He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not;
But to his foe supposed he must complain, The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.
And she steal love’s sweet bait from fearful hooks: I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes,
Being held a foe, he may not have access By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,
To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear; By her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh
And she as much in love, her means much less And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,
To meet her new-beloved any where: That in thy likeness thou appear to us!
But passion lends them power, time means, to meet
Tempering extremities with extreme sweet. BENVOLIO And if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.
[Exit] MERCUTIO This cannot anger him: ’Twould anger him

To raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle
SCENE I Of some strange nature, letting it there stand
A lane by the wall of CAPULET’s orchard. Till she had laid it and conjured it down;
That were some spite: my invocation
[Enter ROMEO] Is fair and honest, and in his mistress’ name
I conjure only but to raise up him.
ROMEO Can I go forward when my heart is here?
Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out. BENVOLIO Come, he hath hid himself among
these trees,
[He climbs the wall, and leaps down within it] To be consorted with the humorous night:
Blind is his love and best befits the dark.
[Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO]
MERCUTIO If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
BENVOLIO Romeo! my cousin Romeo! Now will he sit under a medlar tree,
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
MERCUTIO He is wise;
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.
And, on my lie, hath stol’n him home to bed. Romeo, that she were, O, that she were
BENVOLIO He ran this way, and leap’d this An open et caetera, thou a poperin pear!
orchard wall: Romeo, good night: I’ll to my truckle-bed;
Call, good Mercutio.

This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep: Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
Come, shall we go? And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
BENVOLIO Go, then; for ’tis in vain ROMEO [Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak
To seek him here that means not to be found. at this?
[Exeunt] JULIET ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
SCENE II What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
CAPULET’s orchard. Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
[Enter ROMEO] What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
ROMEO He jests at scars that never felt a wound. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
[JULIET appears above at a window] Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? And for that name which is no part of thee
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Take all myself.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, ROMEO I take thee at thy word:
Who is already sick and pale with grief, Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized;
That thou her maid art far more fair than she: Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green JULIET What man art thou that thus bescreen’d
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. in night
It is my lady, O, it is my love! So stumblest on my counsel?
O, that she knew she were!
She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that? ROMEO By a name
Her eye discourses; I will answer it. I know not how to tell thee who I am:
I am too bold, ’tis not to me she speaks: My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Because it is an enemy to thee;
Having some business, do entreat her eyes Had I it written, I would tear the word.
To twinkle in their spheres till they return. JULIET My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words
What if her eyes were there, they in her head? Of that tongue’s utterance, yet I know the sound:
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright ROMEO Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! JULIET How camest thou hither, tell me,
O, that I were a glove upon that hand, and wherefore?
That I might touch that cheek! The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,
And the place death, considering who thou art,
JULIET Ay me! If any of my kinsmen find thee here.
ROMEO She speaks: ROMEO With love’s light wings did I o’er-perch
O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art these walls;
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head For stony limits cannot hold love out,
As is a winged messenger of heaven And what love can do that dares love attempt;
Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds JULIET If they do see thee, they will murder thee.
And sails upon the bosom of the air.
ROMEO Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
JULIETO Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet,
Deny thy father and refuse thy name; And I am proof against their enmity.

JULIET I would not for the world they saw thee here. It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
ROMEO I have night’s cloak to hide me from their sight; Ere one can say “It lightens.” Sweet, good night!
And but thou love me, let them find me here: This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,
My life were better ended by their hate, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love. Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest
JULIET By whose direction found’st thou out this place? Come to thy heart as that within my breast!
ROMEO By love, who first did prompt me to inquire; ROMEO O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
He lent me counsel and I lent him eyes. JULIET What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?
I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far
As that vast shore wash’d with the farthest sea, ROMEO The exchange of thy love’s faithful vow
I would adventure for such merchandise. for mine.
JULIET Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face, JULIETI gave thee mine before thou didst request it:
Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek And yet I would it were to give again.
For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night
Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny ROMEO Wouldst thou withdraw it? for what
What I have spoke: but farewell compliment! purpose, love?
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say “Ay,” JULIETBut to be frank, and give it thee again.
And I will take thy word: yet if thou swear’st, And yet I wish but for the thing I have:
Thou mayst prove false; at lovers’ perjuries My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
Then say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo, My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully: The more I have, for both are infinite.
Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won,
I’ll frown and be perverse an say thee nay, [Nurse calls within]
So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, I hear some noise within; dear love, adieu!
And therefore thou mayst think my ’haviuor light: Anon, good nurse! Sweet Montague, be true.
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true Stay but a little, I will come again.
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess, [Exit, above]
But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ware,
My true love’s passion: therefore pardon me, ROMEO O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard.
And not impute this yielding to light love, Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Which the dark night hath so discovered. Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
ROMEO Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear [Re-enter JULIET, above]

That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—
JULIET Three words, dear Romeo,
JULIET O, swear not by the moon, and good night indeed.
the inconstant moon, If that thy bent of love be honourable,
That monthly changes in her circled orb, Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. By one that I’ll procure to come to thee,
Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;
ROMEO What shall I swear by? And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay
And follow thee my lord throughout the world.
JULIET Do not swear at all;
Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, NURSE [Within] Madam!
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I’ll believe thee. JULIET I come, anon.—But if thou mean’st not well,
I do beseech thee—
ROMEO If my heart’s dear love—
NURSE [Within] Madam!
JULIET Well, do not swear: although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night:

JULIET By and by, I come:— JULIET Sweet, so would I:

To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief: Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
To-morrow will I send. Good night, good night! parting is such
sweet sorrow,
ROMEO So thrive my soul— That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
JULIET A thousand times good night!
[Exit above]
[Exit, above] ROMEO Sleep dwell upon thine eyes,
ROMEO A thousand times the worse, to want thy light. peace in thy breast!
Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books, Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. Hence will I to my ghostly father’s cell,
His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell.
[Retiring]
[Exit]
[Re-enter JULIET, above]
SCENE III
JULIET Hist! Romeo, hist! O, for a falconer’s voice, FRIAR LAURENCE’s cell.
To lure this tassel-gentle back again!
Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud; [Enter FRIAR LAURENCE, with a basket]
Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,
And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine, FRIAR LAURENCE The grey-eyed morn smiles on the
With repetition of my Romeo’s name. frowning night,
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
ROMEO It is my soul that calls upon my name: And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels
How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels:
Like softest music to attending ears! Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night’s dank dew to dry,
JULIET Romeo! I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
ROMEO My dear?
The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb;
JULIET At what o’clock to-morrow What is her burying grave that is her womb,
Shall I send to thee? And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
ROMEO At the hour of nine. Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some and yet all different.
JULIET I will not fail: ’tis twenty years till then. O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
I have forgot why I did call thee back. In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
ROMEO Let me stand here till thou remember it. For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,
JULIET Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use
Remembering how I love thy company. Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
ROMEO And I’ll still stay, to have thee still forget, And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Forgetting any other home but this. Within the infant rind of this small flower
JULIET ’Tis almost morning; I would have thee gone: Poison hath residence and medicine power:
And yet no further than a wanton’s bird; For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Who lets it hop a little from her hand, Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, Two such opposed kings encamp them still
And with a silk thread plucks it back again, In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
So loving-jealous of his liberty. And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.
ROMEO I would I were thy bird.
[Enter ROMEO]

ROMEO Good morrow, father. The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,
Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears;
FRIAR LAURENCE Benedicite! Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
What early tongue so sweet saluteth me? Of an old tear that is not wash’d off yet:
Young son, it argues a distemper’d head If e’er thou wast thyself and these woes thine,
So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed: Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline:
Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, And art thou changed? pronounce this sentence then,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie; Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.
But where unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign: ROMEO Thou chid’st me oft for loving Rosaline.
Therefore thy earliness doth me assure
Thou art up-roused by some distemperature; FRIAR LAURENCE For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.
Or if not so, then here I hit it right, ROMEO And bad’st me bury love.
Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.
FRIAR LAURENCE Not in a grave,
ROMEO That last is true; the sweeter rest was mine. To lay one in, another out to have.
FRIAR LAURENCE God pardon sin! wast thou ROMEO I pray thee, chide not; she whom I love now
with Rosaline? Doth grace for grace and love for love allow;
ROMEO With Rosaline, my ghostly father? no; The other did not so.
I have forgot that name, and that name’s woe. FRIAR LAURENCE O, she knew well
FRIAR LAURENCE That’s my good son: but where hast Thy love did read by rote and could not spell.
thou been, then? But come, young waverer, come, go with me,
In one respect I’ll thy assistant be;
ROMEO I’ll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again. For this alliance may so happy prove,
I have been feasting with mine enemy, To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.
Where on a sudden one hath wounded me,
That’s by me wounded: both our remedies ROMEO O, let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.
Within thy help and holy physic lies: FRIAR LAURENCE Wisely and slow; they stumble that
I bear no hatred, blessed man, for, lo, run fast.
My intercession likewise steads my foe.
FRIAR LAURENCE Be plain, good son, and homely [Exeunt]
in thy drift;
SCENE IV
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.
A street.
ROMEO Then plainly know my heart’s dear love is set
On the fair daughter of rich Capulet: [Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO]
As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;
MERCUTIO Where the devil should this Romeo be?
And all combined, save what thou must combine
Came he not home to-night?
By holy marriage: when and where and how
We met, we woo’d and made exchange of vow, BENVOLIO Not to his father’s; I spoke with his man.
I’ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,
That thou consent to marry us to-day. MERCUTIO Ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench,
that Rosaline.
FRIAR LAURENCE Holy Saint Francis, what a Torments him so, that he will sure run mad.
change is here!
Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear, BENVOLIO Tybalt, the kinsman of old Capulet,
So soon forsaken? young men’s love then lies Hath sent a letter to his father’s house.
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine MERCUTIO A challenge, on my life.
Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline! BENVOLIO Romeo will answer it.
How much salt water thrown away in waste,
To season love, that of it doth not taste! MERCUTIO Any man that can write may answer a letter.

BENVOLIO Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how great; and in such a case as mine a man may
he dares, being dared. strain courtesy.
MERCUTIO Alas poor Romeo! he is already dead; MERCUTIO That’s as much as to say, such a case as
stabbed with a white wench’s black eye; shot through yours constrains a man to bow in the hams.
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 ROMEO Meaning, to court’sy.
encounter Tybalt? MERCUTIO Thou hast most kindly hit it.
BENVOLIO Why, what is Tybalt? ROMEO A most courteous exposition.
MERCUTIO More than prince of cats, I can tell you. O, MERCUTIO Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.
he is the courageous captain of compliments. He fights
as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and ROMEO Pink for flower.
proportion; rests me his minim rest, one, two, and
the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk MERCUTIO Right.
button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the
ROMEO Why, then is my pump well flowered.
very first house, of the first and second cause:
ah, the immortal passado! The punto reverso! MERCUTIO Well said: follow me this jest now till thou
The hai! hast worn out thy pump, that when the single sole of it
is worn, the jest may remain after the wearing
BENVOLIO The what?
sole singular.
MERCUTIO The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting
ROMEO O single-soled jest, solely singular for
fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents! “By Jesu,
the singleness.
a very good blade! a very tall man! a very good
whore!” Why, is not this a lamentable thing, MERCUTIO Come between us, good Benvolio;
grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with my wits faint.
these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these
perdona-mi’s, who stand so much on the new form, ROMEO Switch and spurs, switch and spurs;
that they cannot at ease on the old bench? O, their or I’ll cry a match.
bones, their bones!
MERCUTIO Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I
[Enter ROMEO] 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:
BENVOLIO Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo. was I with you there for the goose?
MERCUTIO Without his roe, like a dried herring: ROMEO Thou wast never with me for any thing when
flesh, flesh, thou wast not there for the goose.
how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers
that Petrarch flowed in: Laura to his lady was but a MERCUTIO I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.
kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love to ROMEO Nay, good goose, bite not.
be-rhyme her; Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gipsy;
Helen and Hero hildings and harlots; Thisbe a grey MERCUTIO Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most
eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior sharp sauce.
Romeo, bon jour! there’s a French salutation
to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit ROMEO And is it not well served in to a sweet goose?
fairly last night.
MERCUTIO O here’s a wit of cheveril, that stretches
ROMEO Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit from an inch narrow to an ell broad!
did I give you?
ROMEO I stretch it out for that word “broad”; which
MERCUTIO The slip, sir, the slip; can you not conceive? added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a
broad goose.
ROMEO Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was

MERCUTIO Why, is not this better now than groaning MERCUTIO Yea, is the worst well? very well took, i’ faith;
for love? now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; wisely, wisely.
now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature:
for this drivelling love is like a great natural, NURSE If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence
that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble with you.
in a hole. BENVOLIO She will indite him to some supper.
BENVOLIO Stop there, stop there. MERCUTIO A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! so ho!
MERCUTIO Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against ROMEO What hast thou found?
the hair.
MERCUTIO No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten
BENVOLIO Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large. pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent.
MERCUTIO O, thou art deceived; I would have made it
short: for I was come to the whole depth of my tale; and [Sings]
meant, indeed, to occupy the argument no longer. An old hare hoar,
And an old hare hoar,
ROMEO Here’s goodly gear! Is very good meat in lent
But a hare that is hoar
[Enter Nurse and PETER] Is too much for a score,
When it hoars ere it be spent.
MERCUTIO A sail, a sail!
Romeo, will you come to your father’s? We’ll
BENVOLIO Two, two; a shirt and a smock. to dinner, thither.
NURSE Peter! ROMEO I will follow you.
PETER Anon! MERCUTIO Farewell, ancient lady; farewell,
NURSE My fan, Peter.
[Singing]
MERCUTIO Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan’s “lady, lady, lady.”
the fairer face.
[Exeunt MERCUTIO and BENVOLIO]
NURSE God ye good morrow, gentlemen.
NURSE Marry, farewell! I pray you, sir, what saucy
MERCUTIO God ye good den, fair gentlewoman.
merchant was this, that was so full of his ropery?
NURSE Is it good den?
ROMEO A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself
MERCUTIO ’Tis no less, I tell you, for the bawdy hand of talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand
the dial is now upon the prick of noon. to in a month.
NURSE Out upon you! what a man are you! NURSE An a’ speak any thing against me, I’ll take him
down, an a’ were lustier than he is, and twenty such
ROMEO One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for Jacks; and if I cannot, I’ll find those that shall.
himself to mar. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills; I am
none of his skains-mates. And thou must stand by
NURSE By my troth, it is well said; “for himself to mar, too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure?
quoth a”? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I
may find the young Romeo? PETER I saw no man use you a pleasure; if I had, my
weapon should quickly have been out, I warrant you: I
ROMEO I can tell you; but young Romeo will be older
dare draw as soon as another man, if I see occasion in a
when you have found him than he was when you good quarrel, and the law on my side.
sought him: I am the youngest of that name, for fault
of a worse. NURSE Now, afore God, I am so vexed, that every part
about me quivers. Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word:
NURSE You say well. and as I told you, my young lady bade me inquire you

out; what she bade me say, I will keep to myself: ROMEO Ay, nurse; what of that? both with an R.
but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her into
a fool’s paradise, as they say, it were a very gross NURSE Ah, mocker! that’s the dog’s name; R is for
kind of behavior, as they say: for the gentlewoman the—No; I know it begins with some other
is young; and, therefore, if you should deal double letter:—and she hath the prettiest sententious of
with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good
to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing. to hear it.
ROMEO Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. ROMEO Commend me to thy lady.
I protest unto thee— NURSE Ay, a thousand times.
NURSE Good heart, and, i’ faith, I will tell her as much:
Lord, Lord, she will be a joyful woman. [Exit Romeo]
ROMEO What wilt thou tell her, nurse? thou dost not Peter!
mark me. PETER Anon!
NURSE I will tell her, sir, that you do protest; which, as NURSE Peter, take my fan, and go before and apace.
I take it, is a gentlemanlike offer.
[Exeunt]
ROMEO Bid her devise
Some means to come to shrift this afternoon; SCENE V
And there she shall at Friar Laurence’s cell
CAPULET’s orchard.
Be shrived and married. Here is for thy pains.
NURSE No truly sir; not a penny. [Enter JULIET]
ROMEO Go to; I say you shall. JULIET The clock struck nine when I did send
the nurse;
NURSE This afternoon, sir? well, she shall be there. In half an hour she promised to return.
Perchance she cannot meet him: that’s not so.
ROMEO And stay, good nurse, behind the abbey wall: O, she is lame! love’s heralds should be thoughts,
Within this hour my man shall be with thee Which ten times faster glide than the sun’s beams,
And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair; Driving back shadows over louring hills:
Which to the high top-gallant of my joy Therefore do nimble-pinion’d doves draw love,
Must be my convoy in the secret night. And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.
Farewell; be trusty, and I’ll quit thy pains: Now is the sun upon the highmost hill
Farewell; commend me to thy mistress. Of this day’s journey, and from nine till twelve
NURSE Now God in heaven bless thee! Hark you, sir. Is three long hours, yet she is not come.
Had she affections and warm youthful blood,
ROMEO What say’st thou, my dear nurse? She would be as swift in motion as a ball;
My words would bandy her to my sweet love,
NURSEIs your man secret? Did you ne’er hear say, And his to me:
Two may keep counsel, putting one away? But old folks, many feign as they were dead;
Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.
ROMEO I warrant thee, my man’s as true as steel.
O God, she comes!
NURSE Well, sir; my mistress is the sweetest
lady—Lord, Lord! when ’Twas a little prating [Enter Nurse and PETER]
thing:—O, there is a nobleman in town, one Paris, that O honey nurse, what news?
would fain lay knife aboard; but she, good soul, had as Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.
lief see a toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger her
sometimes and tell her that Paris is the properer man; NURSE Peter, stay at the gate.
but, I’ll warrant you, when I say so, she looks as pale as
any clout in the versal world. Doth not rosemary and [Exit PETER]
Romeo begin both with a letter?

JULIET Now, good sweet nurse,—O Lord, why look’st Is this the poultice for my aching bones?
thou sad? Henceforward do your messages yourself.
Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily;
If good, thou shamest the music of sweet news JULIET Here’s such a coil! come, what says Romeo?
By playing it to me with so sour a face. NURSE Have you got leave to go to shrift to-day?
NURSE I am a-weary, give me leave awhile: JULIET I have.
Fie, how my bones ache! what a jaunt have I had!
NURSE Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence’s cell;
JULIET I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news: There stays a husband to make you a wife:
Nay, come, I pray thee, speak; good, good nurse, speak. Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks,
NURSE Jesu, what haste? can you not stay awhile? They’ll be in scarlet straight at any news.
Do you not see that I am out of breath? Hie you to church; I must another way,
To fetch a ladder, by the which your love
JULIET How art thou out of breath, when thou Must climb a bird’s nest soon when it is dark:
hast breath I am the drudge and toil in your delight,
To say to me that thou art out of breath? But you shall bear the burden soon at night.
The excuse that thou dost make in this delay Go; I’ll to dinner: hie you to the cell.
Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse.
Is thy news good, or bad? answer to that; JULIET Hie to high fortune! Honest nurse, farewell.
Say either, and I’ll stay the circumstance:
Let me be satisfied, is’t good or bad? [Exeunt]
NURSE Well, you have made a simple choice; you know SCENE VI
not how to choose a man: Romeo! no, not he; though FRIAR LAURENCE’s cell.
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 [Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and ROMEO]
they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare:
FRIAR LAURENCE So smile the heavens upon
he is not the flower of courtesy, but, I’ll warrant him, as
this holy act,
gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench; serve God. What,
That after hours with sorrow chide us not!
have you dined at home?
ROMEO Amen, amen! but come what sorrow can,
JULIETNo, no: but all this did I know before.
It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
What says he of our marriage? what of that?
That one short minute gives me in her sight:
NURSE Lord, how my head aches! what a head have I! Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. Then love-devouring death do what he dare;
My back o’ t’ other side,—O, my back, my back! It is enough I may but call her mine.
Beshrew your heart for sending me about,
FRIAR LAURENCE These violent delights have
To catch my death with jaunting up and down!
violent ends
JULIET I’ faith, I am sorry that thou art not well. And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love? Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
NURSE Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a And in the taste confounds the appetite:
courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, and, I Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
warrant, a virtuous,—Where is your mother? Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
JULIET Where is my mother! why, she is within; [Enter JULIET]
Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest!
“Your love says, like an honest gentleman, Here comes the lady: O, so light a foot
Where is your mother?” Will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint:
A lover may bestride the gossamer
NURSE O God’s lady dear! That idles in the wanton summer air,
Are you so hot? marry, come up, I trow; And yet not fall; so light is vanity.

Romeo and Juliet: ACT III
JULIET Good even to my ghostly confessor. JULIET Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament:
FRIAR LAURENCE Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for They are but beggars that can count their worth;
us both. But my true love is grown to such excess
JULIET As much to him, else is his thanks too much. I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.
ROMEO Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy FRIAR LAURENCE Come, come with me, and we will
Be heap’d like mine and that thy skill be more make short work;
To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone
This neighbour air, and let rich music’s tongue Till holy church incorporate two in one.
Unfold the imagined happiness that both
[Exeunt]
Receive in either by this dear encounter.
ACT III
SCENE I out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before
A public place. Easter? with another, for tying his new shoes with old
riband? and yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling!
[Enter MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, Page,
and Servants] BENVOLIO An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any
man should buy the fee-simple of my life for an hour
BENVOLIO I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire: and a quarter.
The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,
MERCUTIO The fee-simple! O simple!
And, if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl;
For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring. BENVOLIO By my head, here come the Capulets.
MERCUTIO Thou art like one of those fellows that when MERCUTIO By my heel, I care not.
he enters the confines of a tavern claps me his sword
upon the table and says “God send me no need of [Enter TYBALT and others]
thee!” and by the operation of the second cup draws it
on the drawer, when indeed there is no need. TYBALT Follow me close, for I will speak to them.
Gentlemen, good den: a word with one of you.
BENVOLIO Am I like such a fellow?
MERCUTIO And but one word with one of us? couple it
MERCUTIO Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy with something; make it a word and a blow.
mood as any in Italy, and as soon moved to be moody,
and as soon moody to be moved. TYBALT You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, an
you will give me occasion.
BENVOLIO And what to?
MERCUTIO Could you not take some occasion
MERCUTIO Nay, an there were two such, we should without giving?
have none shortly, for one would kill the other. Thou!
why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair TYBALT Mercutio, thou consort’st with Romeo,—
more, or a hair less, in his beard, than thou hast: thou
MERCUTIO Consort! what, dost thou make us
wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no
minstrels? an thou make minstrels of us, look to hear
other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes: what eye
nothing but discords: here’s my fiddlestick; here’s that
but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head
shall make you dance. ’Zounds, consort!
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 BENVOLIO We talk here in the public haunt of men:
quarrelling: thou hast quarrelled with a man for Either withdraw unto some private place,
coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy And reason coldly of your grievances,
dog that hath lain asleep in the sun: didst thou not fall Or else depart; here all eyes gaze on us.

MERCUTIO Men’s eyes were made to look, ROMEO Draw, Benvolio; beat down their weapons.
and let them gaze; Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage!
I will not budge for no man’s pleasure, I. Tybalt, Mercutio, the prince expressly hath
Forbidden bandying in Verona streets:
[Enter ROMEO] Hold, Tybalt! good Mercutio!
TYBALTWell, peace be with you, sir: here comes [TYBALT under ROMEO’s arm stabs
my man. MERCUTIO, and flies with his followers]
MERCUTIO But I’ll be hanged, sir, if he wear your livery: MERCUTIO I am hurt.
Marry, go before to field, he’ll be your follower; A plague o’ both your houses! I am sped.
Your worship in that sense may call him “man.” Is he gone, and hath nothing?
TYBALT Romeo, the hate I bear thee can afford BENVOLIO What, art thou hurt?
No better term than this,—thou art a villain.
MERCUTIO Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch;
ROMEO Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee marry, ’tis enough.
Doth much excuse the appertaining rage Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon.
To such a greeting: villain am I none;
Therefore farewell; I see thou know’st me not. [Exit Page]
TYBALT Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries ROMEO Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
That thou hast done me; therefore turn and draw.
MERCUTIO No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide
ROMEO I do protest, I never injured thee, as a church-door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve: ask for
But love thee better than thou canst devise, me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I
Till thou shalt know the reason of my love: am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o’
And so, good Capulet,—which name I tender both your houses! ’Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a
As dearly as my own,—be satisfied. cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a
MERCUTIO O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!
rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of
Alla stoccata carries it away. arithmetic! Why the devil came you between us? I
was hurt under your arm.
[Draws] ROMEO I thought all for the best.
Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk? MERCUTIO Help me into some house, Benvolio,
TYBALT What wouldst thou have with me? Or I shall faint. A plague o’ both your houses!
They have made worms’ meat of me: I have it,
MERCUTIO Good king of cats, nothing but one of your And soundly too: your houses!
nine
lives; that I mean to make bold withal, and as you [Exeunt MERCUTIO and BENVOLIO]
shall use me hereafter, drybeat the rest of the
eight. Will you pluck your sword out of his pitcher ROMEO This gentleman, the prince’s near ally,
by the ears? make haste, lest mine be about your My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt
ears ere it be out. In my behalf; my reputation stain’d
With Tybalt’s slander,—Tybalt, that an hour
TYBALT I am for you. Hath been my kinsman! O sweet Juliet,
Thy beauty hath made me effeminate
[Drawing] And in my temper soften’d valour’s steel!
ROMEO Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up. [Re-enter BENVOLIO]
MERCUTIO Come, sir, your passado. BENVOLIO O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio’s dead!
That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds,
[They fight] Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.

ROMEO This day’s black fate on more days LADY CAPULET Tybalt, my cousin!
doth depend; O my brother’s child!
This but begins the woe, others must end. O prince! O cousin! husband! O, the blood is spilt
O my dear kinsman! Prince, as thou art true,
BENVOLIO Here comes the furious Tybalt back again. For blood of ours, shed blood of Montague.
ROMEO Alive, in triumph! and Mercutio slain! O cousin, cousin!
Away to heaven, respective lenity, PRINCE Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?
And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now!
BENVOLIO Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo’s
[Re-enter TYBALT] hand did slay;
Romeo that spoke him fair, bade him bethink
Now, Tybalt, take the villain back again, How nice the quarrel was, and urged withal
That late thou gavest me; for Mercutio’s soul Your high displeasure: all this uttered
Is but a little way above our heads, With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow’d,
Staying for thine to keep him company: Could not take truce with the unruly spleen
Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him. Of Tybalt deaf to peace, but that he tilts
TYBALT Thou, wretched boy, that didst consort With piercing steel at bold Mercutio’s breast,
him here, Who all as hot, turns deadly point to point,
Shalt with him hence. And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats
Cold death aside, and with the other sends
ROMEO This shall determine that. It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity,
Retorts it: Romeo he cries aloud,
[They fight; TYBALT falls] “Hold, friends! friends, part!” and, swifter than
his tongue,
BENVOLIO Romeo, away, be gone! His agile arm beats down their fatal points,
The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain. And ’twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm
Stand not amazed: the prince will doom thee death, An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life
If thou art taken: hence, be gone, away! Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled;
ROMEO O, I am fortune’s fool! But by and by comes back to Romeo,
Who had but newly entertain’d revenge,
BENVOLIO Why dost thou stay? And to ’t they go like lightning, for, ere I
Could draw to part them, was stout Tybalt slain.
[Exit ROMEO] And, as he fell, did Romeo turn and fly.
This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.
[Enter Citizens, &c.]
LADY CAPULET He is a kinsman to the Montague;
FIRST CITIZEN Which way ran he that kill’d Mercutio? Affection makes him false; he speaks not true:
Tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he? Some twenty of them fought in this black strife,
And all those twenty could but kill one life.
BENVOLIO There lies that Tybalt.
I beg for justice, which thou, prince, must give;
FIRST CITIZEN Up, sir, go with me; Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.
I charge thee in the princes name, obey.
PRINCERomeo slew him, he slew Mercutio;
[Enter Prince, attended; MONTAGUE, Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?
CAPULET, their Wives, and others] MONTAGUE Not Romeo, prince, he was
Mercutio’s friend;
PRINCE Where are the vile beginners of this fray?
His fault concludes but what the law should end,
BENVOLIO O noble prince, I can discover all The life of Tybalt.
The unlucky manage of this fatal brawl:
PRINCE And for that offence
There lies the man, slain by young Romeo,
Immediately we do exile him hence:
That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.
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 NURSE Ay, ay, the cords.
That you shall all repent the loss of mine:
I will be deaf to pleading and excuses; [Throws them down]
Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses:
Therefore use none: let Romeo hence in haste, JULIET Ay me! what news? why dost thou wring
Else, when he’s found, that hour is his last. thy hands?
Bear hence this body and attend our will: NURSE Ah, well-a-day! he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead!
Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill. We are undone, lady, we are undone!
Alack the day! he’s gone, he’s kill’d, he’s dead!
[Exeunt]
JULIET Can heaven be so envious?
SCENE II
CAPULET’s orchard. NURSERomeo can,
Though heaven cannot: O Romeo, Romeo!
[Enter JULIET] Who ever would have thought it? Romeo!
JULIET Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, JULIET What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus?
Towards Phoebus’ lodging: such a wagoner This torture should be roar’d in dismal hell.
As Phaethon would whip you to the west, Hath Romeo slain himself? say thou but “I,”
And bring in cloudy night immediately. And that bare vowel “I’ shall poison more
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice:
That runaway’s eyes may wink and Romeo I am not I, if there be such an I;
Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen. Or those eyes shut, that make thee answer “I.”
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites If he be slain, say “I”; or if not, no:
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind, Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, NURSE I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes,—
And learn me how to lose a winning match, God save the mark!—here on his manly breast:
Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods: A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse;
Hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks, Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub’d in blood,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold, All in gore-blood; I swounded at the sight.
Think true love acted simple modesty. JULIET O, break, my heart! poor bankrupt,
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night; break at once!
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night To prison, eyes, ne’er look on liberty!
Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back. Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here;
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night, And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars, NURSE O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had!
And he will make the face of heaven so fine O courteous Tybalt! honest gentleman!
That all the world will be in love with night That ever I should live to see thee dead!
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love, JULIETWhat storm is this that blows so contrary?
But not possess’d it, and, though I am sold, Is Romeo slaughter’d, and is Tybalt dead?
Not yet enjoy’d: so tedious is this day My dear-loved cousin, and my dearer lord?
As is the night before some festival Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom!
To an impatient child that hath new robes For who is living, if those two are gone?
And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse, NURSETybalt is gone, and Romeo banished;
And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks Romeo that kill’d him, he is banished.
But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence.
JULIET O God! did Romeo’s hand shed Tybalt’s blood?
[Enter Nurse, with cords]
NURSE It did, it did; alas the day, it did!
Now, nurse, what news? What hast thou there?
The cords JULIETO serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
That Romeo bid thee fetch? Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?

Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! “Romeo is banished,” to speak that word,

Dove-feather’d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb! Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
Despised substance of divinest show! All slain, all dead. “Romeo is banished!”
Just opposite to what thou justly seem’st, There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
A damned saint, an honourable villain! In that word’s death; no words can that woe sound.
O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell, Where is my father, and my mother, nurse?
When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
In moral paradise of such sweet flesh? NURSE Weeping and wailing over Tybalt’s corse:
Was ever book containing such vile matter Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.
So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell JULIET Wash they his wounds with tears:
In such a gorgeous palace! mine shall be spent,
NURSE There’s no trust, When theirs are dry, for Romeo’s banishment.
No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, Take up those cords: poor ropes, you are beguiled,
All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. Both you and I; for Romeo is exiled:
Ah, where’s my man? give me some aqua vitae: He made you for a highway to my bed;
These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old. But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.
Shame come to Romeo! Come, cords, come, nurse; I’ll to my wedding-bed;
And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!
JULIET Blister’d be thy tongue
For such a wish! he was not born to shame: NURSE Hie to your chamber: I’ll find Romeo
Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit; To comfort you: I wot well where he is.
For ’tis a throne where honour may be crown’d Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night:
Sole monarch of the universal earth. I’ll to him; he is hid at Laurence’cell.
O, what a beast was I to chide at him! JULIETO, find him! give this ring to my true knight,
NURSE Will you speak well of him that kill’d And bid him come to take his last farewell.
your cousin?
[Exeunt]
JULIET Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, SCENE III
When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it? FRIAR LAURENCE’s cell.
But, wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?
That villain cousin would have kill’d my husband: [Enter FRIAR LAURENCE]
Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring;
FRIAR LAURENCE Romeo, come forth; come forth,
Your tributary drops belong to woe,
thou fearful man:
Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.
Affliction is enamour’d of thy parts,
My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain;
And thou art wedded to calamity.
And Tybalt’s dead, that would have slain my husband:
All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then? [Enter ROMEO]
Some word there was, worser than Tybalt’s death,
That murder’d me: I would forget it fain; ROMEO Father, what news? what is the prince’s doom?
But, O, it presses to my memory, What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand,
Like damned guilty deeds to sinners’ minds: That I yet know not?
“Tybalt is dead, and Romeo—banished”;
That “banished,” that one word “banished,” FRIAR LAURENCE Too familiar
Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt’s death Is my dear son with such sour company:
Was woe enough, if it had ended there: I bring thee tidings of the prince’s doom.
Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship
ROMEO What less than dooms-day is the
And needly will be rank’d with other griefs,
prince’s doom?
Why follow’d not, when she said “Tybalt’s dead,”
Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both, FRIAR LAURENCE A gentler judgement vanish’d
Which modern lamentations might have moved? from his lips,
But with a rear-ward following Tybalt’s death, Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.

ROMEO Ha, banishment! be merciful, say “death”; ROMEO Yet “banished”? Hang up philosophy!
For exile hath more terror in his look, Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Much more than death: do not say “banishment.” Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom,
It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more.
FRIAR LAURENCE Hence from Verona art
thou banished: FRIAR LAURENCE O, then I see that madmen
Be patient, for the world is broad and wide. have no ears.
ROMEO There is no world without Verona walls, ROMEO How should they, when that wise men
But purgatory, torture, hell itself. have no eyes?
Hence-banished is banish’d from the world,
And world’s exile is death: then banished, FRIAR LAURENCE Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.
Is death mis-term’d: calling death banishment, ROMEO Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel:
Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden axe, Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,
And smilest upon the stroke that murders me. An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,
FRIAR LAURENCE O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness! Doting like me and like me banished,
Thy fault our law calls death; but the kind prince, Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou
Taking thy part, hath rush’d aside the law, tear thy hair,
And turn’d that black word death to banishment: And fall upon the ground, as I do now,
This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not. Taking the measure of an unmade grave.
ROMEO ’Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven is here, [Knocking within]
Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog
And little mouse, every unworthy thing, FRIAR LAURENCE Arise; one knocks; good Romeo,
Live here in heaven and may look on her; hide thyself.
But Romeo may not: more validity, ROMEO Not I; unless the breath of heartsick groans,
More honourable state, more courtship lives Mist-like, infold me from the search of eyes.
In carrion-flies than Romeo: they my seize
On the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand [Knocking]
And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
Who even in pure and vestal modesty, FRIAR LAURENCE Hark, how they knock! Who’s there?
Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin; Romeo, arise;
But Romeo may not; he is banished: Thou wilt be taken. Stay awhile! Stand up;
Flies may do this, but I from this must fly:
They are free men, but I am banished. [Knocking]
And say’st thou yet that exile is not death?
Run to my study. By and by! God’s will,
Hadst thou no poison mix’d, no sharp-ground knife,
What simpleness is this! I come, I come!
No sudden mean of death, though ne’er so mean,
But “banished” to kill me?—“banished”? [Knocking]
O friar, the damned use that word in hell;
Howlings attend it: how hast thou the heart, Who knocks so hard? whence come you? what’s
Being a divine, a ghostly confessor, your will?
A sin-absolver, and my friend profess’d,
To mangle me with that word “banished”? NURSE [Within] Let me come in, and you shall know
my errand; I come from Lady Juliet.
FRIAR LAURENCE Thou fond mad man, hear me but
speak a word. FRIAR LAURENCE Welcome, then.
ROMEO O, thou wilt speak again of banishment. [Enter Nurse]

FRIAR LAURENCE I’ll give thee armour to keep off NURSEO holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar,
that word: Where is my lady’s lord, where’s Romeo?
Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,
To comfort thee, though thou art banished. FRIAR LAURENCE There on the ground, with his own
tears made drunk.

NURSE O, he is even in my mistress’ case, Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
Just in her case! O woful sympathy! Misshapen in the conduct of them both,
Piteous predicament! Even so lies she, Like powder in a skitless soldier’s flask,
Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering. Is set afire by thine own ignorance,
Stand up, stand up; stand, and you be a man: And thou dismember’d with thine own defence.
For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand; What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive,
Why should you fall into so deep an O? For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead;
There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee,
ROMEO Nurse! But thou slew’st Tybalt; there are thou happy too:
NURSE Ah sir! ah sir! Well, death’s the end of all. The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend
And turns it to exile; there art thou happy:
ROMEO Spakest thou of Juliet? how is it with her? A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back;
Doth she not think me an old murderer, Happiness courts thee in her best array;
Now I have stain’d the childhood of our joy But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
With blood removed but little from her own? Thou pout’st upon thy fortune and thy love:
Where is she? and how doth she? and what says Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
My conceal’d lady to our cancell’d love? Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed,
Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her:
NURSE O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps; But look thou stay not till the watch be set,
And now falls on her bed; and then starts up, For then thou canst not pass to Mantua;
And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries, Where thou shalt live, till we can find a time
And then down falls again. To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,
Beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back
ROMEO As if that name,
With twenty hundred thousand times more joy
Shot from the deadly level of a gun,
Than thou went’st forth in lamentation.
Did murder her; as that name’s cursed hand
Go before, nurse: commend me to thy lady;
Murder’d her kinsman. O, tell me, friar, tell me,
And bid her hasten all the house to bed,
In what vile part of this anatomy
Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto:
Doth my name lodge? tell me, that I may sack
Romeo is coming.
The hateful mansion.
NURSE O Lord, I could have stay’d here all the night
[Drawing his sword] To hear good counsel: O, what learning is!
FRIAR LAURENCE Hold thy desperate hand: My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come.
Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art: ROMEO Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.
Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote
The unreasonable fury of a beast: NURSE Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir:
Unseemly woman in a seeming man! Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.
Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!
Thou hast amazed me: by my holy order, [Exit]
I thought thy disposition better temper’d.
Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself? ROMEO How well my comfort is revived by this!
And stay thy lady too that lives in thee, FRIAR LAURENCE Go hence; good night; and here stands
By doing damned hate upon thyself? all your state:
Why rail’st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth? Either be gone before the watch be set,
Since birth, and heaven, and earth, all three do meet Or by the break of day disguised from hence:
In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose. Sojourn in Mantua; I’ll find out your man,
Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit; And he shall signify from time to time
Which, like a usurer, abound’st in all, Every good hap to you that chances here:
And usest none in that true use indeed Give me thy hand; ’tis late: farewell; good night.
Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit:
Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, ROMEO But that a joy past joy calls out on me,
Digressing from the valour of a man; It were a grief, so brief to part with thee: Farewell.
Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,
Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish; [Exeunt]

SCENE IV SCENE V
A room in CAPULET’s house. CAPULET’s orchard.
[Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, and PARIS] [Enter ROMEO and JULIET above, at
the window]
CAPULET Things have fall’n out, sir, so unluckily,
That we have had no time to move our daughter: JULIET Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
Look you, she loved her kinsman Tybalt dearly, It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
And so did I:—Well, we were born to die. That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
’Tis very late, she’ll not come down to-night: Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
I promise you, but for your company, Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
I would have been a-bed an hour ago.
ROMEO It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
These times of woe afford no time to woo.
PARIS No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Madam, good night: commend me to your daughter. Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
LADY CAPULET I will, and know her mind Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
early to-morrow; I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
To-night she is mew’d up to her heaviness.
JULIET Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I:
CAPULET Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
Of my child’s love: I think she will be ruled To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
In all respects by me; nay, more, I doubt it not. And light thee on thy way to Mantua:
Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed; Therefore stay yet; thou need’st not to be gone.
Acquaint her here of my son Paris’ love;
And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday next— ROMEO Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death;
But, soft! what day is this? I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye,
PARIS Monday, my lord, ’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow;
CAPULET Monday! ha, ha! Well, Wednesday Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
is too soon, The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
O’ Thursday let it be: o’ Thursday, tell her, I have more care to stay than will to go:
She shall be married to this noble earl. Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
Will you be ready? do you like this haste? How is’t, my soul? let’s talk; it is not day.
We’ll keep no great ado,—a friend or two; JULIET It is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away!
For, hark you, Tybalt being slain so late, It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
It may be thought we held him carelessly, Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Being our kinsman, if we revel much: Some say the lark makes sweet division;
Therefore we’ll have some half a dozen friends, This doth not so, for she divideth us:
And there an end. But what say you to Thursday? Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes,
PARIS My lord, I would that Thursday O, now I would they had changed voices too!
were to-morrow. Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day,
CAPULET Well get you gone: o’ Thursday be it, then. O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.
Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed,
Prepare her, wife, against this wedding-day. ROMEO More light and light; more dark and
Farewell, my lord. Light to my chamber, ho! dark our woes!
Afore me! it is so very very late,
That we may call it early by and by. [Enter Nurse, to the chamber]
Good night. NURSE Madam!
[Exeunt] JULIET Nurse?

NURSE Your lady mother is coming to your chamber: An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live;
The day is broke; be wary, look about. Therefore, have done: some grief shows much of love;
But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
[Exit]
JULIET Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
JULIET Then, window, let day in, and let life out.
LADY CAPULET So shall you feel the loss,
ROMEO Farewell, farewell! one kiss, and I’ll descend. but not the friend
Which you weep for.
[He goeth down]
Feeling so the loss,
JULIET
JULIET Art thou gone so? love, lord, ay, Cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
husband, friend!
I must hear from thee every day in the hour, LADY CAPULET Well, girl, thou weep’st not so much for
For in a minute there are many days: his death,
O, by this count I shall be much in years As that the villain lives which slaughter’d him.
Ere I again behold my Romeo!
JULIET What villain, madam?
ROMEO Farewell!
I will omit no opportunity LADY CAPULET That same villain, Romeo.
That may convey my greetings, love, to thee. JULIET [Aside] Villain and he be many miles
JULIET O think’st thou we shall ever meet again? asunder.—

God pardon him! I do, with all my heart;
ROMEO I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.
For sweet discourses in our time to come.
LADY CAPULET That is, because the traitor murderer
JULIET O God, I have an ill-divining soul! lives.
Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,
As one dead in the bottom of a tomb: Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands:
JULIET
Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale. Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death!
ROMEO And trust me, love, in my eye so do you: LADY CAPULET We will have vengeance for it,
Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu! fear thou not:
Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua,
[Exit] Where that same banish’d runagate doth live,
Shall give him such an unaccustom’d dram,
JULIET O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle: That he shall soon keep Tybalt company:
If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him. And then, I hope, thou wilt be satisfied.
That is renown’d for faith? Be fickle, fortune;
For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long, JULIET Indeed, I never shall be satisfied
But send him back. With Romeo, till I behold him—dead—
Is my poor heart for a kinsman vex’d.
LADY CAPULET [Within] Ho, daughter! are you up? Madam, if you could find out but a man
To bear a poison, I would temper it;
JULIET Who is’t that calls? is it my lady mother? That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof,
Is she not down so late, or up so early? Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors
What unaccustom’d cause procures her hither? To hear him named, and cannot come to him.
To wreak the love I bore my cousin
[Enter LADY CAPULET] Upon his body that slaughter’d him!
LADY CAPULET Why, how now, Juliet! LADY CAPULET Find thou the means, and I’ll find
JULIET Madam, I am not well. such a man.
But now I’ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.
LADY CAPULET Evermore weeping for your
cousin’s death? JULIETAnd joy comes well in such a needy time:
What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears? What are they, I beseech your ladyship?

LADY CAPULET Well, well, thou hast a Proud can I never be of what I hate;
careful father, child; But thankful even for hate, that is meant love.
One who, to put thee from thy heaviness,
Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy, CAPULET How now, how now, chop-logic!
That thou expect’st not nor I look’d not for. What is this?
“Proud,” and “I thank you,” and “I thank you not”;
JULIET Madam, in happy time, what day is that? And yet “not proud,” mistress minion, you,
Thank me no thankings, nor, proud me no prouds,
LADY CAPULET Marry, my child, early next But fettle your fine joints ’gainst Thursday next,
Thursday morn, To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church,
The gallant, young and noble gentleman, Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
The County Paris, at Saint Peter’s Church, Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage!
Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride. You tallow-face!
JULIET Now, by Saint Peter’s Church and Peter too, LADY CAPULET Fie, fie! what, are you mad?
He shall not make me there a joyful bride.
I wonder at this haste; that I must wed JULIETGood father, I beseech you on my knees,
Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo. Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam,
I will not marry yet; and, when I do, I swear, CAPULET Hang thee, young baggage!
It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, disobedient wretch!
Rather than Paris. These are news indeed! I tell thee what: get thee to church o’ Thursday,
Or never after look me in the face:
LADY CAPULET Here comes your father; Speak not, reply not, do not answer me;
tell him so yourself, My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest
And see how he will take it at your hands. That God had lent us but this only child;
But now I see this one is one too much,
[Enter CAPULET and Nurse] And that we have a curse in having her:
Out on her, hilding!
CAPULET When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;
But for the sunset of my brother’s son NURSE God in heaven bless her!
It rains downright. You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.
How now! a conduit, girl? what, still in tears?
Evermore showering? In one little body CAPULET And why, my lady wisdom?
Thou counterfeit’st a bark, a sea, a wind; hold your tongue,
For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea, Good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go.
Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,
NURSE I speak no treason.
Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs;
Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them, CAPULET O, God ye god-den.
Without a sudden calm, will overset
Thy tempest-tossed body. How now, wife! NURSE May not one speak?
Have you deliver’d to her our decree?
CAPULET Peace, you mumbling fool!
LADY CAPULET Ay, sir; but she will none, Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl;
she gives you thanks. For here we need it not.
I would the fool were married to her grave!
LADY CAPULET You are too hot.
CAPULET Soft! take me with you, take me
with you, wife. CAPULET God’s bread! it makes me mad:
How! will she none? doth she not give us thanks? Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play,
Is she not proud? doth she not count her blest, Alone, in company, still my care hath been
Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought To have her match’d: and having now provided
So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom? A gentleman of noble parentage,
Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train’d,
JULIET Not proud, you have; but thankful, Stuff’d, as they say, with honourable parts,
that you have: Proportion’d as one’s thought would wish a man;

Romeo and Juliet: ACT IV
And then to have a wretched puling fool, That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you;
A whining mammet, in her fortune’s tender, Or, if he do, it needs must be by stealth.
To answer “I’ll not wed; I cannot love, Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,
I am too young; I pray you, pardon me.” I think it best you married with the county.
But, as you will not wed, I’ll pardon you: O, he’s a lovely gentleman!
Graze where you will you shall not house with me: Romeo’s a dishclout to him: an eagle, madam,
Look to’t, think on’t, I do not use to jest. Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye
Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise: As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend; I think you are happy in this second match,
And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in For it excels your first: or if it did not,
the streets, Your first is dead; or ’Twere as good he were,
For, by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee, As living here and you no use of him.
Nor what is mine shall never do thee good:
Trust to’t, bethink you; I’ll not be forsworn. JULIET Speakest thou from thy heart?
NURSE And from my soul too;
[Exit] Or else beshrew them both.
JULIET Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
JULIET Amen!
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O, sweet my mother, cast me not away! NURSE What?
Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed JULIET Well, thou hast comforted me
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies. marvellous much.
Go in: and tell my lady I am gone,
LADY CAPULET Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word: Having displeased my father, to Laurence’s cell,
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee. To make confession and to be absolved.
[Exit] NURSE Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.
JULIET O God!—O nurse, how shall this be prevented? [Exit]
My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven;
How shall that faith return again to earth, JULIET Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!
Unless that husband send it me from heaven Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,
By leaving earth? comfort me, counsel me. Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue
Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems Which she hath praised him with above compare
Upon so soft a subject as myself! So many thousand times? Go, counsellor;
What say’st thou? hast thou not a word of joy? Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.
Some comfort, nurse. I’ll to the friar, to know his remedy:
If all else fail, myself have power to die.
NURSEFaith, here it is.
Romeo is banish’d; and all the world to nothing, [Exit]
ACT IV
SCENE I PARIS My father Capulet will have it so;

FRIAR LAURENCE’s cell. And I am nothing slow to slack his haste.
[Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and PARIS] FRIAR LAURENCE You say you do not know
the lady’s mind:
FRIAR LAURENCE On Thursday, sir? the time is Uneven is the course, I like it not.
very short.

PARIS Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt’s death, PARIS God shield I should disturb devotion!
And therefore have I little talk’d of love; Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye:
For Venus smiles not in a house of tears. Till then, adieu; and keep this holy kiss.
Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous
That she doth give her sorrow so much sway, [Exit]
And in his wisdom hastes our marriage,
To stop the inundation of her tears; O shut the door! and when thou hast done so,
JULIET
Which, too much minded by herself alone, Come weep with me; past hope, past cure, past help!
May be put from her by society: FRIAR LAURENCE Ah, Juliet, I already know thy grief;
Now do you know the reason of this haste. It strains me past the compass of my wits:
FRIAR LAURENCE [Aside] I would I knew not why it I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it,
should be slow’d. On Thursday next be married to this county.
Look, sir, here comes the lady towards my cell. JULIET Tell me not, friar, that thou hear’st of this,
Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it:
[Enter JULIET] If, in thy wisdom, thou canst give no help,
PARIS Happily met, my lady and my wife! Do thou but call my resolution wise,
And with this knife I’ll help it presently.
JULIET That may be, sir, when I may be a wife. God join’d my heart and Romeo’s, thou our hands;
And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal’d,
PARIS That may be must be, love, on Thursday next.
Shall be the label to another deed,
JULIET What must be shall be. Or my true heart with treacherous revolt
Turn to another, this shall slay them both:
FRIAR LAURENCE That’s a certain text. Therefore, out of thy long-experienced time,
Give me some present counsel, or, behold,
PARIS Come you to make confession to this father?
’Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
JULIET To answer that, I should confess to you. Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that
Which the commission of thy years and art
PARIS Do not deny to him that you love me. Could to no issue of true honour bring.
JULIET I will confess to you that I love him. Be not so long to speak; I long to die,
If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy.
PARIS So will ye, I am sure, that you love me.
FRIAR LAURENCE Hold, daughter: I do spy a
JULIET If I do so, it will be of more price, kind of hope,
Being spoke behind your back, than to your face. Which craves as desperate an execution.
As that is desperate which we would prevent.
PARIS Poor soul, thy face is much abused with tears. If, rather than to marry County Paris,
JULIET The tears have got small victory by that; Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,
For it was bad enough before their spite. Then is it likely thou wilt undertake
A thing like death to chide away this shame,
PARIS Thou wrong’st it, more than tears, with That copest with death himself to scape from it:
that report. And, if thou darest, I’ll give thee remedy.
That is no slander, sir, which is a truth;
JULIET JULIET O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
And what I spake, I spake it to my face. From off the battlements of yonder tower;
Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk
PARIS Thy face is mine, and thou hast slander’d it. Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears;
JULIET It may be so, for it is not mine own. Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,
Are you at leisure, holy father, now; O’er-cover’d quite with dead men’s rattling bones,
Or shall I come to you at evening mass? With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;
Or bid me go into a new-made grave
FRIAR LAURENCE My leisure serves me, pensive And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;
daughter, now. Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble;
My lord, we must entreat the time alone.

And I will do it without fear or doubt, CAPULET So many guests invite as here are writ.
To live an unstain’d wife to my sweet love.
[Exit First Servant]
FRIAR LAURENCE Hold, then; go home, be merry,
give consent Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.
To marry Paris: Wednesday is to-morrow:
To-morrow night look that thou lie alone; SECOND SERVANT You shall have none ill, sir; for I’ll try
Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber: if they can lick their fingers.
Take thou this vial, being then in bed, CAPULET How canst thou try them so?
And this distilled liquor drink thou off;
When presently through all thy veins shall run SECOND SERVANT Marry, sir, ’tis an ill cook that cannot
A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse lick hisown fingers: therefore he that cannot lick his
Shall keep his native progress, but surcease: fingers goes not with me.
No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;
The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade CAPULET Go, be gone.
To paly ashes, thy eyes’ windows fall,
Like death, when he shuts up the day of life; [Exit Second Servant]
Each part, deprived of supple government, We shall be much unfurnished for this time.
Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death: What, is my daughter gone to Friar Laurence?
And in this borrow’d likeness of shrunk death
Thou shalt continue two and forty hours, NURSE Ay, forsooth.
And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.
Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes CAPULET Well, he may chance to do some good on her:
To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead: A peevish self-will’d harlotry it is.
Then, as the manner of our country is, NURSE See where she comes from shrift with merry
In thy best robes uncover’d on the bier look.
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie. [Enter JULIET]
In the mean time, against thou shalt awake,
Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift, CAPULET How now, my headstrong! where have you
And hither shall he come: and he and I been gadding?
Will watch thy waking, and that very night
Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua. JULIET Where I have learn’d me to repent the sin
And this shall free thee from this present shame; Of disobedient opposition
If no inconstant toy, nor womanish fear, To you and your behests, and am enjoin’d
Abate thy valour in the acting it. By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here,
And beg your pardon: pardon, I beseech you!
JULIET Give me, give me! O, tell not me of fear! Henceforward I am ever ruled by you.
FRIAR LAURENCE Hold; get you gone, be strong CAPULET Send for the county; go tell him of this:
and prosperous I’ll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning.
In this resolve: I’ll send a friar with speed
To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord. JULIET I met the youthful lord at Laurence’s cell;
And gave him what becomed love I might,
JULIET Love give me strength! and strength Not step o’er the bounds of modesty.
shall help afford.
Farewell, dear father! CAPULET Why, I am glad on’t; this is well: stand up:
This is as’t should be. Let me see the county;
[Exeunt] Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.
Now, afore God! this reverend holy friar,
SCENE II Our whole city is much bound to him.
Hall in CAPULET’s house. JULIETNurse, will you go with me into my closet,
[Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, Nurse, To help me sort such needful ornaments
As you think fit to furnish me to-morrow?
and two Servingmen]

LADY CAPULET No, not till Thursday; there is My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
time enough. Come, vial.
What if this mixture do not work at all?
CAPULET Go, nurse, go with her: we’ll to church Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?
to-morrow. No, no: this shall forbid it: lie thou there.
[Exeunt JULIET and Nurse] [Laying down her dagger]
LADY CAPULET We shall be short in our provision: What if it be a poison, which the friar
’Tis now near night. Subtly hath minister’d to have me dead,
CAPULET Tush, I will stir about, Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour’d,
And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife: Because he married me before to Romeo?
Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her; I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not,
I’ll not to bed to-night; let me alone; For he hath still been tried a holy man.
I’ll play the housewife for this once. What, ho! How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
They are all forth. Well, I will walk myself I wake before the time that Romeo
To County Paris, to prepare him up Come to redeem me? there’s a fearful point!
Against to-morrow: my heart is wondrous light, Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,
Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim’d. To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
[Exeunt] Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
SCENE III Together with the terror of the place,—
JULIET’s chamber. As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
[Enter JULIET and Nurse] Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
JULIET Ay, those attires are best: but, gentle nurse, Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
I pray thee, leave me to myself to-night, At some hours in the night spirits resort;—
For I have need of many orisons Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
To move the heavens to smile upon my state, So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
Which, well thou know’st, is cross, and full of sin. And shrieks like mandrakes’ torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:—
[Enter LADY CAPULET] O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
LADY CAPULET What, are you busy, ho? need you
And madly play with my forefather’s joints?
my help?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
JULIET No, madam; we have cull’d such necessaries And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone,
As are behoveful for our state to-morrow: As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
So please you, let me now be left alone, O, look! methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
And let the nurse this night sit up with you; Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
For, I am sure, you have your hands full all, Upon a rapier’s point: stay, Tybalt, stay!
In this so sudden business. Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
LADY CAPULET Good night: [She falls upon her bed, within the curtains]
Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.
SCENE IV
[Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse] Hall in CAPULET’s house.
JULIET Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. [Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse]
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life: LADY CAPULET Hold, take these keys, and fetch more
I’ll call them back again to comfort me: spices, nurse.
Nurse! What should she do here?
NURSE They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.

[Enter CAPULET] Go waken Juliet, go and trim her up;

I’ll go and chat with Paris: hie, make haste,
CAPULET Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock Make haste; the bridegroom he is come already:
hath crow’d, Make haste, I say.
The curfew-bell hath rung, ’tis three o’clock:
Look to the baked meats, good Angelica: [Exeunt]
Spare not for the cost.
SCENE V
NURSE Go, you cot-quean, go, JULIET’s chamber.
Get you to bed; faith, You’ll be sick to-morrow
For this night’s watching. [Enter Nurse]
CAPULET No, not a whit: what! I have watch’d ere now NURSE Mistress! what, mistress! Juliet! fast,
All night for lesser cause, and ne’er been sick. I warrant her, she:
LADY CAPULET Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt Why, lamb! why, lady! fie, you slug-a-bed!
in your time; Why, love, I say! madam! sweet-heart! why, bride!
But I will watch you from such watching now. What, not a word? you take your pennyworths now;
Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant,
[Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse] The County Paris hath set up his rest,
That you shall rest but little. God forgive me,
CAPULET A jealous hood, a jealous hood! Marry, and amen, how sound is she asleep!
I must needs wake her. Madam, madam, madam!
[Enter three or four Servingmen, with spits, Ay, let the county take you in your bed;
logs, and baskets] He’ll fright you up, i’ faith. Will it not be?
Now, fellow, [Undraws the curtains]
What’s there?
What, dress’d! and in your clothes! and down again!
FIRST SERVANT Things for the cook, sir; but I know I must needs wake you; Lady! lady! lady!
not what. Alas, alas! Help, help! my lady’s dead!
O, well-a-day, that ever I was born!
CAPULET Make haste, make haste.
Some aqua vitae, ho! My lord! my lady!
[Exit First Servant] [Enter LADY CAPULET]
Sirrah, fetch drier logs:
LADY CAPULET What noise is here?
Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.
NURSE O lamentable day!
SECOND SERVANT I have a head, sir, that will
find out logs, LADY CAPULET What is the matter?
And never trouble Peter for the matter.
NURSE Look, look! O heavy day!
[Exit]
LADY CAPULET O me, O me! My child, my only life,
CAPULET Mass, and well said; a merry whoreson, ha! Revive, look up, or I will die with thee!
Thou shalt be logger-head. Good faith, ’tis day: Help, help! Call help.
The county will be here with music straight,
For so he said he would: I hear him near. [Enter CAPULET]
[Music within] CAPULET For shame, bring Juliet forth;

her lord is come.
Nurse! Wife! What, ho! What, nurse, I say!
NURSE She’s dead, deceased, she’s dead; alack the day!
[Re-enter Nurse] 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: FRIAR LAURENCE Peace, ho, for shame! confusion’s
Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff; cure lives not
Life and these lips have long been separated: In these confusions. Heaven and yourself
Death lies on her like an untimely frost Had part in this fair maid; now heaven hath all,
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. And all the better is it for the maid:
Your part in her you could not keep from death,
NURSE O lamentable day! But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.
LADY CAPULET O woful time! The most you sought was her promotion;
For ’twas your heaven she should be advanced:
CAPULET Death, that hath ta’en her hence And weep ye now, seeing she is advanced
to make me wail, Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak. O, in this love, you love your child so ill,
That you run mad, seeing that she is well:
[Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and PARIS, She’s not well married that lives married long;
with Musicians] But she’s best married that dies married young.
Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary
FRIAR LAURENCE Come, is the bride ready to go On this fair corse; and, as the custom is,
to church? In all her best array bear her to church:
For though fond nature bids us an lament,
CAPULET Ready to go, but never to return.
Yet nature’s tears are reason’s merriment.
O son! the night before thy wedding-day
Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies, CAPULET All things that we ordained festival,
Flower as she was, deflowered by him. Turn from their office to black funeral;
Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir; Our instruments to melancholy bells,
My daughter he hath wedded: I will die, Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,
And leave him all; life, living, all is Death’s. Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
PARISHave I thought long to see this morning’s face,
And all things change them to the contrary.
And doth it give me such a sight as this?
FRIAR LAURENCE Sir, go you in; and, madam,
LADY CAPULET Accursed, unhappy, wretched,
go with him;
hateful day!
And go, Sir Paris; every one prepare
Most miserable hour that e’er time saw
To follow this fair corse unto her grave:
In lasting labour of his pilgrimage!
The heavens do lour upon you for some ill;
But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,
Move them no more by crossing their high will.
But one thing to rejoice and solace in,
And cruel death hath catch’d it from my sight! [Exeunt CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, PARIS,
NURSE O woe! O woful, woful, woful day! and FRIAR LAURENCE]
Most lamentable day, most woful day,
FIRST MUSICIAN Faith, we may put up our pipes, and
That ever, ever, I did yet behold!
be gone.
O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!
Never was seen so black a day as this: NURSE Honest goodfellows, ah, put up, put up;
O woful day, O woful day! For, well you know, this is a pitiful case.
PARIS Beguiled, divorced, wronged, spited, slain! [Exit]
Most detestable death, by thee beguil’d,
By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown! FIRST MUSICIAN Ay, by my troth, the case may be
O love! O life! not life, but love in death! amended.
CAPULET Despised, distressed, hated, martyr’d, kill’d! [Enter PETER]
Uncomfortable time, why camest thou now
To murder, murder our solemnity? PETER Musicians, O, musicians, “Heart’s ease, Heart’s
O child! O child! my soul, and not my child! ease”: O, an you will have me live, play “Heart’s ease.”
Dead art thou! Alack! my child is dead;
And with my child my joys are buried. FIRST MUSICIAN Why “Heart’s ease”?

Romeo and Juliet: ACT V
PETER O, musicians, because my heart itself plays “My Answer me like men:
heart is full of woe”: O, play me some merry dump, “When griping grief the heart doth wound,
to comfort me. And doleful dumps the mind oppress,
Then music with her silver sound”
FIRST MUSICIAN Not a dump we; ’tis no time to — why “silver sound”? why “music with her silver
play now. sound”? What say you, Simon Catling?
PETER You will not, then? MUSICIAN Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound.
FIRST MUSICIAN No. PETER Pretty! What say you, Hugh Rebeck?
PETER I will then give it you soundly. SECOND MUSICIAN I say “silver sound,” because
FIRST MUSICIAN What will you give us? musicians sound for silver.
PETER No money, on my faith, but the gleek; PETER Pretty too! What say you, James Soundpost?
I will give you the minstrel. THIRD MUSICIAN Faith, I know not what to say.
FIRST MUSICIAN Then I will give you the PETER O, I cry you mercy; you are the singer: I will say
serving-creature. for you. It is “music with her silver sound,”
PETER Then will I lay the serving-creature’s dagger on because musicians have no gold for sounding:
your pate. I will carry no crotchets: I’ll re you, I’ll fa “Then music with her silver sound
you; do you note me? With speedy help doth lend redress.”
FIRST MUSICIAN An you re us and fa us, you note us. [Exit]

SECOND MUSICIAN Pray you, put up your dagger, and FIRST MUSICIAN What a pestilent knave is this same!
put out your wit.
SECOND MUSICIAN Hang him, Jack! Come, we’ll in here;
PETER Then have at you with my wit! I will dry-beat tarry for the mourners, and stay dinner.
you with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger.
[Exeunt]
ACT V
SCENE I [Enter BALTHASAR, booted]

Mantua. A street.
News from Verona!—How now, Balthasar!
[Enter ROMEO] Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar?
How doth my lady? Is my father well?
ROMEO If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, How fares my Juliet? that I ask again;
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand: For nothing can be ill, if she be well.
My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne;
And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit BALTHASAR Then she is well, and nothing can be ill:
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument,
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead— And her immortal part with angels lives.
Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave I saw her laid low in her kindred’s vault,
to think!— And presently took post to tell it you:
And breathed such life with kisses in my lips, O, pardon me for bringing these ill news,
That I revived, and was an emperor. Since you did leave it for my office, sir.
Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess’d, ROMEO Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!
When but love’s shadows are so rich in joy! 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: ROMEO Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
Your looks are pale and wild, and do import And fear’st to die? famine is in thy cheeks,
Some misadventure. Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back;
ROMEO Tush, thou art deceived: The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law;
Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do. The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Hast thou no letters to me from the friar? Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
BALTHASAR No, my good lord. APOTHECARY My poverty, but not my will, consents.
ROMEO No matter: get thee gone, ROMEO I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.
And hire those horses; I’ll be with thee straight.
APOTHECARY Put this in any liquid thing you will,
[Exit BALTHASAR] And drink it off; and, if you had the strength
Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.
Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.
Let’s see for means: O mischief, thou art swift ROMEO There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls,
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men! Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
I do remember an apothecary,— Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none.
In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows, Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh.
Culling of simples; meagre were his looks, Come, cordial and not poison, go with me
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones: To Juliet’s grave; for there must I use thee.
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuff’d, and other skins [Exeunt]
Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes, SCENE II
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds, FRIAR LAURENCE’s cell.
Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scatter’d, to make up a show. [Enter FRIAR JOHN]
Noting this penury, to myself I said
“An if a man did need a poison now, FRIAR JOHN Holy Franciscan friar! brother, ho!
Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
[Enter FRIAR LAURENCE]
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.”
O, this same thought did but forerun my need; FRIAR LAURENCE This same should be the voice of
And this same needy man must sell it me. Friar John.
As I remember, this should be the house. Welcome from Mantua: what says Romeo?
Being holiday, the beggar’s shop is shut. Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.
What, ho! apothecary!
FRIAR JOHN Going to find a bare-foot brother out
[Enter Apothecary] One of our order, to associate me,
Here in this city visiting the sick,
APOTHECARY Who calls so loud? And finding him, the searchers of the town,
ROMEO Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor: Suspecting that we both were in a house
Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear Seal’d up the doors, and would not let us forth;
As will disperse itself through all the veins So that my speed to Mantua there was stay’d.
That the life-weary taker may fall dead FRIAR LAURENCE Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo?
And that the trunk may be discharged of breath
As violently as hasty powder fired FRIAR JOHN I could not send it,—here it is again,—
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb. Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
So fearful were they of infection.
APOTHECARY Such mortal drugs I have; but
Mantua’s law FRIAR LAURENCE Unhappy fortune! by my
Is death to any he that utters them. brotherhood,

The letter was not nice but full of charge [Retires]

Of dear import, and the neglecting it
May do much danger. Friar John, go hence; [Enter ROMEO and BALTHASAR, with a torch,
Get me an iron crow, and bring it straight mattock, &c.]
Unto my cell.
ROMEO Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.
FRIAR JOHN Brother, I’ll go and bring it thee. Hold, take this letter; early in the morning
See thou deliver it to my lord and father.
[Exit] Give me the light: upon thy life, I charge thee,
Whate’er thou hear’st or seest, stand all aloof,
FRIAR LAURENCE Now must I to the monument alone;
And do not interrupt me in my course.
Within three hours will fair Juliet wake:
Why I descend into this bed of death,
She will beshrew me much that Romeo
Is partly to behold my lady’s face;
Hath had no notice of these accidents;
But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger
But I will write again to Mantua,
A precious ring, a ring that I must use
And keep her at my cell till Romeo come;
In dear employment: therefore hence, be gone:
Poor living corse, closed in a dead man’s tomb!
But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry
[Exit] In what I further shall intend to do,
By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint
SCENE III And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs:
A churchyard; in it a tomb belonging The time and my intents are savage-wild,
More fierce and more inexorable far
to the CAPULETS. Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.
[Enter PARIS, and his Page bearing flowers BALTHASAR I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.
and a torch]
ROMEO So shalt thou show me friendship.
PARIS Give me thy torch, boy: hence, and stand aloof: Take thou that:
Yet put it out, for I would not be seen. Live, and be prosperous: and farewell, good fellow.
Under yond yew-trees lay thee all along,
Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground; BALTHASAR [Aside] For all this same, I’ll hide
So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread, me hereabout:
Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves, His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.
But thou shalt hear it: whistle then to me,
As signal that thou hear’st something approach. [Retires]
Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee, go.
ROMEO Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
PAGE [Aside] I am almost afraid to stand alone Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,
Here in the churchyard; yet I will adventure. Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
And, in despite, I’ll cram thee with more food!
[Retires]
[Opens the tomb]
PARIS Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed
I strew,— PARIS This is that banish’d haughty Montague,
O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones;— That murder’d my love’s cousin, with which grief,
Which with sweet water nightly I will dew, It is supposed, the fair creature died;
Or, wanting that, with tears distill’d by moans: And here is come to do some villanous shame
The obsequies that I for thee will keep To the dead bodies: I will apprehend him.
Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep.
[Comes forward]
[The Page whistles] Stop thy unhallow’d toil, vile Montague!
The boy gives warning something doth approach. Can vengeance be pursued further than death?
What cursed foot wanders this way to-night, Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee:
To cross my obsequies and true love’s rite? Obey, and go with me; for thou must die.
What with a torch! muffle me, night, awhile.

ROMEO I must indeed; and therefore came I hither. And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man; Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
Fly hence, and leave me: think upon these gone; O, what more favour can I do to thee,
Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth, Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
Put not another sin upon my head, To sunder his that was thine enemy?
By urging me to fury: O, be gone! Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,
By heaven, I love thee better than myself; Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
For I come hither arm’d against myself: That unsubstantial death is amorous,
Stay not, be gone; live, and hereafter say, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
A madman’s mercy bade thee run away. Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that, I still will stay with thee;
PARISI do defy thy conjurations, And never from this palace of dim night
And apprehend thee for a felon here. Depart again: here, here will I remain
ROMEO Wilt thou provoke me? then have at thee, boy! With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
[They fight] And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
PAGE O Lord, they fight! I will go call the watch. Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
[Exit] A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
PARIS O, I am slain! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
[Falls] Here’s to my love!
If thou be merciful,
Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. [Drinks]
O true apothecary!
[Dies] Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
ROMEO In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face.
Mercutio’s kinsman, noble County Paris! [Dies]
What said my man, when my betossed soul
Did not attend him as we rode? I think [Enter, at the other end of the churchyard, FRIAR
He told me Paris should have married Juliet: LAURENCE, with a lantern, crow, and spade]
Said he not so? or did I dream it so? FRIAR LAURENCE Saint Francis be my speed!
Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, How oft to-night
To think it was so? O, give me thy hand, Have my old feet stumbled at graves! Who’s there?
One writ with me in sour misfortune’s book!
I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave; BALTHASAR Here’s one, a friend, and one that knows
A grave? O no! a lantern, slaughter’d youth, you well.
For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence full of light. FRIAR LAURENCE Bliss be upon you! Tell me,
Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr’d. good my friend,
What torch is yond, that vainly lends his light
[Laying PARIS in the tomb] To grubs and eyeless skulls? as I discern,
It burneth in the Capel’s monument.
How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call BALTHASAR It doth so, holy sir; and there’s my master,
A lightning before death: O, how may I One that you love.
Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath, FRIAR LAURENCE Who is it?
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: BALTHASAR Romeo.
Thou art not conquer’d; beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, FRIAR LAURENCE How long hath he been there?

BALTHASAR Full half an hour. JULIET Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.
FRIAR LAURENCE Go with me to the vault. [Exit FRIAR LAURENCE]
BALTHASAR I dare not, sir: What’s here? a cup, closed in my true love’s hand?
My master knows not but I am gone hence; Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:
And fearfully did menace me with death, O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop
If I did stay to look on his intents. To help me after? I will kiss thy lips;
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,
FRIAR LAURENCE Stay, then; I’ll go alone. Fear comes
To make die with a restorative.
upon me:
O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing. [Kisses him]
BALTHASAR As I did sleep under this yew-tree here, Thy lips are warm.
I dreamt my master and another fought,
And that my master slew him. FIRST WATCHMAN [Within] Lead, boy: which way?
FRIAR LAURENCE Romeo! JULIET Yea, noise? then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger!
[Advances] [Snatching ROMEO’s dagger]

Alack, alack, what blood is this, which stains This is thy sheath;
The stony entrance of this sepulchre?
What mean these masterless and gory swords [Stabs herself]
To lie discolour’d by this place of peace?
there rust, and let me die.
[Enters the tomb]
[Falls on ROMEO’s body, and dies]
Romeo! O, pale! Who else? what, Paris too?
And steep’d in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour [Enter Watch, with the Page of PARIS]
Is guilty of this lamentable chance!
The lady stirs. PAGE This is the place; there, where the torch
doth burn.
[JULIET wakes] FIRST WATCHMAN The ground is bloody; search about
JULIET O comfortable friar! where is my lord? the churchyard:
I do remember well where I should be, Go, some of you, whoe’er you find attach.
And there I am. Where is my Romeo? Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain,
And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,
[Noise within] Who here hath lain these two days buried.
Go, tell the prince: run to the Capulets:
FRIAR LAURENCE I hear some noise. Lady, come Raise up the Montagues: some others search:
from that nest We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;
Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep: But the true ground of all these piteous woes
A greater power than we can contradict We cannot without circumstance descry.
Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away.
Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead; [Re-enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR]
And Paris too. Come, I’ll dispose of thee
Among a sisterhood of holy nuns: SECOND WATCHMAN Here’s Romeo’s man; we found
Stay not to question, for the watch is coming; him in the churchyard.
Come, go, good Juliet, FIRST WATCHMAN Hold him in safety, till the prince
come hither.
[Noise again]
I dare no longer stay. [Re-enter others of the Watch, with FRIAR
LAURENCE]

THIRD WATCHMAN Here is a friar, that trembles, PRINCE Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,
sighs and weeps: Till we can clear these ambiguities,
We took this mattock and this spade from him, And know their spring, their head, their
As he was coming from this churchyard side. true descent;
And then will I be general of your woes,
FIRST WATCHMAN A great suspicion: stay the friar too. And lead you even to death: meantime forbear,
And let mischance be slave to patience.
[Enter the PRINCE and Attendants] Bring forth the parties of suspicion.
PRINCE What misadventure is so early up, FRIAR LAURENCE I am the greatest, able to do least,
That calls our person from our morning’s rest? Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me of this direful murder;
[Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, and others] And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
CAPULET What should it be, that they so shriek abroad? Myself condemned and myself excused.
LADY CAPULET The people in the street cry Romeo, PRINCE Then say at once what thou dost know in this.
Some Juliet, and some Paris; and all run,
FRIAR LAURENCE I will be brief, for my short
With open outcry toward our monument.
date of breath
PRINCE What fear is this which startles in our ears? Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
FIRST WATCHMAN Sovereign, here lies the And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife:
County Paris slain; I married them; and their stol’n marriage-day
And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before, Was Tybalt’s dooms-day, whose untimely death
Warm and new kill’d. Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from the city,
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
PRINCESearch, seek, and know how this foul You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
murder comes. Betroth’d and would have married her perforce
FIRST WATCHMAN Here is a friar, and slaughter’d To County Paris: then comes she to me,
Romeo’s man; And, with wild looks, bid me devise some mean
With instruments upon them, fit to open To rid her from this second marriage,
These dead men’s tombs. Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor’d by my art,
CAPULET O heavens! O wife, look how our A sleeping potion; which so took effect
daughter bleeds! As I intended, for it wrought on her
This dagger hath mista’en—for, lo, his house The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
Is empty on the back of Montague,— That he should hither come as this dire night,
And it mis-sheathed in my daughter’s bosom! To help to take her from her borrow’d grave,
Being the time the potion’s force should cease.
LADY CAPULET O me! this sight of death is as a bell, But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
That warns my old age to a sepulchre. Was stay’d by accident, and yesternight
Return’d my letter back. Then all alone
[Enter MONTAGUE and others] At the prefixed hour of her waking,
PRINCE Come, Montague; for thou art early up, Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault;
To see thy son and heir more early down. Meaning to keep her closely at my cell,
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
MONTAGUE Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night; But when I came, some minute ere the time
Grief of my son’s exile hath stopp’d her breath: Of her awaking, here untimely lay
What further woe conspires against mine age? The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth,
PRINCE Look, and thou shalt see. And bear this work of heaven with patience:
MONTAGUE O thou untaught! what manners is in this? But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
To press before thy father to a grave? 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 Of a poor ’pothecary, and therewithal
Her nurse is privy: and, if aught in this Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
Be sacrificed, some hour before his time, See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
Unto the rigour of severest law. That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
PRINCEWe still have known thee for a holy man. Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish’d.
Where’s Romeo’s man? what can he say in this?
CAPULET O brother Montague, give me thy hand:
BALTHASAR I brought my master news of Juliet’s death; This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more
And then in post he came from Mantua Can I demand.
To this same place, to this same monument.
This letter he early bid me give his father, MONTAGUE But I can give thee more:
And threatened me with death, going in the vault, For I will raise her statue in pure gold;
I departed not and left him there. That while Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at such rate be set
PRINCE Give me the letter; I will look on it. As that of true and faithful Juliet.
Where is the county’s page, that raised the watch?
Sirrah, what made your master in this place? CAPULET As rich shall Romeo’s by his lady’s lie;
Poor sacrifices of our enmity!
PAGE He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave;
And bid me stand aloof, and so I did: PRINCE A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
And by and by my master drew on him; Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
And then I ran away to call the watch. Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
PRINCE This letter doth make good the friar’s words, Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Their course of love, the tidings of her death:
And here he writes that he did buy a poison [Exeunt]

Omeo and Uliet: L V IVB IX

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VOLUME IV BOOK IX

ROMEO AND JULIET

BALTHASAR servant to Romeo.

MONTAGUE heads of two houses PETER servant to Juliet’s nurse.

Guards, Watchmen, and Attendants.

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SAMPSON Me they shall feel while I am able to stand: [They fight]

ABRAHAM Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? them down!

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ROMEO Out— BENVOLIO I aim’d so near, when I supposed you loved.

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MERCUTIO And so did I. MERCUTIO True, I talk of dreams,

SCENE V CAPULET What, man! ’tis not so much, ’tis not

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CAPULET He shall be endured: ROMEO What is her mother?

CAPULET Go to, go to; ROMEO Is she a Capulet?

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NURSE What’s this? what’s this? [Exeunt]

PROLOGUE MERCUTIO Nay, I’ll conjure too.

[Exit] MERCUTIO This cannot anger him: ’Twould anger him

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[Exeunt] JULIET ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

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ROMEO Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear [Re-enter JULIET, above]

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JULIET By and by, I come:— JULIET Sweet, so would I:

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Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! “Romeo is banished,” to speak that word,

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ROMEO O, thou wilt speak again of banishment. [Enter Nurse]

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JULIET O think’st thou we shall ever meet again? asunder.—

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SCENE I PARIS My father Capulet will have it so;

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[Enter CAPULET] Go waken Juliet, go and trim her up;

[Music within] CAPULET For shame, bring Juliet forth;

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FIRST MUSICIAN An you re us and fa us, you note us. [Exit]