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William Shakespeare

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SHAKESPEARE'S
TRAGEDY OF
Romeo and Juliet

EDITED, WITH NOTES

BY

WILLIAM J. ROLFE, Litt.D.

FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK ⁂ CINCINNATI ⁂ CHICAGO
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY

Copyright, 1879 and 1898, by
HARPER & BROTHERS.

Copyright, 1904 and 1907, by WILLIAM J. ROLFE.

ROMEO AND JULIET.

W.P. 8

PREFACE

This edition of Romeo and Juliet, first published in 1879, is now thoroughly revised on the same general plan as its predecessors in the new series.

While I have omitted most of the notes on textual variations, I have retained a sufficient number to illustrate the curious and significant differences between the first and second quartos. Among the many new notes are some calling attention to portions of the early draft of the play—some of them very bad—which Shakespeare left unchanged when he revised it.

The references to Dowden in the notes are to his recent and valuable edition of the play, which I did not see until this of mine was on the point of going to the printer. The quotation on page 288 of the Appendix is from his Shakspere: His Mind and Art, which, by the way, was reprinted in this country at my suggestion.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction to Romeo and Juliet 9 The History of the Play 9 The Sources of the Plot 14 General Comments on the Play 17 Romeo and Juliet 27 Act I 29 Act II 58 Act III 85 Act IV 118 Act V 136 Notes 157 Appendix Concerning Arthur Brooke 275 Comments on Some of the Characters 278 The Time-Analysis of the Play 290 List of Characters in the Play 291 Index of Words and Phrases Explained 293

Funeral of Juliet

Verona

INTRODUCTION TO ROMEO AND JULIET

The History of the Play

The earliest edition of Romeo and Juliet, so far as we know, was a quarto printed in 1597, the title-page of which asserts that "it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely." A second quarto appeared in 1599, declared to be "newly corrected, augmented, and amended."

Two other quartos appeared before the folio of 1623, one in 1609 and the other undated; and it is doubtful which was the earlier. The undated quarto is the first that bears the name of the author ("Written by W. Shake-speare"), but this does not occur in some copies of the edition. A fifth quarto was published in 1637.

The first quarto is much shorter than the second, the former having only 2232 lines, including the prologue, while the latter has 3007 lines (Daniel). Some editors believe that the first quarto gives the author's first draft of the play, and the second the form it took after he had revised and enlarged it; but the majority of the best critics agree substantially in the opinion that the first quarto was a pirated edition, and represents in an abbreviated and imperfect form the play subsequently printed in full in the second. The former was "made up partly from copies of portions of the original play, partly from recollection and from notes taken during the performance;" the latter was from an authentic copy, and a careful comparison of the text with the earlier one shows that in the meantime the play "underwent revision, received some slight augmentation, and in some few places must have been entirely rewritten." A marked instance of this rewriting—the only one of considerable length—is in ii. 6. 6-37, where the first quarto reads thus (spelling and pointing being modernized):—

Jul. Romeo.

Rom. My Juliet, welcome. As do waking eyes

Closed in Night's mists attend the frolick Day,

So Romeo hath expected Juliet,

And thou art come.

Jul. I am, if I be Day,

Come to my Sun: shine forth and make me fair.

Rom. All beauteous fairness dwelleth in thine eyes.

Jul. Romeo, from thine all brightness doth arise.

Fri. Come, wantons, come, the stealing hours do pass,

Defer embracements till some fitter time.

Part for a while, you shall not be alone

Till holy Church have joined ye both in one.

Rom. Lead, holy Father, all delay seems long.

Jul. Make haste, make haste, this lingering doth us wrong.

For convenient comparison I quote the later text here:—

Juliet. Good even to my ghostly confessor.

Friar Laurence. Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.

Juliet. As much to him, else is his thanks too much.

Romeo. Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy

Be heap'd like mine and that thy skill be more

To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath

This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue

Unfold the imagin'd happiness that both

Receive in either by this dear encounter.

Juliet. Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,

Brags of his substance, not of ornament.

They are but beggars that can count their worth;

But my true love is grown to such excess

I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth.

Friar Laurence. Come, come with me, and we will make short work;

For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone

Till holy church incorporate two in one.

The "omission, mutilation, or botching" by which some German editors would explain all differences between the earlier and later texts will not suffice to account for such divergence as this. "The two dialogues do not differ merely in expressiveness and effect; they embody different conceptions of the characters;" and yet we cannot doubt that both were written by Shakespeare.

But while the second quarto is "unquestionably our best authority" for the text of the play, it is certain that it "was not printed from the author's manuscript, but from a transcript, the writer of which was not only careless, but thought fit to take unwarrantable liberties with the text." The first quarto, with all its faults and imperfections, is often useful in the detection and correction of these errors and corruptions, and all the modern editors have made more or less use of its readings.

The third quarto (1609) was a reprint of the second, from which it "differs by a few corrections, and more frequently by additional errors." It is from this edition that the text of the first folio is taken, with some changes, accidental or intentional, "all generally for the worse," except in the punctuation, which is more correct, and the stage directions, which are more complete, than in the quarto.

The date of the first draft of the play has been much discussed, but cannot be said to have been settled. The majority of the editors believe that it was begun as early as 1561, but I think that most of them lay too much stress on the Nurse's reference (i. 3. 22, 35) to the "earthquake," which occurred "eleven years" earlier, and which these critics suppose to have been the one felt in England in 1580.

Aside from this and other attempts to fix the date by external evidence of a doubtful character, the internal evidence confirms the opinion that the tragedy was an early work of the poet, and that it was subsequently "corrected, augmented, and amended." There is a good deal of rhyme, and much of it in the form of alternate rhyme. The alliteration, the frequent playing upon words, and the lyrical character of many passages also lead to the same conclusion.

The latest editors agree substantially with this view. Herford says: "The evidence points to 1594-1595 as the time at which the play was substantially composed, though it is tolerably certain that some parts of our present text were written as late as 1596-1598, and possibly that others are as early as 1591." Dowden sums up the matter thus: "On the whole, we might place Romeo and Juliet, on grounds of internal evidence, near The Rape of Lucrece; portions may be earlier in date; certain passages of the revised version are certainly later; but I think that 1595 may serve as an approximation to a central date, and cannot be far astray."

For myself, while agreeing substantially with these authorities, I think that a careful comparison of what are evidently the earliest portions of the text with similar work in Love's Labour's Lost (a play revised like this, but retaining traces of the original form), The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and other plays which the critics generally assign to 1591 or 1592, proves conclusively that parts of Romeo and Juliet must be of quite as early a date.

The earliest reference to the play in the literature of the time is in a sonnet to Shakespeare by John Weever, written probably in 1595 or 1596, though not published until 1599. After referring to Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, Weever adds:—

"Romeo, Richard, more whose names I know not,

Their sugred tongues and power attractive beuty

Say they are saints," etc.

No other allusion of earlier date than the publication of the first quarto has been discovered.

The Sources of the Plot

Girolamo della Corte, in his Storia di Verona, 1594, relates the story of the play as a true event occurring in 1303; but the earlier annalists of the city are silent on the subject. A tale very similar, the scene of which is laid in Siena, appears in a collection of novels by Masuccio di Salerno, printed at Naples in 1476; but Luigi da Porto, in his La Giulietta,[1] published about 1530, is the first to call the lovers Romeo and Juliet, and to make them the children of the rival Veronese houses. The story was retold in French by Adrian Sevin, about 1542; and a poetical version of it was published at Venice in 1553. It is also found in Bandello's Novelle, 1554; and five years later Pierre Boisteau translated it, with some variations, into French in his Histoire de Deux Amans. The earliest English version of the romance appeared in 1562 in a poem by Arthur Brooke founded upon Boisteau's novel, and entitled Romeus and Juliet. A prose translation of Boisteau's novel was given in Paynter's Palace of Pleasure, in 1567. It was undoubtedly from these English sources, and chiefly from the poem by Brooke, that Shakespeare drew his material. It is to be noted, however, that Brooke speaks of having seen "the same argument lately set forth on stage"; and it is possible that this lost play may also have been known to Shakespeare, though we have no reason to suppose that he made any use of it. That he followed Brooke's poem rather than Paynter's prose version is evident from a careful comparison of the two with the play.

Grant White remarks: "The tragedy follows the poem with a faithfulness which might be called slavish, were it not that any variation from the course of the old story was entirely unnecessary for the sake of dramatic interest, and were there not shown in the progress of the action, in the modification of one character and in the disposal of another, all peculiar to the play, self-reliant dramatic intuition of the highest order. For the rest, there is not a personage or a situation, hardly a speech, essential to Brooke's poem, which has not its counterpart—its exalted and glorified counterpart—in the tragedy.... In brief, Romeo and Juliet owes to Shakespeare only its dramatic form and its poetic decoration. But what an exception is the latter! It is to say that the earth owes to the sun only its verdure and its flowers, the air only its perfume and its balm, the heavens only their azure and their glow. Yet this must not lead us to forget that the original tale is one of the most truthful and touching among the few that have entranced the ear and stirred the heart of the world for ages, or that in Shakespeare's transfiguration of it his fancy and his youthful fire had a much larger share than his philosophy or his imagination.

"The only variations from the story in the play are the three which have just been alluded to: the compression of the action, which in the story occupies four or five months, to within as many days, thus adding impetuosity to a passion which had only depth, and enhancing dramatic effect by quickening truth to vividness; the conversion of Mercutio from a mere courtier, 'bolde emong the bashfull maydes,' 'courteous of his speech and pleasant of devise,' into that splendid union of the knight and the fine gentleman, in portraying which Shakespeare, with prophetic eye piercing a century, shows us the fire of faded chivalry expiring in a flash of wit; and the bringing-in of Paris (forgotten in the story after his bridal disappointment) to die at Juliet's bier by the hand of Romeo, thus gathering together all the threads of this love entanglement to be cut at once by Fate."

General Comments on the Play

Coleridge, in his Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare, says: "The stage in Shakespeare's time was a naked room with a blanket for a curtain, but he made it a field for monarchs. That law of unity which has its foundations, not in the factitious necessity of custom, but in nature itself, the unity of feeling, is everywhere and at all times observed by Shakespeare in his plays. Read Romeo and Juliet: all is youth and spring—youth with its follies, its virtues, its precipitancies; spring with its odours, its flowers, and its transiency. It is one and the same feeling that commences, goes through, and ends the play. The old men, the Capulets and the Montagues, are not common old men; they have an eagerness, a heartiness, a vehemence, the effect of spring; with Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden marriage, and his rash death, are all the effects of youth; whilst in Juliet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the nightingale, all that is voluptuous in the rose, with whatever is sweet in the freshness of spring; but it ends with a long deep sigh like the last breeze of the Italian evening."

The play, like The Merchant of Venice, is thoroughly Italian in atmosphere and colour. The season, though Coleridge refers to it figuratively as spring, is really midsummer. The time is definitely fixed by the Nurse's talk about the age of Juliet. She asks Lady Capulet how long it is to Lammas-tide—that is, to August 1—and the reply is, "A fortnight and odd days"—sixteen or seventeen days we may suppose, making the time of the conversation not far from the middle of July. This is confirmed by allusions to the weather and other natural phenomena in the play. At the beginning of act iii, for instance, Benvolio says to his friends:—

"I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire;

The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,

And if we meet we shall not scape a brawl,

For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring."

When the Nurse goes on the errand to Romeo (ii. 4), Peter carries her fan, and she finds occasion to use it. "The nights are only softer days, not made for sleep, but for lingering in moonlit gardens, where the fruit-tree tops are tipped with silver and the nightingale sings on the pomegranate bough." It is only in the coolness of the dawn that Friar Laurence goes forth to gather herbs; and it is

"An hour before the worshipp'd sun

Peer'd forth the golden window of the east,"

that we find Romeo wandering in the grove of sycamore, "with tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew," because Rosaline will not return his love.

In one instance, overlooked by the commentators generally, Shakespeare seems to forget the time of year. In the masquerade scene (i. 5) Old Capulet bids the servants "quench the fire" because "the room is grown too hot." In Brooke's poem, where the action covers four or five months, this scene is in the winter. Shakespeare, in condensing the time to less than a single week in summer, neglected to omit this reference to a colder season.

Aside from this little slip, the time is the Italian summer from first to last. And, as a French critic remarks, "the very form of the language comes from the South." The tale originated in Italy; "it breathes the very spirit of her national records, her old family feuds, the amorous and bloody intrigues which fill her annals. No one can fail to recognize Italy in its lyric rhythm, its blindness of passion, its blossoming and abundant vitality, in its brilliant imagery, its bold composition." All the characters are distinctively Italian. "In total effect," as another has said, "the play is so Italian that one may read it with increasing surprise and delight in Verona itself."

Although, as I have said, it is doubtful whether the story has any historical basis, the Montagues and the Capulets were famous old families in Verona. Dante alludes to them in the Purgatorio (vi. 107), though not as enemies:—

"Vieni a veder Montecchi e Cappelletti,

Monaldi e Filippeschi, uom senza cura,

Color già tristi, e costor con sospetti."[2]

The palace of the Capulets is to this day pointed out in Verona. It is degraded to plebeian occupancy, and the only mark of its ancient dignity is the badge of the family, the cap carved in stone on the inner side of the entrance to the court, which is of ample size, surrounded by buildings that probably formed the main part of the mansion, but are now divided into many tenements. The garden has disappeared, having been covered with other buildings centuries ago.

The so-called "tomb of Juliet" is in a less disagreeable locality, but is unquestionably a fraud, though it has been exhibited for a century or two, and has received many tributes from credulous and sentimental tourists. It is in the garden of an ancient convent, and consists of an open, dilapidated stone sarcophagus (perhaps only an old horse-trough), without inscription or any authentic history. It is kept in a kind of shed, the walls of which are hung with faded wreaths and other mementoes from visitors. One pays twenty-five centesimi (five cents) for the privilege of inspecting it. Byron went to see it in 1816, and writes (November 6) to his sister Augusta: "I brought away four small pieces of it for you and the babes (at least the female part of them), and for Ada and her mother, if she will accept it from you. I thought the situation more appropriate to the history than if it had been less blighted. This struck me more than all the antiquities, more even than the amphitheatre." Maria Louisa, the French empress, got a piece of it, which she had made into hearts and other forms for bracelets and necklaces; and many other sentimental ladies followed the royal example before the mutilation of the relic was prohibited by its guardians.

To return to the play—one would suppose that the keynote was struck with sufficient clearness in the prologue to indicate Shakespeare's purpose and the moral lesson that he meant to impress; but many of the critics have nevertheless failed to understand it. They have assumed that the misfortunes of the hero and heroine were mainly due to their own rashness or imprudence in yielding to the impulses of passion instead of obeying the dictates of reason. They think that the dramatist speaks through Friar Laurence when he warns them against haste in the marriage (ii. 6. 9 fol.):—

"These violent delights have violent ends,

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,

Which as they kiss consume; the sweetest honey

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,

And in the taste confounds the appetite.

Therefore love moderately, long love doth so;

Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow."

But the venerable celibate speaks for himself and in keeping with the character, not for Shakespeare.

Neither does the poet, as some believe, intend to read a lesson against clandestine marriage and disregard for the authority or approval of parents in the match. The Friar, even at the first suggestion of the hurried and secret marriage, does not oppose or discourage it on any such grounds; nor, in the closing scene, does he blame either the lovers or himself on that account. Nowhere in the play is there the slightest suggestion of so-called "poetic justice" or retribution in the fate that overtakes the unhappy pair.

It is the parents, not the children, that have sinned, and the sin of the parents is visited upon their innocent offspring. This is the burden of the prologue; and it is most emphatically repeated at the close of the play.

The feud of the two households and the civil strife that it has caused are the first things to which the attention of those who are to witness the play is called. Next they are told that the children of these two foes become lovers—not foolish, rash, imprudent lovers, not victims of disobedience to their parents, not in any way responsible for what they afterwards suffer—but "star-cross'd lovers." The fault is not in themselves, but in their stars—in their fate as the offspring of these hostile parents. But their unfortunate and piteous overthrow is the means by which the fatal feud of the two families is brought to an end. The "death-mark'd love" of the children—love as pure as it was passionate, love true from first to last to the divine law of love—while by an evil destiny it brings death to themselves, involves also the death of the hate which was the primal cause of all the tragic consequences.

This is no less distinctly expressed in the last speeches of the play. After hearing the Friar's story, the Prince says:—

"Where be these enemies?—Capulet!—Montague!

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!

And I, for winking at your discords too,

Have lost a brace of kinsmen; all are punish'd.

Capulet. O brother Montague, give me thy hand;

This is my daughter's jointure, for no more

Can I demand.

Montague. But I can give thee more;

For I will raise her statue in pure gold,

That while Verona by that name is known

There shall no figure at such rate be set

As that of true and faithful Juliet.

Capulet. As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie;

Poor sacrifices of our enmity!"

It is the parents who are punished. The scourge is laid upon their hate, and it was the love of their children by which Heaven found the means to wield that scourge. The Prince himself has a share in the penalty for tolerating the discords of the families. "We all," he says, "all are punished." But the good Friar's hope, expressed when he consented to perform the marriage,—

"For this alliance may so happy prove

To turn your households' rancour to pure love,"—

is now fulfilled. Both Capulet and Montague, as they join hands in amity over the dead bodies of their children, acknowledge the debt they owe to the "star-cross'd" love of those "poor sacrifices of their enmity." They vie with each other in doing honour to the guiltless victims of their "pernicious rage." Montague will raise the golden statue to Juliet, and Capulet promises as rich a monument to Romeo.

Da Porto and Paynter and Brooke, in like manner, refer to the reconciliation of the rival families as the fortunate result of the tragic history. Da Porto says: "Their fathers, weeping over the bodies of their children and overcome by mutual pity, embraced each other; so that the long enmity between them and their houses, which neither the prayers of their friends, nor the menaces of the Prince, nor even time itself had been able to extinguish, was ended by the piteous death of the two lovers." As Paynter puts it, "The Montesches and Capellets poured forth such abundance of tears, as with the same they did evacuate their ancient grudge and choler, whereby they were then reconciled: and they which could not be brought to atonement[3] by any wisdom or human counsel were in the end vanquished and made friends by pity." So Brooke, in his lumbering verse:—

"The straungenes of the chaunce, when tryed was the truth,

The Montagewes and Capelets hath moved so to ruth,

That with their emptyed teares, theyr choler and theyr rage

Was emptied quite; and they whose wrath no wisdom could asswage,

Nor threatning of the prince, ne mynd of murthers donne

At length (so mighty Jove it would) by pitye they are wonne."

And then the poem, like the play, ends with a reference to the monumental honour done to the lovers:

"And lest that length of time might from our myndes remove

The memory of so perfect, sound, and so approved love,

The bodies dead, removed from vaulte where they did dye,

In stately tombe, on pillers great of marble, rayse they hye.

On every syde above were set, and eke beneath,

Great store of cunning Epitaphes, in honor of theyr death.

And even at this day the tombe is to be seene;

So that among the monumentes that in Verona been,

There is no monument more worthy of the sight,

Then is the tombe of Juliet and Romeus her knight."

ROMEO AND JULIET

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

Escalus, prince of Verona.
Paris, a young nobleman, kinsman to the prince.
Montague, }
Capulet,     } heads of two houses at variance with each other.
An old man of the Capulet family.
Romeo, son to Montague.
Mercutio, kinsman to the prince, and friend to Romeo.
Benvolio, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo.
Tybalt, nephew to Lady Capulet.
Friar Laurence, }
Friar John,          } Franciscans.
Balthasar, servant to Romeo.
Sampson, }
Gregory, } servants to Capulet.
Peter, servant to Juliet's nurse.
Abram, servant to Montague.
An Apothecary.
Three Musicians.
Page to Paris; another Page; an Officer.

Lady Montague, wife to Montague.
Lady Capulet, wife to Capulet.
Juliet, daughter to Capulet.
Nurse to Juliet.

Citizens of Verona; Kinsfolk of both houses; Maskers, Guards, Watchmen, and Attendants.

Chorus.

Scene: Verona; Mantua.

The "Measure"

PROLOGUE

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life,

Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows

Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.

The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,

And the continuance of their parents' rage,

Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage,

The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

ACT I

Scene I.

Verona. A Public Place.

Enter Sampson and Gregory, of the house of Capulet,
with swords and bucklers

Sampson. Gregory, on my word, we'll not carry coals.

Gregory. No, for then we should be colliers.

Sampson. I mean, an we be in choler we'll draw.

Gregory. Ay, while you live, draw your neck out
o' the collar.

Sampson. I strike quickly, being moved.

Gregory. But thou art not quickly moved to strike.

Sampson. A dog of the house of Montague moves
me. 10

Gregory. To move is to stir, and to be valiant is
to stand; therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn'st
away.

Sampson. A dog of that house shall move me to
stand; I will take the wall of any man or maid of
Montague's.

Gregory.> That shows thee a weak slave; for the
weakest goes to the wall.

Sampson. True; and therefore women, being the
weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall. Therefore 20
I will push Montague's men from the wall, and
thrust his maids to the wall.

Gregory. The quarrel is between our masters and
us their men.

Sampson. 'Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant;
when I have fought with the men, I will be cruel
with the maids and cut off their heads.

Gregory. Draw thy tool; here comes two of the
house of the Montagues.

Sampson. My naked weapon is out; quarrel, I 30
will back thee.

Gregory. How? turn thy back and run?

Sampson. Fear me not.

Gregory. No, marry; I fear thee!

Sampson. Let us take the law of our sides; let
them begin.

Gregory. I will frown as I pass by, and let them
take it as they list.

Sampson. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb
at them, which is a disgrace to them if they bear it. 40

Enter Abram and Balthasar

Abram. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

Sampson. I do bite my thumb, sir.

Abram. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

Sampson. [Aside to Gregory] Is the law of our
side, if I say ay?

Gregory. No.

Sampson. No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you,
sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.

Gregory. Do you quarrel, sir?

Abram. Quarrel, sir! no, sir. 50

Sampson. If you do, sir, I am for you; I serve as
good a man as you.

Abram. No better.

Sampson. Well, sir.

Gregory. [Aside to Sampson] Say 'better'; here
comes one of my master's kinsmen.

Sampson. Yes, better, sir.

Abram. You lie.

Sampson. Draw, if you be men.—Gregory, remember
thy swashing blow. [They fight. 60

Enter Benvolio

Benvolio. Part, fools!

Put up your swords; you know not what you do. [Beats down their swords.

Enter Tybalt

Tybalt. What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?

Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.

Benvolio. I do but keep the peace; put up thy sword,

Or manage it to part these men with me.

Tybalt. What, drawn and talk of peace! I hate the word,

As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee;

Have at thee, coward! [They fight.

Enter several of both houses who join the fray; then enter Citizens, with clubs

70

First Citizen. Clubs, bills, and partisans! strike! beat them down!

Down with the Capulets! down with the Montagues!

Enter Capulet in his gown, and Lady Capulet

Capulet. What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!

Lady Capulet. A crutch, a crutch! why call you for a sword?

Capulet. My sword, I say! Old Montague is come,

And flourishes his blade in spite of me.

Enter Montague and Lady Montague

Montague. Thou villain Capulet!—Hold me not, let me go.

Lady Montague. Thou shalt not stir a foot to seek a foe.

Enter Prince, with his train

Prince. Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,

Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel,—

80

Will they not hear? What, ho! you men, you beasts,

That quench the fire of your pernicious rage

With purple fountains issuing from your veins,

On pain of torture, from those bloody hands

Throw your mistemper'd weapons to the ground,

And hear the sentence of your moved prince.—

Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word,

By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,

Have thrice disturb'd the quiet of our streets,

And made Verona's ancient citizens

90

Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments,

To wield old partisans, in hands as old,

Canker'd with peace, to part your canker'd hate.

If ever you disturb our streets again,

Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.—

For this time, all the rest depart away.—

You, Capulet, shall go along with me;—

And, Montague, come you this afternoon,

To know our further pleasure in this case,

To old Freetown, our common judgment-place.—

100

Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.

[Exeunt all but Montague, Lady Montague, and Benvolio.

Montague. Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?

Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?

Benvolio. Here were the servants of your adversary

And yours close fighting ere I did approach.

I drew to part them; in the instant came

The fiery Tybalt with his sword prepar'd,

Which, as he breath'd defiance to my ears,

He swung about his head and cut the winds,

Who, nothing hurt withal, hiss'd him in scorn.

110

While we were interchanging thrusts and blows,

Came more and more, and fought on part and part,

Till the prince came, who parted either part.

Lady Montague. O, where is Romeo? saw you him to-day?

Right glad I am he was not at this fray.

Benvolio. Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun

Peer'd forth the golden window of the east,

A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad;

Where, underneath the grove of sycamore

That westward rooteth from the city's side,

120

So early walking did I see your son.

Towards him I made, but he was ware of me

And stole into the covert of the wood;

I, measuring his affections by my own,

Which then most sought where most might not be found,

Being one too many by my weary self,

Pursued my humour, not pursuing his,

And gladly shunn'd who gladly fled from me.

Montague. Many a morning hath he there been seen,

With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew,

130

Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs;

But all so soon as the all-cheering sun

Should in the farthest east begin to draw

The shady curtains from Aurora's bed,

Away from light steals home my heavy son,

And private in his chamber pens himself,

Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out,

And makes himself an artificial night.

Black and portentous must this humour prove,

139

Unless good counsel may the cause remove.

Benvolio. My noble uncle, do you know the cause?

Montague. I neither know it nor can learn of him.

Benvolio. Have you importun'd him by any means?

Montague. Both by myself and many other friends;

But he, his own affections' counsellor,

Is to himself—I will not say how true—

But to himself so secret and so close,

So far from sounding and discovery,

As is the bud bit with an envious worm

Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air

150

Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.

Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow,

We would as willingly give cure as know.

Enter Romeo

Benvolio. See, where he comes! So please you, step aside;

I'll know his grievance or be much denied.

Montague. I would thou wert so happy by thy stay

To hear true shrift.—Come, madam, let's away.

[Exeunt Montague and Lady.

Benvolio. Good morrow, cousin.

Romeo. Is the day so young?

Benvolio. But new struck nine.

Romeo. Ay me! sad hours seem long.

Was that my father that went hence so fast?

160

Benvolio. It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?

Romeo. Not having that which, having, makes them short.

Benvolio. In love?

Romeo. Out—

Benvolio. Of love?

Romeo. Out of her favour where I am in love.

Benvolio. Alas, that love, so gentle in his view,

Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!

Romeo. Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,

Should without eyes see pathways to his will!

Where shall we dine?—O me! What fray was here?

171

Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.

Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!

O any thing, of nothing first created!

O heavy lightness! serious vanity!

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!

This love feel I that feel no love in this.

Dost thou not laugh?

180

Benvolio. No, coz, I rather weep.

Romeo. Good heart, at what?

Benvolio. At thy good heart's oppression.

Romeo. Why, such is love's transgression.

Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,

Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest

With more of thine; this love that thou hast shown

Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.

Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs;

Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;

Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears.

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What is it else? a madness most discreet,

A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

Farewell, my coz.

Benvolio. Soft! I will go along;

An if you leave me so, you do me wrong.

Romeo. Tut, I have lost myself, I am not here;

This is not Romeo, he's some other where.

Benvolio. Tell me in sadness who is that you love.

Romeo. What, shall I groan and tell thee?

Benvolio. Groan! why, no,

But sadly tell me who.

Romeo. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will;

200

Ah, word ill urg'd to one that is so ill!

In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.

Benvolio. I aim'd so near when I suppos'd you lov'd.

Romeo. A right good mark-man! And she's fair I love.

Benvolio. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.

Romeo. Well, in that hit you miss. She'll not be hit

With Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit,

And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd,

From Love's weak childish bow she lives unharm'd.

She will not stay the siege of loving terms,

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Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,

Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.

O, she is rich in beauty! only poor

That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store.

Benvolio. Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?

Romeo. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste;

For beauty starv'd with her severity

Cuts beauty off from all posterity.

She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,

To merit bliss by making me despair;

220

She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow

Do I live dead that live to tell it now.

Benvolio. Be rul'd by me, forget to think of her.

Romeo. O, teach me how I should forget to think.

Benvolio. By giving liberty unto thine eyes;

Examine other beauties.

Romeo. 'Tis the way

To call hers, exquisite, in question more.

These happy masks that kiss fair ladies' brows,

Being black, put us in mind they hide the fair.

He that is strucken blind cannot forget

230

The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.

Show me a mistress that is passing fair,

What doth her beauty serve but as a note

Where I may read who pass'd that passing fair?

Farewell; thou canst not teach me to forget.

Benvolio. I'll pay that doctrine or else die in debt. Exeunt.

Scene II.

A Street

Enter Capulet, Paris, and Servant

Capulet. But Montague is bound as well as I,

In penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, I think,

For men so old as we to keep the peace.

Paris. Of honourable reckoning are you both,

And pity 'tis you liv'd at odds so long.

But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?

Capulet. But saying o'er what I have said before.

My child is yet a stranger in the world;

She hath not seen the change of fourteen years.

10

Let two more summers wither in their pride

Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.

Paris. Younger than she are happy mothers made.

Capulet. And too soon marr'd are those so early made.

The earth hath swallow'd all my hopes but she,

She is the hopeful lady of my earth.

But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart,

My will to her consent is but a part;

An she agree, within her scope of choice

Lies my consent and fair according voice.

20

This night I hold an old accustom'd feast,

Whereto I have invited many a guest,

Such as I love; and you, among the store,

One more, most welcome, makes my number more.

At my poor house look to behold this night

Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light.

Such comfort as do lusty young men feel

When well-apparell'd April on the heel

Of limping winter treads, even such delight

Among fresh female buds shall you this night

30

Inherit at my house. Hear all, all see,

And like her most whose merit most shall be;

Which on more view of many, mine being one

May stand in number, though in reckoning none.

Come, go with me.—[To Servant, giving a paper] Go, sirrah, trudge about

Through fair Verona; find those persons out

Whose names are written there, and to them say,

My house and welcome on their pleasure stay. [Exeunt Capulet and Paris.

Servant. Find them out whose names are written
here! It is written that the shoemaker should meddle
with his yard and the tailor with his last, the 40
fisher with his pencil and the painter with his nets;
but I am sent to find those persons whose names are
here writ, and can never find what names the writing
person hath here writ. I must to the learned.—In
good time.

Enter Benvolio and Romeo

Benvolio. Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning,

One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish;

Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;

One desperate grief cures with another's languish.

50

Take thou some new infection to thy eye,

And the rank poison of the old will die.

Romeo. Your plantain-leaf is excellent for that.

Benvolio. For what, I pray thee?

Romeo. For your broken shin.

Benvolio. Why, Romeo, art thou mad?

Romeo. Not mad, but bound more than a madman is;

Shut up in prison, kept without my food,

Whipp'd and tormented and—Good-den, good fellow.

Servant. God gi' good-den.—I pray, sir, can you
read?

Romeo. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery. 60

Servant. Perhaps you have learned it without book;
but, I pray, can you read any thing you see?

Romeo. Ay, if I know the letters and the language.

Servant. Ye say honestly; rest you merry!

Romeo. Stay, fellow; I can read.

[Reads] 'Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;
County Anselme and his beauteous sisters; the
lady widow of Vitruvio; Signior Placentio and his
lovely nieces; Mercutio and his brother Valentine;
mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters; my fair 70
niece Rosaline; Livia; Signior Valentio and his
cousin Tybalt; Lucio and the lively Helena?'
A fair assembly; whither should they come?

Servant. Up.

Romeo. Whither?

Servant. To supper; to our house.

Romeo. Whose house?

Servant. My master's.

Romeo. Indeed, I should have ask'd you that before.

Servant. Now I'll tell you without asking. My 80
master is the great rich Capulet; and if you be not
of the house of Montagues, I pray, come and crush
a cup of wine. Rest you merry! [Exit.

Benvolio. At this same ancient feast of Capulet's

Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lov'st,

With all the admired beauties of Verona.

Go thither, and with unattainted eye

Compare her face with some that I shall show,

And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

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Romeo. When the devout religion of mine eye

Maintains such falsehood then turn tears to fires;

And these, who often drown'd could never die,

Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!

One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun

Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.

Benvolio. Tut! you saw her fair, none else being by,

Herself pois'd with herself in either eye;

But in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd

Your lady's love against some other maid

100

That I will show you shining at this feast,

And she shall scant show well that now shows best.

Romeo. I'll go along, no such sight to be shown,

But to rejoice in splendour of mine own. [Exeunt.

Scene III.

A Room in Capulet's House

Enter Lady Capulet and Nurse

Lady Capulet. Nurse, where's my daughter? call her forth to me.

Nurse. Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old,

I bade her come.—What, lamb! what, lady-bird!—

God forbid!—Where's this girl?—What, Juliet!

Enter Juliet

Juliet. How now! who calls?

Nurse. Your mother.

Juliet. Madam, I am here.

What is your will?

Lady Capulet. This is the matter:—Nurse, give leave awhile,

We must talk in secret.—Nurse, come back again;

I have remember'd me, thou's hear our counsel.

10

Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.

Nurse. Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.

Lady Capulet. She's not fourteen.

Nurse. I'll lay fourteen of my teeth,—

And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four,—

She is not fourteen. How long is it now

To Lammas-tide?

Lady Capulet. A fortnight and odd days.

Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year,

Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.

Susan and she—God rest all Christian souls!—

Were of an age; well, Susan is with God,

20

She was too good for me; but, as I said,

On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;

That shall she, marry; I remember it well.

'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;

And she was wean'd,—I never shall forget it,—

Of all the days of the year, upon that day,

For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,

Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall;

My lord and you were then at Mantua,—

Nay, I do bear a brain;—but, as I said,

30

When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple

Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool,

To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!

Shake, quoth the dove-house; 'twas no need, I trow,

To bid me trudge.

And since that time it is eleven years,

For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,

She could have run and waddled all about.—

God mark thee to his grace!

Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nurs'd;

40

An I might live to see thee married once,

I have my wish.

Lady Capulet. Marry, that 'marry' is the very theme

I came to talk of.—Tell me, daughter Juliet,

How stands your disposition to be married?

Juliet. It is an honour that I dream not of.

Nurse. An honour! were not I thine only nurse,

I would say thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat.

Lady Capulet. Well, think of marriage now; younger than you

Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,

50

Are made already mothers. By my count,

I was your mother much upon these years

That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief:

The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.

Nurse. A man, young lady! lady, such a man

As all the world—why, he's a man of wax.

Lady Capulet. Verona's summer hath not such a flower.

Nurse. Nay, he's a flower; in faith, a very flower.

Lady Capulet. What say you? can you love the gentleman?

This night you shall behold him at our feast;

60

Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,

And find delight writ there with beauty's pen.

Examine every married lineament

And see how one another lends content;

And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies

Find written in the margent of his eyes.

This precious book of love, this unbound lover,

To beautify him, only lacks a cover;

The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride

For fair without the fair within to hide.

70

That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,

That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;

So shall you share all that he doth possess,

By having him making yourself no less.

Speak briefly, can you like of Paris' love?

Juliet. I'll look to like, if looking liking move;

But no more deep will I endart mine eye

Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.

Enter a Servant

Servant. Madam, the guests are come, supper

served up, you called, my young lady asked for,

80

the nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in

extremity. I must hence to wait; I beseech you,

follow straight.

Lady Capulet. We follow thee.—[Exit Servant.] Juliet, the county stays.

Nurse. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days. [Exeunt.

Scene IV.

A Street

Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six Maskers, Torch-bearers, and others

Romeo. What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?

Or shall we on without apology?

Benvolio. The date is out of such prolixity.

We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf,

Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath,

Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;

Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke

After the prompter, for our entrance

.

But let them measure us by what they will,

10

We'll measure them a measure, and be gone.

Romeo. Give me a torch; I am not for this ambling.

Being but heavy, I will bear the light.

Mercutio. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.

Romeo. Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes

With nimble soles; I have a soul of lead

So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.

Mercutio. You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,

And soar with them above a common bound.

Romeo. I am too sore enpierced with his shaft

20

To soar with his light feathers, and, so bound,

I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe;

Under love's heavy burden do I sink.

Mercutio. And, to sink in it, should you burden love;

Too great oppression for a tender thing.

Romeo. Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,

Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

Mercutio. If love be rough with you, be rough with love;

Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.—

Give me a case to put my visage in; [Putting on a mask]

30

A visor for a visor! what care I

What curious eye doth quote deformities?

Here are the beetle-brows shall blush for me.

Benvolio. Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in

But every man betake him to his legs.

Romeo. A torch for me; let wantons light of heart

Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels,

For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase:

I'll be a candle-holder and look on.

The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done.

40

Mercutio. Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word;

If thou art Dun, we'll draw thee from the mire

Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'st

Up to the ears.—Come, we burn daylight, ho!

Romeo. Nay, that's not so.

Mercutio. I mean, sir, in delay

We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.

Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits

Five times in that ere once in our five wits.

Romeo. And we mean well in going to this mask;

But 'tis no wit to go.

Mercutio.Why, may one ask?

Romeo. I dreamt a dream to-night.

50

Mercutio. And so did I.

Romeo. Well, what was yours?

Mercutio.That dreamers often lie.

Romeo. In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.

Mercutio. O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the fore-finger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies

Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;

Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,

60

The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,

The traces of the smallest spider's web,

The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,

Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,

Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,

Not half so big as a round little worm

Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;

Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut

Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,

Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.

70

And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lover's brains, and then they dream of love;

O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight;

O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,

Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.

Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,

And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;

And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail

80

Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,

Then dreams he of another benefice.

Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon

Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,

And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two

And sleeps again. This is that very Mab

That plats the manes of horses in the night,

90

And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,

Which once untangled much misfortune bodes.

This is she—

Romeo.Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!

Thou talk'st of nothing.

Mercutio.True, I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,

Which is as thin of substance as the air,

And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes

Even now the frozen bosom of the North,

And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,

100

Turning his face to the dew-dropping South.

Benvolio. This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves;

Supper is done, and we shall come too late.

Romeo. I fear, too early; for my mind misgives

Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,

Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

With this night's revels, and expire the term

Of a despised life clos'd in my breast

By some vile forfeit of untimely death,

But He that hath the steerage of my course

110

Direct my sail!—On, lusty gentlemen.

Benvolio. Strike, drum. [Exeunt.

Scene V.

A Hall in Capulet's House

Musicians waiting. Enter Servingmen with napkins

1 Servingman. Where's Potpan, that he helps not
to take away? He shift a trencher! he scrape a
trencher!

2 Servingman. When good manners shall lie all
in one or two men's hands and they unwashed too,
'tis a foul thing.

1 Servingman. Away with the joint-stools, remove
the court-cupboard, look to the plate.—Good thou,
save me a piece of marchpane; and, as thou lovest
10me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and
Nell.—Antony!—and Potpan!

2 Servingman. Ay, boy, ready.

1 Servingman. You are looked for and called for,
asked for and sought for, in the great chamber.

2 Servingman. We cannot be here and there too.
—Cheerly, boys; be brisk a while, and the longer
liver take all.

Enter Capulet, with Juliet and others of his house, meeting the Guests and Maskers

Capulet. Welcome, gentlemen! ladies that have their toes

Unplagu'd with corns will have a bout with you.—

20

Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all

Will now deny to dance? she that makes dainty,

She, I'll swear, hath corns; am I come near ye now?—

Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day

That I have worn a visor and could tell

A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear,

Such as would please; 'tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone.—

You are welcome, gentlemen!—Come, musicians, play.—

A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls.— [Music plays, and they dance.

More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up,

30

And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.—

Ah, sirrah, this unlook'd-for sport comes well.—

Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet,

For you and I are past our dancing days.

How long is 't now since last yourself and I

Were in a mask?

2 Capulet. By 'r lady, thirty years.

Capulet. What, man! 'tis not so much, 'tis not so much!

'Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,

Come Pentecost as quickly as it will,

Some five and twenty years; and then we mask'd.

40

2 Capulet. 'Tis more, 'tis more! His son is elder, sir;

His son is thirty.

Capulet. Will you tell me that?

His son was but a ward two years ago.

Romeo. [To a Servingman] What lady is that, which doth enrich the hand

Of yonder knight?

Servingman. I know not, sir.

Romeo. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!

50

So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows

As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.

The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,

And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.

Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!

For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

Tybalt. This, by his voice, should be a Montague.—

Fetch me my rapier, boy.—What dares the slave

Come hither, cover'd with an antic face,

To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?

60

Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,

To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.

Capulet. Why, how now, kinsman! wherefore storm you so?

Tybalt. Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe,

A villain that is hither come in spite,

To scorn at our solemnity this night.

Capulet. Young Romeo is it?

Tybalt. 'Tis he, that villain Romeo.

Capulet. Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone.

He bears him like a portly gentleman;

And, to say truth, Verona brags of him

70

To be a virtuous and well-govern'd youth.

I would not for the wealth of all the town

Here in my house do him disparagement;

Therefore be patient, take no note of him.

It is my will, the which if thou respect,

Show a fair presence and put off these frowns,

An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.

Tybalt. It fits when such a villain is a guest;

I'll not endure him.

Capulet. He shall be endur'd;

What, goodman boy! I say he shall. Go to;

80

Am I the master here, or you? go to.

You'll not endure him!—God shall mend my soul!—

You'll make a mutiny among my guests!

You will set cock-a-hoop! you'll be the man!

Tybalt. Why, uncle, 'tis a shame.

Capulet Go to, go to;

You are a saucy boy.—Is 't so, indeed?—

This trick may chance to scathe you,—I know what.

You must contrary me! marry, 'tis time.—

Well said, my hearts!—You are a princox; go!

Be quiet, or—More light, more light!—For shame!

90

I'll make you quiet. What!—Cheerly, my hearts!

Tybalt. Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting

Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.

I will withdraw; but this intrusion shall,

Now seeming sweet, convert to bitter gall. [Exit.

Romeo. [To Juliet] If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Juliet. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

100

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Romeo. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Juliet. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

Romeo. O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;

They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Juliet. Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

Romeo. Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

Thus from my lips by thine my sin is purg'd. [Kissing her.

Juliet. Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

Romeo. Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg'd!

Give me my sin again.

112

Juliet. You kiss by the book.

Nurse. Madam, your mother craves a word with you.

Romeo. What is her mother?

Nurse. Marry, bachelor,

Her mother is the lady of the house,

And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous.

I nurs'd her daughter that you talk'd withal;

I tell you, he that can lay hold of her

Shall have the chinks.

Romeo. Is she a Capulet?

120

O dear account! my life is my foe's debt.

Benvolio. Away, be gone; the sport is at the best.

Romeo. Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest.

Capulet. Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone;

We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.—

Is it e'en so? why, then, I thank you all;

I thank you, honest gentlemen; good night.—

More torches here!—Come on then, let's to bed.

Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late;

I'll to my rest. [Exeunt all but Juliet and Nurse.

Juliet. Come hither, nurse. What is yond gentleman?

131

Nurse. The son and heir of old Tiberio.

Juliet. What's he that now is going out of door?

Nurse. Marry, that, I think, be young Petruchio.

Juliet. What's he that follows there, that would not dance?

Nurse. I know not.

Juliet. Go, ask his name.—If he be married,

My grave is like to be my wedding bed.

Nurse. His name is Romeo, and a Montague,

The only son of your great enemy.

140

Juliet. My only love sprung from my only hate!

Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

Prodigious birth of love it is to me,

That I must love a loathed enemy.

Nurse. What's this? what's this?

Juliet. A rhyme I learn'd even now

Of one I danc'd withal. [One calls within 'Juliet.'

Nurse. Anon, anon!—

Come, let's away; the strangers all are gone. [Exeunt.

Capulet's Garden

ACT II

Enter Chorus

Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie,

And young affection gapes to be his heir;

That fair for which love groan'd for and would die,

With tender Juliet match'd, is now not fair.

Now Romeo is belov'd and loves again,

Alike bewitched by the charm of looks,

But to his foe suppos'd he must complain,

And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks.

Being held a foe, he may not have access

To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear;

And she as much in love, her means much less

To meet her new-beloved any where.

But passion lends them power, time means, to meet,

Tempering extremities with extreme sweet. [Exit.

Scene I.

A Lane by the Wall of Capulet's Orchard

Enter Romeo

Romeo. Can I go forward when my heart is here?—

Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.

[He climbs the wall, and leaps down within it.

Enter Benvolio and Mercutio

Benvolio. Romeo! my cousin Romeo! Romeo!

Mercutio. He is wise,

And, on my life, hath stolen him home to bed.

Benvolio. He ran this way, and leap'd this orchard wall;

Call, good Mercutio.

Mercutio. Nay, I'll conjure too.—

Romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover!

Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh!

Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied;

10

Cry but 'Ay me!' pronounce but 'love' and 'dove';

Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,

One nickname for her purblind son and heir,

Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so trim

When King Cophetua lov'd the beggar-maid!—

He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not;

The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.—

I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes,

By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,

That in thy likeness thou appear to us!

20

Benvolio. An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.

Mercutio. This cannot anger him; 'twould anger him

To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle

Of some strange nature, letting it there stand

Till she had laid it and conjur'd it down.

That were some spite; my invocation

Is fair and honest, and in his mistress' name

I conjure only but to raise up him.

Benvolio. Come, he hath hid himself among these trees,

To be consorted with the humorous night;

30

Blind is his love and best befits the dark.

Mercutio. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.—

Romeo, good night.—I'll to my truckle-bed;

This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep.

Come, shall we go?

Benvolio.Go, then; for 'tis in vain

To seek him here that means not to be found. [Exeunt.

Scene II.

Capulet's Orchard

Enter Romeo

Romeo. He jests at scars that never felt a wound.— [Juliet appears above at a window.

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.—

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief

That thou her maid art far more fair than she.

Be not her maid, since she is envious.

Her vestal livery is but sick and green,

And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.—

10

It is my lady, O, it is my love!

O, that she knew she were!—

She speaks, yet she says nothing; what of that?

Her eye discourses; I will answer it.

I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks.

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,

Having some business, do entreat her eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

What if her eyes were there, they in her head?

The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,

20

As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

O, that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!

Juliet. Ay me!

Romeo. She speaks.—

O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art

As glorious to this night, being o'er my head,

As is a winged messenger of heaven

Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes

30

Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him,

When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds

And sails upon the bosom of the air.

Juliet. O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name;

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love

And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

Romeo. [Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

Juliet. 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

40

What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,

Retain that dear perfection which he owes

Without that title.—Romeo, doff thy name,

And for that name, which is no part of thee,

Take all myself.

Romeo. I take thee at thy word.

50

Call me but love, and I'll be new baptiz'd;

Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

Juliet. What man art thou that thus bescreen'd in night

So stumblest on my counsel?

Romeo. By a name

I know not how to tell thee who I am.

My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,

Because it is an enemy to thee;

Had I it written, I would tear the word.

Juliet. My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words

Of that tongue's utterance, yet I know the sound.—

60

Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?

Romeo. Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.

Juliet. How cam'st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?

The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,

And the place death, considering who thou art,

If any of my kinsmen find thee here.

Romeo. With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls,

For stony limits cannot hold love out,

And what love can do that dares love attempt;

Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.

70

Juliet. If they do see thee, they will murther thee.

Romeo. Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye

Than twenty of their swords; look thou but sweet,

And I am proof against their enmity.

Juliet. I would not for the world they saw thee here.

Romeo. I have night's cloak to hide me from their eyes;

And but thou love me, let them find me here.

My life were better ended by their hate

Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.

Juliet. By whose direction found'st thou out this place?

Romeo. By love, that first did prompt me to inquire;

81

He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes.

I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far

As that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea,

I would adventure for such merchandise.

Juliet. Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,

Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek

For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night.

Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny

What I have spoke; but farewell compliment!

90

Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ay,

And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swear'st,

Thou mayst prove false; at lovers' perjuries,

They say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,

If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully;

Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,

I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay,

So thou wilt woo, but else not for the world.

In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,

And therefore thou mayst think my haviour light;

100

But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true

Than those that have more cunning to be strange.

I should have been more strange, I must confess,

But that thou overheard'st, ere I was ware,

My true love's passion; therefore pardon me,

And not impute this yielding to light love,

Which the dark night hath so discovered.

Romeo. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear

That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—

Juliet. O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,

110

That monthly changes in her circled orb,

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

Romeo. What shall I swear by?

Juliet. Do not swear at all;

Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,

Which is the god of my idolatry,

And I'll believe thee.

Romeo. If my heart's dear love—

Juliet. Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee,

I have no joy of this contract to-night;

It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden,

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

120

Ere one can say it lightens. Sweet, good night!

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest

Come to thy heart as that within my breast!

Romeo. O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?

Juliet. What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?

Romeo. The exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine.

Juliet. I gave thee mine before thou didst request it;

And yet I would it were to give again.

130

Romeo. Wouldst thou withdraw it? for what purpose, love?

Juliet. But to be frank and give it thee again;

And yet I wish but for the thing I have.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite. [Nurse calls within.

I hear some noise within; dear love, adieu!—

Anon, good nurse!—Sweet Montague, be true.

Stay but a little, I will come again. [Exit.

Romeo. O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard,

140

Being in night, all this is but a dream,

Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.

Re-enter Juliet, above

Juliet. Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed.

If that thy bent of love be honourable,

Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,

By one that I'll procure to come to thee,

Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;

And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay,

And follow thee my lord throughout the world.

Nurse. [Within] Madam!

150

Juliet. I come, anon.—But if thou mean'st not well,

I do beseech thee—

Nurse. [Within] Madam!

Juliet. By and by, I come.—

To cease thy suit and leave me to my grief;

To-morrow will I send.

Romeo. So thrive my soul—

Juliet. A thousand times good night! [Exit.

Romeo. A thousand times the worse, to want thy light.—

Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books,

But love from love toward school with heavy looks. [Retiring slowly.

Re-enter Juliet, above

Juliet. Hist! Romeo, hist!—O, for a falconer's voice,

160

To lure this tassel-gentle back again!

Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud;

Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,

And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine

With repetition of my Romeo's name.

Romeo. It is my soul that calls upon my name;

How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,

Like softest music to attending ears!

Juliet. Romeo!

Romeo. My dear?

Juliet. At what o'clock to-morrow

Shall I send to thee?

Romeo. At the hour of nine.

170

Juliet. I will not fail; 't is twenty years till then.

I have forgot why I did call thee back.

Romeo. Let me stand here till thou remember it.

Juliet. I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,

Remembering how I love thy company.

Romeo. And I'll still stay, to have thee still forget,

Forgetting any other home but this.

Juliet. 'T is almost morning; I would have thee gone,

And yet no farther than a wanton's bird,

Who lets it hop a little from her hand,

180

Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,

And with a silk thread plucks it back again,

So loving-jealous of his liberty.

Romeo. I would I were thy bird.

Juliet. Sweet, so would I;

Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.

Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow

That I shall say good night till it be morrow. [Exit above.

Romeo. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast!

Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!

189

Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell,

His help to crave and my dear hap to tell. [Exit.

Scene III.

Friar Laurence's Cell

EnterFriar Laurence, with a basket

Friar Laurence. The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,

Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,

And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels

From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels.

Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,

The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,

I must up-fill this osier cage of ours

With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.

The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;

10

What is her burying grave that is her womb,

And from her womb children of divers kind

We sucking on her natural bosom find,

Many for many virtues excellent,

None but for some, and yet all different.

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities!

For nought so vile that on the earth doth live

But to the earth some special good doth give;

Nor aught so good but, strain'd from that fair use,

20

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,

And vice sometime's by action dignified.

Within the infant rind of this weak flower

Poison hath residence, and medicine power;

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part,

Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs,—grace and rude will;

And where the worser is predominant,

30

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

Enter Romeo

Romeo. Good morrow, father.

Friar Laurence. Benedicite!

What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?—

Young son, it argues a distemper'd head

So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed.

Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,

And where care lodges sleep will never lie;

But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain

Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.

Therefore thy earliness doth me assure

40

Thou art up-rous'd with some distemperature;

Or if not so, then here I hit it right,

Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.

Romeo. That last is true; the sweeter rest was mine.

Friar Laurence. God pardon sin! wast thou with Rosaline?

Romeo. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? no;

I have forgot that name and that name's woe.

Friar Laurence. That's my good son; but where

hast thou been, then?

Romeo. I 'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again.

I have been feasting with mine enemy,

50

Where on a sudden one hath wounded me

That's by me wounded; both our remedies

Within thy help and holy physic lies.

I bear no hatred, blessed man, for, lo,

My intercession likewise steads my foe.

Friar Laurence. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;

Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.

Romeo. Then plainly know, my heart's dear love is set

On the fair daughter of rich Capulet.

As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;

60

And all combin'd, save what thou must combine

By holy marriage. When and where and how

We met, we woo'd, and made exchange of vow,

I'll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,

That thou consent to marry us to-day.

Friar Laurence. Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!

Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear,

So soon forsaken? young men's love then lies

Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.

Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine

70

Hath wash'd thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!

How much salt water thrown away in waste,

To season love that of it doth not taste!

The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,

Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears;

Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit

Of an old tear that is not wash'd off yet.

If e'er thou wast thyself and these woes thine,

Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline;

And art thou chang'd? pronounce this sentence then:

80

Women may fall when there's no strength in men.

Romeo. Thou chidd'st me oft for loving Rosaline.

Friar Laurence. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

Romeo. And bad'st me bury love.

Friar Laurence. Not in a grave,

To lay one in, another out to have.

Romeo. I pray thee, chide not; she whom I love now

Doth grace for grace and love for love allow,

The other did not so.

Friar Laurence. O, she knew well

Thy love did read by rote and could not spell.

But come, young waverer, come, go with me,

90

In one respect I'll thy assistant be;

For this alliance may so happy prove

To turn your households' rancour to pure love.

Romeo. O, let us hence! I stand on sudden haste.

Friar Laurence. Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast. [Exeunt.

Scene IV.

A Street

Enter Benvolio and Mercutio

Mercutio. Where the devil should this Romeo be?

Came he not home to-night?

Benvolio. Not to his father's; I spoke with his man.

Mercutio. Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline,

Torments him so that he will sure run mad.

Benvolio. Tybalt, the kinsman of old Capulet,

Hath sent a letter to his father's house.

Mercutio. A challenge, on my life.

Benvolio. Romeo will answer it.

10

Mercutio. Any man that can write may answer

a letter.

Benvolio. Nay, he will answer the letter's master,

how he dares, being dared.

Mercutio. Alas, poor Romeo! he is already dead;

stabbed with a white wench's black eye; shot thorough

the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his

heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft; and

is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

Benvolio. Why, what is Tybalt?

20

Mercutio. More than prince of cats, I can tell you.

O, he is the courageous captain of compliments! He

fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance,

and proportion; rests me his minim rest, one, two,

and the third in your bosom; the very butcher of a

silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the

very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah,

the immortal passado! the punto reverso! the hay!

Benvolio. The what?

Mercutio. The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting

30

fantasticoes, these new tuners of accents! 'By Jesu,

a very good blade! a very tall man!'—Why, is not

this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be

thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers,

these pardonnez-mois, who stand so much

on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the

old bench? O, their bons, their bons!

Enter Romeo

Benvolio. Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo.

Mercutio. Without his roe, like a dried herring. O

flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! Now is he for the

40

numbers that Petrarch flowed in; Laura to his lady

was but a kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better

love to be-rhyme her; Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra

a gypsy; Helen and Hero hildings and harlots;

Thisbe a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose.—Signior

Romeo, bon jour! there's a French salutation

to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit

fairly last night.

Romeo. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit

did I give you?

50

Mercutio. The slip, sir, the slip; can you not

conceive?

Romeo. Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was

great; and in such a case as mine a man may strain

courtesy.

Mercutio. That's as much as to say, such a case

as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams.

Romeo. Meaning, to curtsy.

Mercutio. Thou hast most kindly hit it.

Romeo. A most courteous exposition.

60

Mercutio. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.

Romeo. Pink for flower.

Mercutio. Right.

Romeo. Why, then is my pump well flowered.

Mercutio. Well said; follow me this jest now till

thou hast worn out thy pump, that when the single

sole of it is worn the jest may remain after the wearing

sole singular.

Romeo. O single-souled jest, solely singular for

the singleness!

70

Mercutio. Come between us, good Benvolio; my

wits fail.

Romeo. Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or

I'll cry a match.

Mercutio. Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase,

I have done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in

one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole

five. Was I with you there for the goose?

Romeo. Thou wast never with me for any thing

when thou was not there for the goose.

80

Mercutio. I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.

Romeo. Nay, good goose, bite not.

Mercutio. Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is

a most sharp sauce.

Romeo. And is it not well served in to a sweet

goose?

Mercutio. O, here's a wit of cheveril, that stretches

from an inch narrow to an ell broad!

Romeo. I stretch it out for that word 'broad,'

which added to the goose proves thee far and wide

90

a broad goose.

Mercutio. Why, is not this better now than groaning

for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou

Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well

as by nature; for this drivelling love is like a great

natural,—

Benvolio. Stop there, stop there.

Romeo. Here's goodly gear!

Enter Nurse and Peter

Mercutio. A sail, a sail!

Benvolio. Two, two; a shirt and a smock.

100Nurse. Peter!

Peter. Anon!

Nurse. My fan, Peter.

Mercutio. Good Peter, to hide her face; for her
fan's the fairer of the two.

Nurse. God ye good morrow, gentlemen.

Mercutio. God ye good den, fair gentlewoman.

Nurse. Is it good den?

Mercutio. 'Tis no less, I tell you, for the hand of
the dial is now upon the prick of noon.

110Nurse. Out upon you! what a man are you!

Romeo. One, gentlewoman, that God hath made
for himself to mar.

Nurse. By my troth, it is well said; 'for himself
to mar,' quoth a'?—Gentlemen, can any of you tell
me where I may find the young Romeo?

Romeo. I can tell you; but young Romeo will be
older when you have found him than he was when
you sought him. I am the youngest of that name,
for fault of a worse.

120Nurse. You say well.

Mercutio. Yea, is the worst well? very well took,
i' faith; wisely, wisely.

Nurse. If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence
with you.

Benvolio. She will indite him to some supper.

Mercutio. So ho!

Romeo. What hast thou found?

Mercutio. No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a
lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be
130spent.—Romeo, will you come to your father's?
we'll to dinner thither.

Romeo. I will follow you.

Mercutio. Farewell, ancient lady; farewell, [singing]
'lady, lady, lady!'
[Exeunt Mercutio and Benvolio.

Nurse. Marry, farewell!—I pray you, sir, what
saucy merchant was this, that was so full of his
ropery?

Romeo. A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear
himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than
140he will stand to in a month.

Nurse. An a' speak any thing against me, I'll take
him down an a' were lustier than he is, and twenty
such Jacks; and if I cannot, I'll find those that
shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills; I
am none of his skains-mates.—And thou must stand
by too, and suffer every knave to use me at his
pleasure?

Peter. I saw no man use you at his pleasure; if I
had, my weapon should quickly have been out, I
150warrant you. I dare draw as soon as another man,
if I see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law on
my side.

Nurse. Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every
part about me quivers. Scurvy knave!—Pray you,
sir, a word: and as I told you, my young lady bade
me inquire you out; what she bade me say, I will
keep to myself; but first let me tell ye, if ye should
lead her in a fool's paradise, as they say, it were a
very gross kind of behaviour, as they say; for the
160gentlewoman is young, and, therefore, if you should
deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be
offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.

Romeo. Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress.
I protest unto thee—

Nurse. Good heart, and, i' faith, I will tell her as
much. Lord, Lord, she will be a joyful woman!

Romeo. What wilt thou tell her, nurse? thou dost
not mark me.

Nurse. I will tell her, sir, that you do protest,
170which, as I take it, is a gentlemanlike offer.

Romeo. Bid her devise some means to come to shrift

This afternoon;

And there she shall at Friar Laurence' cell

Be shriv'd and married. Here is for thy pains.

Nurse. No, truly, sir, not a penny.

Romeo. Go to; I say you shall.

Nurse. This afternoon, sir? well, she shall be there.

Romeo. And stay, good nurse; behind the abbey wall

Within this hour my man shall be with thee,

180

And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair,

Which to the high top-gallant of my joy

Must be my convoy in the secret night.

Farewell; be trusty, and I'll quit thy pains.

Farewell; commend me to thy mistress.

Nurse. Now God in heaven bless thee! Hark you, sir.

Romeo. What say'st thou, my dear nurse?

Nurse. Is your man secret? Did you ne'er hear say,

Two may keep counsel, putting one away?

Romeo. I warrant thee, my man's as true as steel.

190Nurse. Well, sir; my mistress is the sweetest lady—Lord,
Lord! when 'twas a little prating thing—O,
there is a nobleman in town, one Paris, that would
fain lay knife aboard; but she, good soul, had as
lieve see a toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger
her sometimes, and tell her that Paris is the properer
man; but, I'll warrant you, when I say so, she looks
as pale as any clout in the versal world. Doth not
rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter?

Romeo. Ay, nurse; what of that? both with an R.

200Nurse. Ah, mocker! that's the dog's name; R is
for the—No, I know it begins with some other
letter—and she hath the prettiest sententious of it,
of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to
hear it.

Romeo. Commend me to thy lady.

Nurse. Ay, a thousand times.—[Exit Romeo] Peter!

Peter. Anon.

Nurse. Before, and apace.
[Exeunt.

Scene V.

Capulet's Orchard

Enter Juliet

Juliet. The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse;

In half an hour she promis'd to return.

Perchance she cannot meet him; that's not so.

O, she is lame! love's heralds should be thoughts,

Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams

Driving back shadows over lowering hills;

Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw Love,

And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.

Now is the sun upon the highmost hill

10

Of this day's journey, and from nine till twelve

Is three long hours, yet she is not come.

Had she affections and warm youthful blood,

She would be as swift in motion as a ball;

My words would bandy her to my sweet love,

And his to me;

But old folks, many feign as they were dead,

Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.—

Enter Nurse and Peter

O God, she comes!—O honey nurse, what news?

Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.

Nurse. Peter, stay at the gate. [Exit Peter.

21

Juliet. Now, good sweet nurse,—O Lord, why look'st thou sad?

Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily;

If good, thou sham'st the music of sweet news

By playing it to me with so sour a face.

Nurse. I am aweary, give me leave awhile.

Fie, how my bones ache! what a jaunt have I had!

Juliet. I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news.

Nay, come, I pray thee, speak; good, good nurse, speak.

Nurse. Jesu, what haste? can you not stay awhile?

30

Do you not see that I am out of breath?

Juliet. How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath

To say to me that thou art out of breath?

The excuse that thou dost make in this delay

Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse.

Is thy news good, or bad? answer to that;

Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance.

Let me be satisfied, is 't good or bad?

Nurse. Well, you have made a simple choice; you
know not how to choose a man. Romeo! no, not
40he; though his face be better than any man's, yet his
leg excels all men's; and for a hand, and a foot, and
a body, though they be not to be talked on, yet they
are past compare. He is not the flower of courtesy,
but, I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy
ways, wench; serve God. What, have you dined at
home?

Juliet. No, no; but all this did I know before.

What says he of our marriage? what of that?

Nurse. Lord, how my head aches! what a head have I!

50

It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.

My back o' t'other side,—O, my back, my back!

Beshrew your heart for sending me about,

To catch my death with jaunting up and down!

Juliet. I' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well.

Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?

Nurse. Your love says, like an honest gentleman,

And a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome,

And, I warrant, a virtuous,—Where is your mother?

Juliet. Where is my mother! why, she is within;

60

Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest!

'Your love says, like an honest gentleman,

Where is your mother?'

Nurse. O God's lady dear!

Are you so hot? marry, come up, I trow;

Is this the poultice for my aching bones?

Henceforward do your messages yourself.

Juliet. Here's such a coil!—come, what says Romeo?

Nurse. Have you got leave to go to shrift to-day?

Juliet. I have.

Nurse. Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence' cell;

70

There stays a husband to make you a wife.

Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks,

They'll be in scarlet straight at any news.

Hie you to church; I must another way,

To fetch a ladder, by the which your love

Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark.

I am the drudge, and toil in your delight.

Go; I'll to dinner; hie you to the cell.

Juliet. Hie to high fortune!—Honest nurse, farewell. [Exeunt.

Scene VI.

Friar Laurence's Cell

Enter Friar Laurence and Romeo

Friar Laurence. So smile the heavens upon this holy act

That after hours with sorrow chide us not!

Romeo. Amen, amen! but come what sorrow can,

It cannot countervail the exchange of joy

That one short minute gives me in her sight.

Do thou but close our hands with holy words,

Then love—devouring death do what he dare,

It is enough I may but call her mine.

Friar Laurence. These violent delights have violent ends,

10

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,

Which as they kiss consume; the sweetest honey

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,

And in the taste confounds the appetite.

Therefore love moderately, long love doth so;

Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.—

Enter Juliet

Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot

Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint!

A lover may bestride the gossamer

That idles in the wanton summer air,

20

And yet not fall, so light is vanity.

Juliet. Good even to my ghostly confessor.

Friar Laurence. Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.

Juliet. As much to him, else is his thanks too much.

Romeo. Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy

Be heap'd like mine and that thy skill be more

To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath

This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue

Unfold the imagin'd happiness that both

Receive in either by this dear encounter.

Juliet. Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,

31

Brags of his substance, not of ornament.

They are but beggars that can count their worth;

But my true love is grown to such excess

I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth.

Friar Laurence. Come, come with me, and we will make short work;

For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone

Till holy church incorporate two in one. [Exeunt.

Loggia of Capulet's House

ACT III

Scene I.

A Public Place

Enter Mercutio, Benvolio, Page, and Servants

Benvolio. I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire.

The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,

And if we meet we shall not scape a brawl;

For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.

Mercutio. Thou art like one of those fellows that
when he enters the confines of a tavern claps me his
sword upon the table, and says 'God send me no
need of thee!' and by the operation of the second
cup draws him on the drawer, when indeed there is
10no need.

Benvolio. Am I like such a fellow?

Mercutio. Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in
thy mood as any in Italy, and as soon moved to be
moody, and as soon moody to be moved.

Benvolio. And what to?

Mercutio. Nay, an there were two such, we should
have none shortly, for one would kill the other.
Thou! why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath
a hair more, or a hair less, in his beard than thou
20hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking
nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast
hazel eyes; what eye but such an eye would spy out
such a quarrel? Thy head is as full of quarrels as
an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been
beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling. Thou
hast quarrelled with a man for coughing in the street,
because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain
asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a
tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter?
30with another for tying his new shoes with old riband?
and yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling!

Benvolio. An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art,
any man should buy the fee-simple of my life for an
hour and a quarter.

Mercutio. The fee-simple! O simple!

Benvolio. By my head, here come the Capulets.

Mercutio. By my heel, I care not.

Enter Tybalt and others

Tybalt. Follow me close, for I will speak to them.—
Gentlemen, good den; a word with one of you.

40Mercutio. And but one word with one of us?
couple it with something; make it a word and a
blow.

Tybalt. You shall find me apt enough to that, sir,
an you will give me occasion.

Mercutio. Could you not take some occasion without
giving?

Tybalt. Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo,—

Mercutio. Consort! what, dost thou make us
minstrels? an thou make minstrels of us, look to
50hear nothing but discords; here's my fiddlestick,
here's that shall make you dance. Zounds, consort!

Benvolio. We talk here in the public haunt of men.

Either withdraw unto some private place,

Or reason coldly of your grievances,

Or else depart; here all eyes gaze on us.

Mercutio. Men's eyes were made to look, and let them gaze;

I will not budge for no man's pleasure, I.

Enter Romeo

Tybalt. Well, peace be with you, sir; here comes my man.

Mercutio. But I'll be hang'd, sir, if he wear your livery.

60

Marry, go before to field, he 'll be your follower;

Your worship in that sense may call him man.

Tybalt. Romeo, the hate I bear thee can afford

No better term than this,—thou art a villain.

Romeo. Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee

Doth much excuse the appertaining rage

To such a greeting. Villain am I none,

Therefore farewell; I see thou know'st me not.

Tybalt. Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries

That thou hast done me; therefore turn and draw.

70

Romeo. I do protest, I never injur'd thee,

But love thee better than thou canst devise

Till thou shalt know the reason of my love;

And so, good Capulet,—which name I tender

As dearly as my own,—be satisfied.

Mercutio. O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!

A la stoccata carries it away.— [Draws.

Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?

Tybalt. What wouldst thou have with me?

Mercutio. Good king of cats, nothing but one of
80your nine lives; that I mean to make bold withal,
and, as you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest
of the eight. Will you pluck your sword out of his
pilcher by the ears? make haste, lest mine be about
your ears ere it be out.

Tybalt. I am for you. [Drawing.
Romeo. Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.

Mercutio. Come, sir, your passado. [They fight.

Romeo. Draw, Benvolio; beat down their weapons.—

Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage!

90

Tybalt, Mercutio, the prince expressly hath

Forbid this bandying in Verona streets.

Hold, Tybalt! good Mercutio! [Exeunt Tybalt and his partisans.

Mercutio.I am hurt.

A plague o' both your houses! I am sped.

Is he gone, and hath nothing?

Benvolio. What, art thou hurt?

Mercutio. Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough.—

Where is my page?—Go, villain, fetch a surgeon. [Exit Page.

Romeo. Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.

Mercutio. No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so
wide as a church-door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve;
100ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave
man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world.—A
plague o' both your houses!—Zounds, a dog, a rat,
a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart,
a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of
arithmetic!—Why the devil came you between us?
I was hurt under your arm.

Romeo. I thought all for the best.

Mercutio. Help me into some house, Benvolio,

Or I shall faint.—A plague o' both your houses!

110

They have made worms' meat of me. I have it,

And soundly too;—your houses! [Exeunt Mercutio and Benvolio

Romeo. This gentleman, the prince's near ally,

My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt

In my behalf; my reputation stain'd

With Tybalt's slander,—Tybalt, that an hour

Hath been my cousin!—O sweet Juliet,

Thy beauty hath made me effeminate,

And in my temper soften'd valour's steel!

Re-enter Benvolio

Benvolio. O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio's dead!

120

That gallant spirit hath aspir'd the clouds,

Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.

Romeo. This day's black fate on more days doth depend;

This but begins the woe others must end.

Benvolio. Here comes the furious Tybalt back again.

Re-enter Tybalt

Romeo. Alive, in triumph! and Mercutio slain!

Away to heaven, respective lenity,

And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now!—

Now, Tybalt, take the villain back again

That late thou gav'st me! for Mercutio's soul

130

Is but a little way above our heads,

Staying for thine to keep him company;

Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him.

Tybalt. Thou, wretched boy, that didst consort him here,

Shalt with him hence.

Romeo. This shall determine that. [They fight; Tybalt falls.

Benvolio. Romeo, away, be gone!

The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain.

Stand not amaz'd; the prince will doom thee death

If thou art taken. Hence, be gone, away!

Romeo. O, I am fortune's fool!

Benvolio. Why dost thou stay? [Exit Romeo.

Enter Citizens, etc.

140

1 Citizen. Which way ran he that kill'd Mercutio?

Tybalt, that murtherer, which way ran he?

Benvolio. There lies that Tybalt.

1 Citizen. Up, sir, go with me;

I charge thee in the prince's name, obey.

Enter Prince, attended; Montague, Capulet, their Wives, and others

Prince. Where are the vile beginners of this fray?

Benvolio. O noble prince, I can discover all

The unlucky manage of this fatal brawl.

There lies the man, slain by young Romeo,

That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.

Lady Capulet. Tybalt, my cousin! O my brother's child!

150

O prince! O cousin! husband! O, the blood is spilt

Of my dear kinsman!—Prince, as thou art true,

For blood of ours shed blood of Montague.—

O cousin, cousin!

Prince. Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?

Benvolio. Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo's hand did slay;

Romeo that spoke him fair, bade him bethink

How nice the quarrel was, and urg'd withal

Your high displeasure. All this, uttered

With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow'd,

160

Could not take truce with the unruly spleen

Of Tybalt deaf to peace, but that he tilts

With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast,

Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point,

And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats

Cold death aside, and with the other sends

It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity

Retorts it. Romeo he cries aloud,

'Hold, friends! friends, part!' and swifter than his tongue,

His agile arm beats down their fatal points,

170

And 'twixt them rushes, underneath whose arm

An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life

Of stout Mercutio; and then Tybalt fled,

But by and by comes back to Romeo,

Who had but newly entertain'd revenge,

And to 't they go like lightning, for, ere I

Could draw to part them, was stout Tybalt slain,

And, as he fell, did Romeo turn and fly.

This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.

Lady Capulet. He is a kinsman to the Montague;

180

Affection makes him false, he speaks not true.

Some twenty of them fought in this black strife,

And all those twenty could but kill one life.

I beg for justice, which thou, prince, must give;

Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.

Prince. Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio;

Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?

Montague. Not Romeo, prince, he was Mercutio's friend;

His fault concludes but what the law should end,

The life of Tybalt.

Prince. And for that offence

190

Immediately we do exile him hence.

I have an interest in your hate's proceeding,

My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding;

But I'll amerce you with so strong a fine

That you shall all repent the loss of mine.

I will be deaf to pleading and excuses;

Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses.

Therefore use none; let Romeo hence in haste,

Else, when he's found, that hour is his last.

Bear hence this body and attend our will;

200

Mercy but murthers, pardoning those that kill. [Exeunt.

Scene II.

Capulet's Orchard

Enter Juliet

Juliet. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,

Towards Phœbus' lodging; such a waggoner

As Phaethon would whip you to the west

And bring in cloudy night immediately.—

Spread thy close curtain, love-performing Night,

That runaways' eyes may wink, and Romeo

Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.—

Lovers can see to do their amorous rites

By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,

10

It best agrees with night.—Come, civil Night,

Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,

And learn me how to lose a winning match,

Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.

Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,

With thy black mantle, till strange love grown bold

Think true love acted simple modesty.

Come, Night, come, Romeo, come, thou day in night,

For thou wilt lie upon the wings of Night

Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.

Come, gentle Night, come, loving, black-brow'd Night,

21

Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night

And pay no worship to the garish sun.—

O, I have bought the mansion of a love,

But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,

Not yet enjoy'd. So tedious is this day

As is the night before some festival

30

To an impatient child that hath new robes

And may not wear them.—O, here comes my nurse,

And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks

But Romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence.—

Enter Nurse, with cords

Now, nurse, what news? What hast thou there? the cords

That Romeo bid thee fetch?

Nurse. Ay, ay, the Cords. [Throws them down.

Juliet. Ay me! what news? why dost thou wring thy hands?

Nurse. Ah, well-a-day! he's dead, he's dead, he's dead!

We are undone, lady, we are undone!

Alack the day! he's gone, he's kill'd, he's dead!

Juliet. Can heaven be so envious?

40

Nurse. Romeo can,

Though heaven cannot.—O Romeo, Romeo!—

Who ever would have thought it?—Romeo!

Juliet. What devil art thou, that dost torment me thus?

This torture should be roar'd in dismal hell.

Hath Romeo slain himself? say thou but ay,

And that bare vowel I shall poison more

Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.

I am not I, if there be such an I,

Or those eyes shut that make thee answer ay.

50

If he be slain, say ay; or if not, no.

Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.

Nurse. I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes—

God save the mark!—here on his manly breast;

A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse,

Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub'd in blood,

All in gore-blood; I swounded at the sight.

Juliet. O, break, my heart! poor bankrupt, break at once!

To prison, eyes, ne'er look on liberty!

Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here,

60

And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!

Nurse. O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had!

O courteous Tybalt! honest gentleman!

That ever I should live to see thee dead!

Juliet. What storm is this that blows so contrary?

Is Romeo slaughter'd, and is Tybalt dead?

My dear-lov'd cousin, and my dearer lord?

Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom!

For who is living if those two are gone?

Nurse. Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished;

70

Romeo that kill'd him, he is banished.

Juliet. O God! did Romeo's hand shed Tybalt's blood?

Nurse. It did, it did; alas the day, it did!

Juliet. O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face;

Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?

Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!

Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!

Despised substance of divinest show!

Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,

A damned saint, an honourable villain!

80

O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell,

When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend

In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?

Was ever book containing such vile matter

So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell

In such a gorgeous palace!

Nurse.There's no trust,

No faith, no honesty in men; all perjur'd,

All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.—

Ah, where's my man? give me some aqua vitæ.—

These griefs, these woes, these sorrows, make me old.

Shame come to Romeo!

90

Juliet.Blister'd be thy tongue

For such a wish! he was not born to shame;

Upon his brow shame is asham'd to sit,

For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd

Sole monarch of the universal earth.

O, what a beast was I to chide at him!

Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin?

Juliet. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?—

Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name

When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?

100

But, wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?

That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband.

Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring;

Your tributary drops belong to woe,

Which you mistaking offer up to joy.

My husband lives that Tybalt would have slain,

And Tybalt's dead that would have slain my husband.

All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then?

Some word there was, worser than Tybalt's death,

That murther'd me. I would forget it fain,

110

But, O, it presses to my memory,

Like damned guilty deeds to sinners' minds:

'Tybalt is dead, and Romeo—banished!'

That 'banished,' that one word 'banished,'

Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt's death

Was woe enough, if it had ended there;

Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship

And needly will be rank'd with other griefs,

Why follow'd not, when she said Tybalt's dead,

Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both,

120

Which modern lamentation might have mov'd?

But with a rearward following Tybalt's death,

'Romeo is banished!'—to speak that word,

Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,

All slain, all dead. 'Romeo is banished!'

There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,

In that word's death; no words can that woe sound.—

Where is my father, and my mother, nurse?

Nurse. Weeping and wailing over Tybalt's corse.

Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.

130

Juliet. Wash they his wounds with tears; mine shall be spent,

When theirs are dry, for Romeo's banishment.

Take up those cords.—Poor ropes, you are beguil'd,

Both you and I, for Romeo is exil'd;

He made you for a highway to my bed,

But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.

Nurse. Hie to your chamber. I'll find Romeo

To comfort you; I wot well where he is.

Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night.

I'll to him; he is hid at Laurence' cell.

Juliet. O, find him! give this ring to my true knight,

141

And bid him come to take his last farewell. [Exeunt.

Scene III.

Friar Laurence's Cell

Enter Friar Laurence

Friar Laurence. Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man.

Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts,

And thou art wedded to calamity.

Enter Romeo

Romeo. Father, what news? what is the prince's doom?

What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand,

That I yet know not?

Friar Laurence. Too familiar

Is my dear son with such sour company;

I bring thee tidings of the prince's doom.

Romeo. What less than doomsday is the prince's doom?

10

Friar Laurence. A gentler judgment vanish'd from his lips,

Not body's death, but body's banishment.

Romeo. Ha, banishment! be merciful, say death,

For exile hath more terror in his look,

Much more than death; do not say banishment.

Friar Laurence. Hence from Verona art thou banished;

Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.

Romeo. There is no world without Verona walls,

But purgatory, torture, hell itself.

Hence banished is banish'd from the world,

20

And world's exile is death. Then banished

Is death misterm'd; calling death banishment

Thou cutt'st my head off with a golden axe,

And smil'st upon the stroke that murthers me.

Friar Laurence. O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness!

Thy fault our law calls death; but the kind prince,

Taking thy part, hath rush'd aside the law,

And turn'd that black word death to banishment.

This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not.

Romeo. 'Tis torture, and not mercy; heaven is here,

30

Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog

And little mouse, every unworthy thing,

Live here in heaven and may look on her,

But Romeo may not. More validity,

More honourable state, more courtship lives

In carrion-flies than Romeo. They may seize

On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand

And steal immortal blessing from her lips,

Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,

Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin;

40

But Romeo may not, he is banished.

This may flies do, when I from this must fly;

They are free men, but I am banished.

And say'st thou yet that exile is not death?

Hadst thou no poison mix'd, no sharp-ground knife,

No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean,

But 'banished' to kill me?—Banished!

O friar, the damned use that word in hell,

Howling attends it; how hast thou the heart,

Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,

50

A sin-absolver, and my friend profess'd,

To mangle me with that word 'banished'?

Friar Laurence. Thou fond mad man, hear me but speak a word.

Romeo. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.

Friar Laurence. I'll give thee armour to keep off that word;

Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy,

To comfort thee, though thou art banished.

Romeo. Yet 'banished'? Hang up philosophy!

Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,

Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,

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It helps not, it prevails not; talk no more.

Friar Laurence. O, then I see that madmen have no ears.

Romeo. How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?

Friar Laurence. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.

Romeo. Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.

Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,

An hour but married, Tybalt murthered,

Doting like me and like me banished,

Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,

And fall upon the ground, as I do now,

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Taking the measure of an unmade grave. [Knocking within.

Friar Laurence. Arise; one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.

Romeo. Not I; unless the breath of heart-sick groans

Mist-like infold me from the search of eyes. [Knocking.

Friar Laurence. Hark, how they knock!—Who's there?—Romeo, arise;

Thou wilt be taken.—Stay awhile!—Stand up; [Knocking.

Run to my study.—By and by!—God's will,

What simpleness is this!—I come, I come! [Knocking.

Who knocks so hard? whence come you? what's your will?

Nurse. [Within] Let me come in and you shall know my errand;

I come from Lady Juliet.

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Friar Laurence.Welcome, then.

Enter Nurse

Nurse. O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar,

Where is my lady's lord, where's Romeo?

Friar Laurence. There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.

Nurse. O, he is even in my mistress' case,

Just in her case!

Friar Laurence. O woful sympathy!

Piteous predicament!

Nurse.Even so lies she,

Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering.—

Stand up, stand up; stand, an you be a man.

For Juliet's sake, for her sake, rise and stand.

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Why should you fall into so deep an O?

Romeo. Nurse!

Nurse. Ah sir! ah sir! Well, death's the end of all.

Romeo. Spak'st thou of Juliet? how is it with her?

Doth she not think me an old murtherer,

Now I have stain'd the childhood of our joy

With blood remov'd but little from her own?

Where is she? and how doth she? and what says

My conceal'd lady to our cancell'd love?

Nurse. O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps;

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And now falls on her bed; and then starts up,

And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,

And then down falls again.

Romeo.As if that name,

Shot from the deadly level of a gun,

Did murther her, as that name's cursed hand

Murther'd her kinsman.—O, tell me, friar, tell me,

In what vile part of this anatomy

Doth my name lodge? tell me, that I may sack

The hateful mansion. [Drawing his sword.

Friar Laurence.Hold thy desperate hand!

Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art;

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Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote

The unreasonable fury of a beast.

Unseemly woman in a seeming man!

Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!

Thou hast amaz'd me; by my holy order,

I thought thy disposition better temper'd.

Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself?

And slay thy lady too that lives in thee,

By doing damned hate upon thyself?

Why rail'st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth?

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Since birth and heaven and earth, all three do meet

In thee at once, which thou at once wouldst lose.

Fie, fie, thou sham'st thy shape, thy love, thy wit,

Which, like a usurer, abound'st in all,

And usest none in that true use indeed

Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.

Thy noble shape is but a form of wax,

Digressing from the valour of a man;

Thy dear love sworn, but hollow perjury,

Killing that love which thou hast vow'd to cherish;

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Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,

Misshapen in the conduct of them both,

Like powder in a skilless soldier's flask,

Is set a-fire by thine own ignorance,

And thou dismember'd with thine own defence.

What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive,

For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead;

There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,

But thou slew'st Tybalt; there art thou happy too.

The law that threaten'd death becomes thy friend

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And turns it to exile; there art thou happy.

A pack of blessings lights upon thy back,

Happiness courts thee in her best array;

But, like a misbehav'd and sullen wench,

Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love.

Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.

Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed,

Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her;

But look thou stay not till the watch be set,

For then thou canst not pass to Mantua,

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Where thou shalt live till we can find a time

To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,

Beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back

With twenty hundred thousand times more joy

Than thou went'st forth in lamentation.—

Go before, nurse, commend me to thy lady,

And bid her hasten all the house to bed,

Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto;

Romeo is coming.

Nurse. O Lord, I could have stay'd here all the night

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To hear good counsel; O, what learning is!—

My lord, I'll tell my lady you will come.

Romeo. Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.

Nurse. Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir;

Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late. [Exit.

Romeo. How well my comfort is reviv'd by this!

Friar Laurence. Go hence; good night; and here stands all your state:

Either be gone before the watch be set,

Or by the break of day disguis'd from hence.

Sojourn in Mantua; I'll find out your man,

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And he shall signify from time to time

Every good hap to you that chances here.

Give me thy hand; 'tis late: farewell; good night.

Romeo. But that a joy past joy calls out on me,

It were a grief, so brief to part with thee.

Farewell. [Exeunt.

Scene IV.

A Room in Capulet's House

Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, and Paris

Capulet. Things have fallen out, sir, so unluckily

That we have had no time to move our daughter.

Look you, she lov'd her kinsman Tybalt dearly,

And so did I.—Well, we were born to die.—

'Tis very late, she'll not come down to-night;

I promise you, but for your company,

I would have been a-bed an hour ago.

Paris. These times of woe afford no time to woo.—

Madam, good night; commend me to your daughter.

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Lady Capulet. I will, and know her mind early to-morrow;

To-night she's mew'd up to her heaviness.

Capulet. Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender

Of my child's love. I think she will be rul'd

In all respects by me; nay, more, I doubt it not.—

Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed;

Acquaint her here of my son Paris' love,

And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday next—

But, soft! what day is this?

Paris.Monday, my lord.

Capulet. Monday! ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon.

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O' Thursday let it be; o' Thursday, tell her,

She shall be married to this noble earl.

Will you be ready? do you like this haste?

We'll keep no great ado,—a friend or two;

For, hark you, Tybalt being slain so late,

It may be thought we held him carelessly,

Being our kinsman, if we revel much.

Therefore we'll have some half a dozen friends,

And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?

Paris. My lord, I would that Thursday were to-morrow.

30

Capulet. Well, get you gone; o' Thursday be it then.—

Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed,

Prepare her, wife, against this wedding-day.—

Farewell, my lord.—Light to my chamber, ho!

Afore me, it is so very late, that we

May call it early by and by.—Good night. [Exeunt.

Scene V.

Juliet's Chamber

Enter Romeo and Juliet

Juliet. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day.

It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;

Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree.

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Romeo. It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale; look, love, what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

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Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

Juliet. Yon light is not daylight, I know it, I.

It is some meteor that the sun exhales,

To be to thee this night a torch-bearer

And light thee on thy way to Mantua;

Therefore stay yet, thou need'st not to be gone.

Romeo. Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;

I am content, so thou wilt have it so.

I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye,

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'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;

Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat

The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.

I have more care to stay than will to go;

Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.

How is 't, my soul? let's talk, it is not day.

Juliet. It is, it is; hie hence, be gone, away!

It is the lark that sings so out of tune,

Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.

Some say the lark makes sweet division;

30

This doth not so, for she divideth us.

Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes;

O, now I would they had chang'd voices too!

Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,

Hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day.

O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.

Romeo. More light and light?—More dark and

dark our woes!

Enter Nurse

Nurse. Madam!

Juliet. Nurse?

Nurse. Your lady mother is coming to your chamber.

The day is broke; be wary, look about. [Exit.

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Juliet. Then, window, let day in, and let life out.

Romeo. Farewell, farewell! one kiss, and I'll descend. [Romeo descends.

Juliet. Art thou gone so? my lord, my love, my friend!

I must hear from thee every day in the hour,

For in a minute there are many days.

O, by this count I shall be much in years

Ere I again behold my Romeo!

Romeo. Farewell! I will omit no opportunity

That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.

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Juliet. O, think'st thou we shall ever meet again?

Romeo. I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve

For sweet discourses in our time to come.

Juliet. O God, I have an ill-divining soul!

Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,

As one dead in the bottom of a tomb;

Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale.

Romeo. And trust me, love, in my eye so do you;

Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu! [Exit.

Juliet. O Fortune, Fortune! all men call thee fickle;

60

If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him

That is renown'd for faith? Be fickle, Fortune;

For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long,

But send him back.

Lady Capulet. [Within] Ho, daughter! are you up?

Juliet. Who is 't that calls? is it my lady mother?

Is she not down so late, or up so early?

What unaccustom'd cause procures her hither?

Enter Lady Capulet

Lady Capulet. Why, how now, Juliet!

Juliet.Madam, I am not well.

Lady Capulet. Evermore weeping for your cousin's death?

What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?

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An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live;

Therefore, have done. Some grief shows much of love,

But much of grief shows still some want of wit.

Juliet. Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.

Lady Capulet. So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend

Which you weep for.

Juliet.Feeling so the loss,

I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.

Lady Capulet. Well, girl, thou weep'st not so much for his death

As that the villain lives which slaughter'd him.

Juliet. What villain, madam?

Lady Capulet.That same villain, Romeo.

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Juliet. Villain and he be many miles asunder.—

God pardon him! I do, with all my heart;

And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.

Lady Capulet. That is, because the traitor murtherer lives.

Juliet. Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands.

Would none but I might venge my cousin's death!

Lady Capulet. We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not;

Then weep no more. I'll send to one in Mantua,

Where that same banish'd runagate doth live,

Shall give him such an unaccustom'd dram

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That he shall soon keep Tybalt company;

And then, I hope, thou wilt be satisfied.

Juliet. Indeed, I never shall be satisfied

With Romeo, till I behold him—dead—

Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vex'd.—

Madam, if you could find out but a man

To bear a poison, I would temper it,

That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof,

Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors

To hear him nam'd, and cannot come to him,

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To wreak the love I bore my cousin

Upon his body that hath slaughter'd him!

Lady Capulet. Find thou the means, and I'll find such a man.

But now I'll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.

Juliet. And joy comes well in such a needy time.

What are they, I beseech your ladyship?

Lady Capulet. Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child;

One who, to put thee from thy heaviness,

Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy

That thou expect'st not, nor I look'd not for.

110

Juliet. Madam, in happy time, what day is that?

Lady Capulet. Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn,

The gallant, young, and noble gentleman,

The County Paris, at Saint Peter's Church,

Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.

Juliet. Now, by Saint Peter's Church and Peter too,

He shall not make me there a joyful bride.

I wonder at this haste; that I must wed

Ere he that should be husband comes to woo.

I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam,

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I will not marry yet; and, when I do, I swear,

It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,

Rather than Paris. These are news indeed!

Lady Capulet. Here comes your father; tell him so yourself,

And see how he will take it at your hands.

Enter Capulet and Nurse

Capulet. When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;

But for the sunset of my brother's son

It rains downright.—

How now! a conduit, girl? what, still in tears?

Evermore showering? In one little body

130

Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind:

For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,

Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,

Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs,

Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them,

Without a sudden calm, will overset

Thy tempest-tossed body.—How now, wife!

Have you deliver'd to her our decree?

Lady Capulet. Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks.

I would the fool were married to her grave!

140

Capulet. Soft! take me with you, take me with you, wife.

How! will she none? doth she not give us thanks?

Is she not proud? doth she not count her blest,

Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought

So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom?

Juliet. Not proud you have, but thankful that you have;

Proud can I never be of what I hate,

But thankful even for hate that is meant love.

Capulet. How now, how now, chop-logic! What is this?

'Proud' and 'I thank you' and 'I thank you not,'

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And yet 'not proud'! Mistress minion, you,

Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,

But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,

To go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church,

Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.

Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage!

You tallow-face!

Lady Capulet. Fie, fie! what, are you mad?

Juliet. Good father, I beseech you on my knees,

Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

Capulet. Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!

160

I tell thee what, get thee to church o' Thursday

Or never after look me in the face.

Speak not, reply not, do not answer me;

My fingers itch.—Wife, we scarce thought us blest

That God had lent us but this only child,

But now I see this one is one too much,

And that we have a curse in having her;

Out on her, hilding!

Nurse.God in heaven bless her!

You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.

Capulet. And why, my lady wisdom? hold your tongue,

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Good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go.

Nurse. I speak no treason.

Capulet.O, God ye god-den!

Nurse. May not one speak?

Capulet.Peace, you mumbling fool!

Utter your gravity o'er a gossip's bowl,

For here we need it not.

Lady Capulet.You are too hot.

Capulet. God's bread! it makes me mad! Day, night, late, early,

At home, abroad, alone, in company,

Waking, or sleeping, still my care hath been

To have her match'd; and having now provided

A gentleman of noble parentage,

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Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd,

Stuff'd, as they say, with honourable parts,

Proportion'd as one's thought would wish a man,—

And then to have a wretched puling fool,

A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender,

To answer 'I'll not wed; I cannot love,

I am too young; I pray you, pardon me.'—

But, an you will not wed, I'll pardon you;

Graze where you will, you shall not house with me.

Look to 't, think on 't, I do not use to jest.

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Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise.

An you be mine, I'll give you to my friend;

An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,

For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee,

Nor what is mine shall never do thee good.

Trust to 't, bethink you; I'll not be forsworn. [Exit.

Juliet. Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,

That sees into the bottom of my grief?

O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!

Delay this marriage for a month, a week;

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Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed

In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.

Lady Capulet. Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word;

Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee. [Exit.

Juliet. O God!—O nurse, how shall this be prevented?

My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven;

How shall that faith return again to earth,

Unless that husband send it me from heaven

By leaving earth? comfort me, counsel me.—

Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems

210

Upon so soft a subject as myself!—

What say'st thou? hast thou not a word of joy?

Some comfort, nurse.

Nurse.Faith, here 'tis. Romeo

Is banished, and all the world to nothing

That he dares ne'er come back to challenge you;

Or, if he do, it needs must be by stealth.

Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,

I think it best you married with the county.

O, he's a lovely gentleman!

Romeo's a dishclout to him; an eagle, madam,

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Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye

As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,

I think you are happy in this second match,

For it excels your first; or if it did not,

Your first is dead, or 'twere as good he were

As living here and you no use of him.

Juliet. Speakest thou from thy heart?

Nurse.And from my soul too;

Or else beshrew them both.

Juliet.Amen!

Nurse.What?

Juliet. Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.

Go in, and tell my lady I am gone,

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Having displeas'd my father, to Laurence' cell,

To make confession and to be absolv'd.

Nurse. Marry, I will; and this is wisely done. [Exit.

Juliet. Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!

Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,

Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue

Which she hath prais'd him with above compare

So many thousand times?—Go, counsellor;

Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.—

I'll to the friar, to know his remedy;

If all else fail, myself have power to die. [Exit.

Juliet at Laurence's Cell.

ACT IV

Scene I.

Friar Laurence's Cell

Enter Friar Laurence and Paris

Friar Laurence. On Thursday, sir? the time is very short.

Paris. My father Capulet will have it so,

And I am nothing slow to slack his haste.

Friar Laurence. You say you do not know the lady's mind;

Friar Laurence. You say you do not know the lady's mind;

Uneven is the course, I like it not.

Paris. Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt's death,

And therefore have I little talk'd of love;

For Venus smiles not in a house of tears.

Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous

10

That she doth give her sorrow so much sway,

And in his wisdom hastes our marriage,

To stop the inundation of her tears,

Which, too much minded by herself alone,

May be put from her by society.

Now do you know the reason of this haste.

Friar Laurence. [Aside] I would I knew not why it should be slow'd.—

Look, sir, here comes the lady towards my cell.

Enter Juliet

Paris. Happily met, my lady and my wife!

Juliet. That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.

20

Paris. That may be must be, love, on Thursday next.

Juliet. What must be shall be.

Friar Laurence.That's a certain text.

Paris. Come you to make confession to this father?

Juliet. To answer that, I should confess to you.

Paris. Do not deny to him that you love me.

Juliet. I will confess to you that I love him.

Paris. So will you, I am sure, that you love me.

Juliet. If I do so, it will be of more price,

Being spoke behind your back, than to your face.

Paris. Poor soul, thy face is much abus'd with tears.

30

Juliet. The tears have got small victory by that,

For it was bad enough before their spite.

Paris. Thou wrong'st it more than tears with that report.

Juliet. That is no slander, sir, which is a truth;

And what I spake, I spake it to my face.

Paris. Thy face is mine, and thou hast slander'd it.

Juliet. It may be so, for it is not mine own.—

Are you at leisure, holy father, now,

Or shall I come to you at evening mass?

Friar Laurence. My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now.—

40

My lord, we must entreat the time alone.

Paris. God shield I should disturb devotion!—

Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye;

Till then, adieu, and keep this holy kiss. [Exit.

Juliet. O, shut the door! and when thou hast done so,

Come weep with me; past hope, past cure, past help!

Friar Laurence. Ah, Juliet, I already know thy grief;

It strains me past the compass of my wits.

I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it,

On Thursday next be married to this county.

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Juliet. Tell me not, friar, that thou hear'st of this,

Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it;

If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help,

Do thou but call my resolution wise,

And with this knife I'll help it presently.

God join'd my heart and Romeo's, thou our hands;

And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd,

Shall be the label to another deed,

Or my true heart with treacherous revolt

Turn to another, this shall slay them both.

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Therefore, out of thy long-experienc'd time,

Give me some present counsel, or, behold,

'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife

Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that

Which the commission of thy years and art

Could to no issue of true honour bring.

Be not so long to speak; I long to die,

If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy.

Friar Laurence. Hold, daughter! I do spy a kind of hope,

Which craves as desperate an execution

70

As that is desperate which we would prevent.

If, rather than to marry County Paris,

Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,

Then is it likely thou wilt undertake

A thing like death to chide away this shame

That cop'st with death himself to scape from it;

And, if thou dar'st, I'll give thee remedy.

Juliet. O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,

From off the battlements of yonder tower;

Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk

80

Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears;

Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,

O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,

With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;

Or bid me go into a new-made grave

And hide me with a dead man in his shroud,—

Things, that to hear them told, have made me tremble,—

And I will do it without fear or doubt,

To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love.

Friar Laurence. Hold, then; go home, be merry, give consent

90

To marry Paris. Wednesday is to-morrow.

To-morrow night look that thou lie alone;

Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber.

Take thou this vial, being then in bed,

And this distilled liquor drink thou off;

When presently through all thy veins shall run

A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse

Shall keep his native progress but surcease.

No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;

The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade

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To paly ashes, thy eyes' windows fall,

Like death, when he shuts up the day of life;

Each part, depriv'd of supple government,

Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death;

And in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death

Thou shalt continue two and forty hours,

And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.

Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes

To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead.

Then, as the manner of our country is,

110

In thy best robes uncover'd on the bier

Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault

Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.

In the mean time, against thou shalt awake,

Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift,

And hither shall he come; and he and I

Will watch thy waking, and that very night

Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.

And this shall free thee from this present shame,

If no inconstant toy nor womanish fear

120

Abate thy valour in the acting it.

Juliet. Give me, give me! O, tell not me of fear!

Friar Laurence. Hold; get you gone, be strong and prosperous

In this resolve. I'll send a friar with speed

To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.

Juliet. Love give me strength! and strength shall help afford.

Farewell, dear father! [Exeunt.

Scene II.

Hall in Capulet's House

Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, Nurse, and two Servingmen

Capulet. So many guests invite as here are writ.— [Exit Servant.
Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.

2 Servant. You shall have none ill, sir, for I'll try if they can lick their fingers.

Capulet. How canst thou try them so?

2 Servant. Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers; therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me.

Capulet. Go, be gone.— [Exit Servant.

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We shall be much unfurnish'd for this time.

What, is my daughter gone to Friar Laurence?

Nurse. Ay, forsooth.

Capulet. Well, he may chance to do some good on her;

A peevish self-will'd harlotry it is.

Nurse. See where she comes from shrift with merry look.

Enter Juliet

Capulet. How now, my headstrong! where have you been gadding?

Juliet. Where I have learn'd me to repent the sin

Of disobedient opposition

To you and your behests, and am enjoin'd

20

By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here

And beg your pardon. Pardon, I beseech you!

Henceforward I am ever rul'd by you.

Capulet. Send for the county; go tell him of this.

I'll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning.

Juliet. I met the youthful lord at Laurence' cell,

And gave him what becomed love I might,

Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty.

Capulet. Why, I am glad on 't; this is well,—stand up.

This is as 't should be.—Let me see the county;

30

Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.—

Now, afore God! this reverend holy friar,

All our whole city is much bound to him.

Juliet. Nurse, will you go with me into my closet,

To help me sort such needful ornaments

As you think fit to furnish me to-morrow?

Lady Capulet. No, not till Thursday; there is time enough.

Capulet. Go, nurse, go with her; we'll to church to-morrow. [Exeunt Juliet and Nurse.

Lady Capulet. We shall be short in our provision;

'Tis now near night.

Capulet. Tush, I will stir about,

40

And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife.

Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her.

I'll not to bed to-night; let me alone,

I'll play the housewife for this once.—What, ho!—

They are all forth. Well, I will walk myself

To County Paris, to prepare him up

Against to-morrow. My heart is wondrous light,

Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim'd. [Exeunt.

Scene III.

Juliet's Chamber

Enter Juliet and Nurse

Juliet. Ay, those attires are best; but, gentle nurse,

I pray thee, leave me to myself to-night,

For I have need of many orisons

To move the heavens to smile upon my state,

Which, well thou know'st, is cross and full of sin.

Enter Lady Capulet

Lady Capulet. What, are you busy, ho? need you my help?

Juliet. No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries

As are behoveful for our state to-morrow.

So please you, let me now be left alone,

10

And let the nurse this night sit up with you;

For, I am sure, you have your hands full all

In this so sudden business.

Lady Capulet. Good night;

Get thee to bed and rest, for thou hast need. [Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.

Juliet. Farewell!—God knows when we shall meet again.

I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins

That almost freezes up the heat of life;

I'll call them back again to comfort me.—

Nurse!—What should she do here?

My dismal scene I needs must act alone.—

20

Come, vial.—

What if this mixture do not work at all?

Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?

No, no!—this shall forbid it.—Lie thou there.— [Laying down a dagger.

What if it be a poison, which the friar

Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,

Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd

Because he married me before to Romeo?

I fear it is; and yet, methinks, it should not,

For he hath still been tried a holy man.

30

How if, when I am laid into the tomb,

I wake before the time that Romeo

Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!

Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?

Or, if I live, is it not very like,

The horrible conceit of death and night,

Together with the terror of the place,—

As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,

40

Where for these many hundred years the bones

Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;

Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,

Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,

At some hours in the night spirits resort;—

Alack, alack, is it not like that I,

So early waking, what with loathsome smells,

And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,

That living mortals hearing them run mad;—

O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,

50

Environed with all these hideous fears?

And madly play with my forefathers' joints?

And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?

And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,

As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?—

O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost

Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body

Upon a rapier's point.—Stay, Tybalt, stay!—

Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee. [She throws herself on the bed.

Scene IV.

Hall in Capulet's House

Enter Lady Capulet and Nurse

Lady Capulet. Hold, take these keys and fetch more spices, nurse.

Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.

Enter Capulet

Capulet. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow'd,

The curfew-bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock.—

Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica;

Spare not for cost.

Nurse.Go, you cot-quean, go,

Get you to bed; faith, you'll be sick to-morrow

For this night's watching.

Capulet. No, not a whit. What! I have watch' ere now

10

All night for lesser cause and ne'er been sick.

Lady Capulet. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time,

But I will watch you from such watching now. [Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.

Capulet. A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!—

Enter three or four Servingmen, with spits, logs, and baskets

Now, fellow,

What's there?

1 Servant. Things for the cook, sir, but I know not what.

Capulet. Make haste, make haste.—[Exit Servant.]

Sirrah, fetch drier logs;

Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.

2 Servant. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs,

And never trouble Peter for the matter. [Exit.

Capulet. Mass, and well said; a merry whoreson, ha!

21

Thou shalt be logger-head.—Good faith, 'tis day;

The county will be here with music straight,

For so he said he would. I hear him near.— [Music within.

Nurse!—Wife!—What, ho!—What, nurse, I say!

Re-enter Nurse

Go waken Juliet, go and trim her up;

I'll go and chat with Paris.—Hie, make haste,

Make haste; the bridegroom he is come already;

Make haste, I say. [Exeunt.

Scene V.

Juliet's Chamber

Enter Nurse

Nurse. Mistress! what, mistress! Juliet! Fast, I warrant her, she.—

Why, lamb! why, lady! fie, you slug-a-bed!

Why, love, I say! madam! sweet-heart! why, bride!

What, not a word?—How sound is she asleep!

I needs must wake her.—Madam, madam, madam!

Ay, let the county take you in your bed;

He'll fright you up, i' faith.—Will it not be? [Undraws the curtains.

What, dress'd! and in your clothes! and down again!

I must needs wake you. Lady! lady! lady!—

10

Alas, alas!—Help, help! my lady's dead!—

O, well-a-day, that ever I was born!—

Some aqua vitæ, ho!—My lord! my lady!

Enter Lady Capulet

Lady Capulet. What noise is here?

Nurse. O lamentable day!

Lady Capulet. What is the matter?

Nurse. Look, look! O heavy day!

Lady Capulet. O me, O me! My child, my only life,

Revive, look up, or I will die with thee!—

Help, help! Call help.

Enter Capulet

Capulet. For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord is come.

Nurse. She's dead, deceas'd, she's dead; alack the day!

20

Lady Capulet. Alack the day, she's dead, she's dead, she's dead!

Capulet. Ha! let me see her. Out, alas! she's cold;

Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;

Life and these lips have long been separated.

Death lies on her like an untimely frost

Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

Nurse. O lamentable day!

Lady Capulet.O woful time!

Capulet. Death, that hath ta'en her hence to make me wail,

Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.

Enter Friar Laurence and Paris with Musicians

Friar Laurence. Come, is the bride ready to go to church?

30

Capulet. Ready to go, but never to return.—

O son! the night before thy wedding-day

Hath Death lain with thy wife. See, there she lies,

Flower as she was, deflowered by him.

Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir;

My daughter he hath wedded. I will die,

And leave him all; life, living, all is Death's.

Paris. Have I thought long to see this morning's face,

And doth it give me such a sight as this?

Lady Capulet. Accurst, unhappy, wretched, hateful day!

40

Most miserable hour that e'er time saw

In lasting labour of his pilgrimage!

But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,

But one thing to rejoice and solace in,

And cruel death hath catch'd it from my sight!

Nurse. O woe! O woful, woful, woful day!

Most lamentable day, most woful day,

That ever, ever, I did yet behold!

O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!

Never was seen so black a day as this!

50

O woful day, O woful day!

Paris. Beguil'd, divorced, wronged, spited, slain!

Most detestable Death, by thee beguil'd,

By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown!

O love! O life! not life, but love in death!

Capulet. Despis'd, distressed, hated, martyr'd, kill'd!

Uncomfortable time, why cam'st thou now

To murther, murther our solemnity?—

O child! O child! my soul, and not my child!

Dead art thou! Alack! my child is dead;

60

And with my child my joys are buried.

Friar Laurence. Peace, ho, for shame! confusion's cure lives not

In these confusions. Heaven and yourself

Had part in this fair maid; now heaven hath all,

And all the better is it for the maid.

Your part in her you could not keep from death,

But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.

The most you sought was her promotion,

For 'twas your heaven she should be advanc'd;

And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc'd

70

Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?

O, in this love you love your child so ill

That you run mad seeing that she is well;

She's not well married that lives married long,

But she's best married that dies married young.

Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary

On this fair corse, and, as the custom is,

In all her best array bear her to church;

For though fond nature bids us all lament,

Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment.

80

Capulet. All things that we ordained festival

Turn from their office to black funeral:

Our instruments to melancholy bells,

Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,

Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,

Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,

And all things change them to the contrary.

Friar Laurence. Sir, go you in,—and, madam, go with him;—

And go, Sir Paris;—every one prepare

To follow this fair corse unto her grave.

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The heavens do lower upon you for some ill;

Move them no more by crossing their high will.

[Exeunt Capulet, Lady Capulet, Paris, and Friar.

1 Musician. Faith, we may put up our pipes, and be gone.

Nurse. Honest good fellows, ah, put up, put up;

For, well you know, this is a pitiful case. [Exit.

1 Musician. Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.

Enter Peter

Peter. Musicians, O musicians, 'Heart's ease,

Heart's ease'; O, an you will have me live, play

'Heart's ease.'

1 Musician. Why 'Heart's ease'?

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Peter. O, musicians, because my heart itself plays

'My heart is full of woe.' O, play me some merry

dump, to comfort me.

1 Musician. Not a dump we; 'tis no time to

play now.

Peter. You will not, then?

1 Musician. No.

Peter. I will then give it you soundly.

1 Musician. What will you give us?

Peter. No money, on my faith, but the gleek; I will give you the

110

minstrel.

1 Musician. Then will I give you the

serving-creature.

Peter. Then will I lay the serving-creature's

dagger on your pate. I will carry no crotchets; I'll

re you, I'll fa you; do you note me?

1 Musician. An you re us and fa us, you note

us.

2 Musician. Pray you, put up your dagger, and

put out your wit.

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Peter. Then have at you with my wit! I will

drybeat you with an iron wit, and put up my iron

dagger. Answer me like men:

'When griping grief the heart doth wound,

And doleful dumps the mind oppress,

Then music with her silver sound'—

why 'silver sound'? why 'music with her silver

sound'?—What say you, Simon Catling?

1 Musician. Marry, sir, because silver hath a

sweet sound.

130

Peter. Pretty!—What say you, Hugh Rebeck?

2 Musician. I say 'silver sound,' because musicians

sound for silver.

Peter. Pretty too!—What say you, James Soundpost?

3 Musician. Faith, I know not what to say.

Peter. O, I cry you mercy, you are the singer; I

will say for you. It is 'music with her silver sound,'

because musicians have no gold for sounding.

'Then music with her silver sound

With speedy help doth lend redress.' [Exit.

141

1 Musician. What a pestilent knave is this same!

2 Musician. Hang him, Jack!—Come, we'll in

here, tarry for the mourners, and stay dinner. [Exeunt.

Tomb of the Scaligers, Verona

ACT V

Scene I.

Mantua. A Street

Enter Romeo

Romeo. If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep

My dreams presage some joyful news at hand.

My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne,

And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit

Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead—

Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think!—

And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips

That I reviv'd and was an emperor.

10

Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd,

When but love's shadows are so rich in joy!—

Enter Balthasar

News from Verona!—How now, Balthasar!

Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar?

How doth my lady? Is my father well?

How fares my Juliet? that I ask again,

For nothing can be ill if she be well.

Balthasar. Then she is well, and nothing can be ill;

Her body sleeps in Capel's monument

And her immortal part with angels lives.

20

I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault

And presently took post to tell it you.

O, pardon me for bringing these ill news,

Since you did leave it for my office, sir.

Romeo. Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!—

Thou know'st my lodging; get me ink and paper,

And hire post-horses. I will hence to-night.

Balthasar. I do beseech you, sir, have patience;

Your looks are pale and wild, and do import

Some misadventure.

Romeo.Tush, thou art deceiv'd;

30

Leave me and do the thing I bid thee do.

Hast thou no letters to me from the friar?

Balthasar. No, my good lord.

Romeo. No matter; get thee gone

And hire those horses. I'll be with thee straight.— [Exit Balthasar.

Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.

Let's see for means.—O mischief, thou art swift

To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!

I do remember an apothecary,—

And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted

In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,

40

Culling of simples. Meagre were his looks,

Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;

And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,

An alligator stuff'd, and other skins

Of ill-shap'd fishes; and about his shelves

A beggarly account of empty boxes,

Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,

Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,

Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show.

Noting this penury, to myself I said,

50

An if a man did need a poison now,

Whose sale is present death in Mantua,

Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.

O, this same thought did but forerun my need,

And this same needy man must sell it me!

As I remember, this should be the house.

Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut.—

What, ho! apothecary!

Enter Apothecary

Apothecary.Who calls so loud?

Romeo. Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor.

Hold, there is forty ducats; let me have

60

A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear

As will disperse itself through all the veins

That the life-weary taker may fall dead,

And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath

As violently as hasty powder fir'd

Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.

Apothecary. Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law

Is death to any he that utters them.

Romeo. Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,

And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks,

70

Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,

Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back,

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;

The world affords no law to make thee rich;

Then be not poor, but break it and take this.

Apothecary. My poverty, but not my will, consents.

Romeo. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.

Apothecary. Put this in any liquid thing you will,

And drink it off; and, if you had the strength

Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.

80

Romeo. There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,

Doing more murthers in this loathsome world

Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.

I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.

Farewell; buy food, and get thyself in flesh.—

Come, cordial and not poison, go with me

To Juliet's grave, for there must I use thee. [Exeunt.

Scene II.

Friar Laurence's Cell

Enter Friar John

Friar John. Holy Franciscan friar! brother, ho!

Enter Friar Laurence

Friar Laurence. This same should be the voice of Friar John.—

Welcome from Mantua; what says Romeo?

Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.

Friar John. Going to find a barefoot brother out,

One of our order, to associate me,

Here in this city visiting the sick,

And finding him, the searchers of the town,

Suspecting that we both were in a house

10

Where the infectious pestilence did reign,

Seal'd up the doors and would not let us forth,

So that my speed to Mantua there was stay'd.

Friar Laurence. Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo?

Friar John. I could not send it,—here it is again,—

Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,

So fearful were they of infection.

Friar Laurence. Unhappy fortune! by my brotherhood,

The letter was not nice, but full of charge

Of dear import, and the neglecting it

20

May do much danger. Friar John, go hence;

Get me an iron crow and bring it straight

Unto my cell.

Friar John. Brother, I'll go and bring it thee. [Exit.

Friar Laurence. Now must I to the monument alone;

Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake.

She will beshrew me much that Romeo

Hath had no notice of these accidents;

But I will write again to Mantua,

And keep her at my cell till Romeo come.

Poor living corse, clos'd in a dead man's tomb! [Exit.

Scene III.

A Churchyard; in it a Tomb belonging to the Capulets

Enter Paris, and his Page bearing flowers and a torch

Paris. Give me thy torch, boy; hence, and stand aloof;

Yet put it out, for I would not be seen.

Under yond yew-trees lay thee all along,

Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground;

So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread,

Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves,

But thou shalt hear it; whistle then to me

As signal that thou hear'st something approach.

Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee, go.

10

Page. [Aside] I am almost afraid to stand alone

Here in the churchyard, yet I will adventure. [Retires.

Paris. Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew.

O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones,

Which with sweet water nightly I will dew,

Or, wanting that, with tears distill'd by moans;

The obsequies that I for thee will keep

Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep.— [The Page whistles.

The boy gives warning something doth approach.

What cursed foot wanders this way to-night,

20

To cross my obsequies and true love's rite?

What, with a torch!—muffle me, night, awhile. [Retires.

Enter Romeo and Balthasar, with a torch, mattock, etc.

Romeo. Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.

Hold, take this letter; early in the morning

See thou deliver it to my lord and father.

Give me the light. Upon thy life, I charge thee,

Whate'er thou hear'st or seest, stand all aloof

And do not interrupt me in my course.

Why I descend into this bed of death

Is partly to behold my lady's face,

30

But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger

A precious ring, a ring that I must use

In dear employment. Therefore hence, be gone;

But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry

In what I further shall intend to do,

By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint

And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs.

The time and my intents are savage-wild,

More fierce and more inexorable far

Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.

40

Balthasar. I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.

Romeo. So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that.

Live, and be prosperous; and farewell, good fellow.

Balthasar. [Aside] For all this same, I'll hide me hereabout;

His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt. [Retires.

Romeo. Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,

Gorg'd with the dearest morsel of the earth,

Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,

And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food! [Opens the tomb.

Paris. This is that banish'd haughty Montague

50

That murther'd my love's cousin,—with which grief,

It is supposed, the fair creature died,—

And here is come to do some villanous shame

To the dead bodies; I will apprehend him.— [Advances.

Stop thy unhallow'd toil, vile Montague!

Can vengeance be pursued further than death?

Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee.

Obey, and go with me, for thou must die.

Romeo. I must indeed, and therefore came I hither.

Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man.

60

Fly hence, and leave me; think upon these gone,

Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,

Put not another sin upon my head,

By urging me to fury; O, be gone!

By heaven, I love thee better than myself;

For I come hither arm'd against myself.

Stay not, be gone; live, and hereafter say

A madman's mercy bade thee run away.

Paris. I do defy thy conjurations

69

And apprehend thee for a felon here.

Romeo. Wilt thou provoke me? then have at thee, boy! [They fight.

Page. O Lord, they fight! I will go call the watch. [Exit.

Paris. O, I am slain!—[Falls.] If thou be merciful,

Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. [Dies.

Romeo. In faith, I will.—Let me peruse this face.

Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris!

What said my man when my betossed soul

Did not attend him as we rode? I think

He told me Paris should have married Juliet;

Said he not so? or did I dream it so?

80

Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,

To think it was so?—O, give me thy hand,

One writ with me in sour misfortune's book!

I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave,—

A grave? O, no! a lantern, slaughter'd youth;

For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes

This vault a feasting presence full of light.

Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd.— [Laying Paris in the tomb.

How oft when men are at the point of death

Have they been merry! which their keepers call

90

A lightning before death; O, how may I

Call this a lightning?—O my love! my wife!

Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,

Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.

Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,

And death's pale flag is not advanced there.—

Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?

O, what more favour can I do to thee

Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain

100

To sunder his that was thine enemy?

Forgive me, cousin!—Ah, dear Juliet,

Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe

That unsubstantial Death is amorous,

And that the lean abhorred monster keeps

Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

For fear of that, I still will stay with thee,

And never from this palace of dim night

Depart again. Here, here will I remain

With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here

110

Will I set up my everlasting rest,

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh.—Eyes, look your last!

Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss

A dateless bargain to engrossing death!—

Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!

Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on

The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!

119

Here's to my love! [Drinks.]—O true apothecary!

Thy drugs are quick.—Thus with a kiss I die. [Dies.

Enter, at the other end of the churchyard, Friar Laurence, with a lantern, crow, and spade

Friar Laurence. Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night

Have my old feet stumbled at graves!—Who's there?

Balthasar. Here's one, a friend, and one that knows you well.

Friar Laurence. Bliss be upon you! Tell me, good my friend,

What torch is yond that vainly lends his light

To grubs and eyeless skulls? as I discern,

It burneth in the Capels' monument.

Balthasar. It doth so, holy sir; and there's my master,

One that you love.

Friar Laurence. Who is it?

129

Balthasar.Romeo.

Friar Laurence. How long hath he been there?

Balthasar.Full half an hour.

Friar Laurence. Go with me to the vault.

Balthasar. I dare not, sir;

My master knows not but I am gone hence,

And fearfully did menace me with death

If I did stay to look on his intents.

Friar Laurence. Stay, then; I 'll go alone.—Fear comes upon me;

O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing!

Balthasar. As I did sleep under this yew-tree here,

I dreamt my master and another fought,

And that my master slew him. [Exit.

Friar Laurence. Romeo!— [Advances.

140

Alack, alack, what blood is this, which stains

The stony entrance of this sepulchre?—

What mean these masterless and gory swords

To lie discolour'd by this place of peace?— [Enters the tomb.

Romeo! O, pale!—Who else? what, Paris too?

And steep'd in blood?—Ah, what an unkind hour

Is guilty of this lamentable chance!—

The lady stirs. [Juliet wakes.

Juliet. O comfortable friar! where is my lord?—

I do remember well where I should be,

150

And there I am.—Where is my Romeo? [Noise within.

Friar Laurence. I hear some noise.—Lady, come from that nest

Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep;

A greater power than we can contradict

Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away.

Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead,

And Paris too. Come, I'll dispose of thee

Among a sisterhood of holy nuns.

Stay not to question, for the watch is coming;

Come, go, good Juliet. [Noise again.]—I dare no longer stay.

160

Juliet. Go, get thee hence, for I will not away. [Exit Friar Laurence.

What's here? a cup, clos'd in my true love's hand?

Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.—

O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop

To help me after?—I will kiss thy lips;

Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,

To make me die with a restorative. [Kisses him.

Thy lips are warm.

1 Watch. [Within] Lead, boy; which way?

Juliet. Yea, noise? then I'll be brief.—O happy dagger! [Snatching Romeo's dagger.

This is thy sheath [Stabs herself]; there rest, and let me die.

[Falls on Romeo's body, and dies.

Enter Watch, with the Page of Paris

171

Page. This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn.

1 Watch. The ground is bloody; search about the churchyard.

Go, some of you, whoe'er you find attach.—

[Exeunt some.

Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain;

And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,

Who here hath lain these two days buried.—

Go, tell the prince;—run to the Capulets;—

Raise up the Montagues;—some others search.— [Exeunt other Watchmen.

We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;

180

But the true ground of all these piteous woes

We cannot without circumstance descry.

Re-enter some of the Watch, with Balthasar

2 Watch. Here's Romeo's man; we found him in the churchyard.

1 Watch. Hold him in safety till the prince come hither.

Re-enter others of the Watch, with Friar Laurence

3 Watch. Here is a friar, that trembles, sighs, and weeps.

We took this mattock and this spade from him,

As he was coming from this churchyard side.

1 Watch. A great suspicion; stay the friar too.

Enter the Prince and Attendants

Prince. What misadventure is so early up

That calls our person from our morning's rest?

Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, and others

190

Capulet. What should it be that they so shriek abroad?

Lady Capulet. The people in the street cry Romeo,

Some Juliet, and some Paris, and all run

With open outcry toward our monument.

Prince. What fear is this which startles in our ears?

1 Watch. Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain;

And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,

Warm and new kill'd.

Prince. Search, seek, and know how this foul murther comes.

1 Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter'd Romeo's man,

200

With instruments upon them fit to open

These dead men's tombs.

Capulet. O heaven!—O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!

This dagger hath mista'en,—for, lo, his house

Is empty on the back of Montague,—

And is mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosom!

Lady Capulet. O me! this sight of death is as a bell

That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

Enter Montague and others

Prince. Come, Montague; for thou art early up,

To see thy son and heir more early down.

210

Montague. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night;

Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her breath.

What further woe conspires against mine age?

Prince. Look, and thou shalt see.

Montague. O thou untaught! what manners is in this,

To press before thy father to a grave?

Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,

Till we can clear these ambiguities,

And know their spring, their head, their true descent;

And then will I be general of your woes

220

And lead you even to death. Meantime forbear,

And let mischance be slave to patience.—

Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

Friar Laurence. I am the greatest, able to do least,

Yet most suspected, as the time and place

Doth make against me, of this direful murther;

And here I stand, both to impeach and purge

Myself condemned and myself excus'd.

Prince. Then say at once what thou dost know in this.

Friar Laurence. I will be brief, for my short date of breath

230

Is not so long as is a tedious tale.

Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;

And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful wife.

I married them; and their stolen marriage-day

Was Tybalt's doomsday, whose untimely death

Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from this city,

For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin'd.

You, to remove that siege of grief from her,

Betroth'd and would have married her perforce

To County Paris; then comes she to me,

240

And with wild looks bid me devise some means

To rid her from this second marriage,

Or in my cell there would she kill herself.

Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,

A sleeping potion, which so took effect

As I intended, for it wrought on her

The form of death; meantime I writ to Romeo

That he should hither come as this dire night,

To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,

Being the time the potion's force should cease.

250

But he which bore my letter, Friar John,

Was stay'd by accident and yesternight

Return'd my letter back. Then all alone,

At the prefixed hour of her waking,

Came I to take her from her kindred's vault,

Meaning to keep her closely at my cell

Till I conveniently could send to Romeo;

But when I came, some minute ere the time

Of her awaking, here untimely lay

The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.

260

She wakes, and I entreated her come forth

And bear this work of heaven with patience;

But then a noise did scare me from the tomb,

And she too desperate would not go with me,

But, as it seems, did violence on herself.

All this I know, and to the marriage

Her nurse is privy; and, if aught in this

Miscarried by my fault, let my old life

Be sacrific'd some hour before his time

Unto the rigour of severest law.

Prince. We still have known thee for a holy man.—

271

Where's Romeo's man? what can he say in this?

Balthasar. I brought my master news of Juliet's death,

And then in post he came from Mantua

To this same place, to this same monument.

This letter he early bid me give his father,

And threaten'd me with death, going in the vault,

If I departed not and left him there.

Prince. Give me the letter; I will look on it.—

Where is the county's page that rais'd the watch?—

280

Sirrah, what made your master in this place?

Page. He came with flowers to strew his lady's grave

And bid me stand aloof, and so I did.

Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb,

And by and by my master drew on him;

And then I ran away to call the watch.

Prince. This letter doth make good the friar's words,

Their course of love, the tidings of her death;

And here he writes that he did buy a poison

Of a poor pothecary, and therewithal

290

Came to this vault to die and lie with Juliet.—

Where be these enemies?—Capulet!—Montague!

See, what a scourge is aid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!

And I, for winking at your discords too,

Have lost a brace of kinsmen; all are punish'd.

Capulet. O brother Montague, give me thy hand;

This is my daughter's jointure, for no more

Can I demand.

Montague.But I can give thee more;

For I will raise her statue in pure gold,

300

That while Verona by that name is known

There shall no figure at such rate be set

As that of true and faithful Juliet.

Capulet. As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie,

Poor sacrifices of our enmity!

Prince. A glooming peace this morning with it brings;

The sun for sorrow will not show his head.

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;

Some shall be pardon'd and some punished;

309

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. [Exeunt.

The Nurse and Peter

NOTES

Introduction

The Metre of the Play.—It should be understood at the outset that metre, or the mechanism of verse, is something altogether distinct from the music of verse. The one is matter of rule, the other of taste and feeling. Music is not an absolute necessity of verse; the metrical form is a necessity, being that which constitutes the verse.

The plays of Shakespeare (with the exception of rhymed passages, and of occasional songs and interludes) are all in unrhymed or blank verse; and the normal form of this blank verse is illustrated by the second line of the prologue to the present play: "In fair Verona, where we lay our scene."

This line, it will be seen, consists of ten syllables, with the even syllables (2d, 4th, 6th, 8th, and 10th) accented, the odd syllables (1st, 3d, etc.) being unaccented. Theoretically, it is made up of five feet of two syllables each, with the accent on the second syllable. Such a foot is called an iambus (plural, iambuses, or the Latin iambi), and the form of verse is called iambic.

This fundamental law of Shakespeare's verse is subject to certain modifications, the most important of which are as follows:—

1. After the tenth syllable an unaccented syllable (or even two such syllables) may be added, forming what is sometimes called a female line; as in the 103d line of the first scene: "Here were the servants of your adversary." The rhythm is complete with the third syllable of adversary, the fourth being an extra eleventh syllable. In iv. 3. 27 and v. 3. 256 we have two extra syllables,—the last two of Romeo in both lines.

2. The accent in any part of the verse may be shifted from an even to an odd syllable; as in line 3 of the prologue, "From ancient grudge break to new mutiny," where the accent is shifted from the sixth to the fifth syllable. See also i. 1. 92: "Canker'd with peace, to part your canker'd hate;" where the accent is shifted from the second to the first syllable. This change occurs very rarely in the tenth syllable, and seldom in the fourth; and it is not allowable in two successive accented syllables.

3. An extra unaccented syllable may occur in any part of the line; as in line 7 of the prologue, where the second syllable of piteous is superfluous. In i. 1. 64 the third syllable of Benvolio, and in line 71 below the second syllable of Capulets and the second the are both superfluous.

4. Any unaccented syllable, occurring in an even place immediately before or after an even syllable which is properly accented, is reckoned as accented for the purposes of the verse; as, for instance, in lines 1, 3, and 7 of the prologue. In 1 the last syllable of dignity and in 3 the last of mutiny are metrically equivalent to accented syllables. In 7 the same is true of the first syllable of misadventur'd and the third of overthrows. In iv. 2. 18 ("Of disobedient opposition") only two regular accents occur, but we have a metrical accent on the first syllable of disobedient, and on the first and the last syllables of opposition, which word has metrically five syllables. In disobedient there is an extra unaccented syllable.

5. In many instances in Shakespeare words must be lengthened in order to fill out the rhythm:—

(a) In a large class of words in which e or i is followed by another vowel, the e or i is made a separate syllable; as ocean, opinion, soldier, patience, partial, marriage, etc. For instance, iii. 5. 29 ("Some say the lark makes sweet division") appears to have only nine syllables, but division is a quadrisyllable; and so is devotion in iv. 1. 41: "God shield I should disturb devotion!" Marriage is a trisyllable in iv. 1. 11, and also in v. 3. 241; and the same is true of patience in v. 1. 27 v. 1. 27, v. 3. 221 and 261. This lengthening occurs most frequently at the end of the line.

(b) Many monosyllables ending in r, re, rs, res, preceded by a long vowel or diphthong, are often made dissyllables; as fare, fear, dear, fire, hair, hour, your, etc. In iii. 1. 198: "Else, when he's found, that hour is his last," hour is a dissyllable. If the word is repeated in a verse it is often both monosyllable and dissyllable; as in M. of V. iii. 2. 20: "And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so," where either yours (preferably the first) is a dissyllable, the other being a monosyllable. In J.C. iii. 1. 172: "As fire drives fire, so pity, pity," the first fire is a dissyllable.

(c) Words containing l or r, preceded by another consonant, are often pronounced as if a vowel came between the consonants; as in i. 4. 8: "After the prompter, at our entrance" [ent(e)rance]. See also T. of S. ii. 1. 158: "While she did call me rascal fiddler" [fidd(e)ler]; All's Well, iii. 5. 43: "If you will tarry, holy pilgrim" [pilg(e)rim]; C. of E. v. 1. 360: "These are the parents of these children" (childeren, the original form of the word); W.T. iv. 4. 76: "Grace and remembrance [rememb(e)rance] be to you both!" etc. See also on ii. 4. 184 and iii. 1. 89 below.

(d) Monosyllabic exclamations (ay, O, yea, nay, hail, etc.) and monosyllables otherwise emphasized are similarly lengthened; also certain longer words; as commandement in M. of V. iv. 1. 442; safety (trisyllable) in Ham. i. 3. 21; business (trisyllable, as originally pronounced) in J.C. iv. 1. 22: "To groan and sweat under the business" (so in several other passages); and other words mentioned in the notes to the plays in which they occur.

6. Words are also contracted for metrical reasons, like plurals and possessives ending in a sibilant, as balance, horse (for horses and horse's), princess, sense, marriage (plural and possessive), image, etc. So spirit, inter'gatories, unpleasant'st, and other words mentioned in the notes on the plays.

7. The accent of words is also varied in many instances for metrical reasons. Thus we find both révenue and revénue in the first scene of the M.N.D. (lines 6 and 158), óbscure and obscúre, púrsue and pursúe, cóntrary (see note on iii. 2. 64) and contráry, contráct (see on ii. 2. 117) and cóntract, etc.

These instances of variable accent must not be confounded with those in which words were uniformly accented differently in the time of Shakespeare; like aspéct, impórtune (see on i. 1. 142), perséver (never persevére), perséverance, rheúmatic, etc.

8. Alexandrines, or verses of twelve syllables, with six accents, occur here and there; as in the inscriptions on the caskets in M. of V., and occasionally in this play. They must not be confounded with female lines with two extra syllables (see on 1 above) or with other lines in which two extra unaccented syllables may occur.

9. Incomplete verses, of one or more syllables, are scattered through the plays. See i. 1. 61, 69, 162, 163, 164, 198, etc.

10. Doggerel measure is used in the very earliest comedies (L. L. L. and C. of E. in particular) in the mouths of comic characters, but nowhere else in those plays, and never anywhere after 1597 or 1598. There is no instance of it in this play.

11. Rhyme occurs frequently in the early plays, but diminishes with comparative regularity from that period until the latest. Thus, in L. L. L. there are about 1100 rhyming verses (about one-third of the whole number), in the M.N.D. about 900, and in Rich. II. about 500, while in Cor. and A. and C. there are only about 40 each, in the Temp. only two, and in the W.T. none at all, except in the chorus introducing act iv. Songs, interludes, and other matter not in ten-syllable measure are not included in this enumeration. In the present play, out of about 2500 ten-syllable verses, nearly 500 are in rhyme.

Alternate rhymes are found only in the plays written before 1599 or 1600. In the M. of V. there are only four lines at the end of iii. 2. In Much Ado and A.Y.L., we also find a few lines, but none at all in subsequent plays. Examples in this play are the prologue, the chorus at the beginning of act ii., and the last speech of act. v. See also passages in i. 2, i. 5, and v. 3.

Rhymed couplets or "rhyme-tags" are often found at the end of scenes; as in the first scene, and eleven other scenes, of the present play. In Ham. 14 out of 20 scenes, and in Macb. 21 out of 28, have such "tags"; but in the latest plays they are not so frequent. The Temp., for instance, has but one, and the W.T. none.

12. In this edition of Shakespeare, the final -ed of past tenses and participles is printed -'d when the word is to be pronounced in the ordinary way; as in star-cross'd, line 6, and misadventur'd, line 7, of the prologue. But when the metre requires that the -ed be made a separate syllable, the e is retained; as in moved, line 85, of the first scene, where the word is a dissyllable. The only variation from this rule is in verbs like cry, die, sue, etc., the -ed of which is very rarely made a separate syllable.

Shakespeare's Use of Verse and Prose in the Plays.—This is a subject to which the critics have given very little attention, but it is an interesting study. In this play we find scenes entirely in verse (none entirely in prose) and others in which the two are mixed. In general, we may say that verse is used for what is distinctly poetical, and prose for what is not poetical. The distinction, however, is not so clearly marked in the earlier as in the later plays. The second scene of the M. of V., for instance, is in prose, because Portia and Nerissa are talking about the suitors in a familiar and playful way; but in the T.G. of V., where Julia and Lucetta are discussing the suitors of the former in much the same fashion, the scene is in verse. Dowden, commenting on Rich. II., remarks: "Had Shakespeare written the play a few years later, we may be certain that the gardener and his servants (iii. 4) would not have uttered stately speeches in verse, but would have spoken homely prose, and that humour would have mingled with the pathos of the scene. The same remark may be made with reference to the subsequent scene (v. 5) in which his groom visits the dethroned king in the Tower." Comic characters and those in low life generally speak in prose in the later plays, as Dowden intimates, but in the very earliest ones doggerel verse is much used instead. See on 10 above.

The change from prose to verse is well illustrated in the third scene of the M. of V. It begins with plain prosaic talk about a business matter; but when Antonio enters, it rises at once to the higher level of poetry. The sight of Antonio reminds Shylock of his hatred of the Merchant, and the passion expresses itself in verse, the vernacular tongue of poetry. We have a similar change in the first scene of J.C., where, after the quibbling "chaff" of the mechanics about their trades, the mention of Pompey reminds the Tribune of their plebeian fickleness, and his scorn and indignation flame out in most eloquent verse.

The reasons for the choice of prose or verse are not always so clear as in these instances. We are seldom puzzled to explain the prose, but not unfrequently we meet with verse where we might expect prose. As Professor Corson remarks (Introduction to Shakespeare, 1889), "Shakespeare adopted verse as the general tenor of his language, and therefore expressed much in verse that is within the capabilities of prose; in other words, his verse constantly encroaches upon the domain of prose, but his prose can never be said to encroach upon the domain of verse." If in rare instances we think we find exceptions to this latter statement, and prose actually seems to usurp the place of verse, I believe that careful study of the passage will prove the supposed exception to be apparent rather than real.

Some Books for Teachers and Students.—A few out of the many books that might be commended to the teacher and the critical student are the following: Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (7th ed. 1887); Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare (1898; for ordinary students the abridged ed. of 1899 is preferable); Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon (3d ed. 1902); Littledale's ed. of Dyce's Glossary (1902); Bartlett's Concordance to Shakespeare (1895); Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar (1873); Furness's "New Variorum" ed. of Romeo and Juliet (1871; encyclopædic and exhaustive); Dowden's Shakspere: His Mind and Art (American ed. 1881); Hudson's Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare (revised ed. 1882); Mrs. Jameson's Characteristics of Women (several eds., some with the title, Shakespeare Heroines); Ten Brink's Five Lectures on Shakespeare (1895); Boas's Shakespeare and His Predecessors (1895); Dyer's Folk-lore of Shakespeare (American ed. 1884); Gervinus's Shakespeare Commentaries (Bunnett's translation, 1875); Wordsworth's Shakespeare's Knowledge of the Bible (3d ed. 1880); Elson's Shakespeare in Music (1901).

Some of the above books will be useful to all readers who are interested in special subjects or in general criticism of Shakespeare. Among those which are better suited to the needs of ordinary readers and students, the following may be mentioned: Mabie's William Shakespeare: Poet, Dramatist, and Man (1900); Phin's Cyclopædia and Glossary of Shakespeare (1902; more compact and cheaper than Dyce); Dowden's Shakspere Primer (1877; small but invaluable); Rolfe's Shakespeare the Boy (1896; treating of the home and school life, the games and sports, the manners, customs, and folk-lore of the poet's time); Guerber's Myths of Greece and Rome (for young students who may need information on mythological allusions not explained in the notes).

Black's Judith Shakespeare (1884; a novel, but a careful study of the scene and the time) is a book that I always commend to young people, and their elders will also enjoy it. The Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare is a classic for beginners in the study of the dramatist; and in Rolfe's ed. the plan of the authors is carried out in the Notes by copious illustrative quotations from the plays. Mrs. Cowden-Clarke's Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines (several eds.) will particularly interest girls; and both girls and boys will find Bennett's Master Skylark (1897) and Imogen Clark's Will Shakespeare's Little Lad (1897) equally entertaining and instructive.

H. Snowden Ward's Shakespeare's Town and Times (2d ed. 1903) and John Leyland's Shakespeare Country (enlarged ed. 1903) are copiously illustrated books (yet inexpensive) which may be particularly commended for school libraries.

Abbreviations in the Notes.—The abbreviations of the names of Shakespeare's plays will be readily understood; as T.N. for Twelfth Night, Cor. for Coriolanus, 3 Hen. VI. for The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth, etc. P.P. refers to The Passionate Pilgrim; V. and A. to Venus and Adonis; L.C. to Lover's Complaint; and Sonn. to the Sonnets.

Other abbreviations that hardly need explanation are Cf. (confer, compare), Fol. (following), Id. (idem, the same), and Prol. (prologue). The numbers of the lines in the references (except for the present play) are those of the "Globe" edition (the cheapest and best edition of Shakespeare in one compact volume), which is now generally accepted as the standard for line-numbers in works of reference (Schmidt's Lexicon, Abbott's Grammar, Dowden's Primer, the publications of the New Shakspere Society, etc.). Every teacher and every critical student should have it at hand for reference.

PROLOGUE

Enter Chorus. As Malone suggests, this probably meant only that the prologue was to be spoken by the same actor that personated the chorus at the end of act i. The prologue is omitted in the folio, but we cannot doubt that it was written by S. It is in form a sonnet, of the pattern adopted in his Sonnets. See comments upon it, p. 22 above.

2. Fair Verona. The city is thus described in the opening lines of Brooke's poem:[4]—

"There is beyonde the Alps, a towne of auncient fame

Whose bright renoune yet shineth cleare, Verona men it name:

Bylt in an happy time, bylt on a fertile soyle:

Maynteined by the heauenly fates, and by the townish toyle.

The fruitefull hilles aboue, the pleasant vales belowe,

The siluer streame with chanell depe, that through the towne doth flow:

The store of springes that serue for vse, and eke for ease:

And other moe commodities, which profite may and please;

Eke many certaine signes of thinges betyde of olde,

To fyll the houngry eyes of those that curiously beholde:

Doe make this towne to be preferde aboue the rest

Of Lumbard townes, or at the least compared with the best."

6. Star-cross'd. For the astrological allusion, cf. i. 4. 104, v. 1. 24, and v. 3. 111 below. The title of one of Richard Braithwaite's works, published in 1615, is "Love's Labyrinth: or the True Lover's Knot, including the disastrous falls of two Star-crost lovers Pyramus and Thisbe."

8. Doth. The reading of the quartos, changed by most of the modern editors to "Do." Ulrici considers it the old third person plural in -th. He adds that S. mostly uses it only where it has the force of the singular, namely, where the sense is collective, as in overthrows here. Cf. v. 1. 70 below.

12. Two hours. Cf. Hen. VIII. prol. 13: "may see away their shilling Richly in two short hours."

ACT I

Scene I.—

1. Carry coals. "Endure affronts" (Johnson). According to Nares, the phrase got this meaning from the fact that the carriers of wood and coals were esteemed the very lowest of menials. Cf. Hen. V. iii. 2. 49, where there is a play upon the expression. Steevens quotes Nash, Have With You, etc.: "We will bear no coles, I warrant you;" Marston, Antonio and Mellida, part ii.: "He has had wrongs; and if I were he I would bear no coles," etc. Dyce cites Cotgrave, Fr. Dict.: "Il a du feu en la teste. Hee is very chollericke, furious, or couragious; he will carrie no coales." He might have added from Sherwood's English-French supplement to Cotgrave (ed. 1632): "That will carrie no coales, Brave."

3. Colliers. The preceding note explains how colliers came to be a term of abuse. The New Eng. Dict. adds that it may have been due to "the evil repute of the collier for cheating." Steevens compares T.N. iii. 4. 130: "hang him, foul collier!"

4. Choler. For the play upon the word, cf. Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, iii. 2:—

"Cash. Why, how now, Cob? what moves thee to this cholar, ha?

Cob. Collar, master Thomas? I scorn your collar, I sir; I am none of your cart-horse, though I carry and draw water."

15. Take the wall. Claim the right of passing next the wall when meeting a person on the street; a right valued in old-fashioned streets with narrow sidewalks or none at all. To give the wall was an act of courtesy; to take the wall might be an insult.

17. The weakest goes to the wall. A familiar proverb.

28. Here comes two, etc. Halliwell-Phillipps remarks that the partisans of the Montagues wore a token in their hats to distinguish them from the Capulets; hence throughout the play they are known at a distance. Cf. Gascoigne, Devise of a Masque, written for Viscount Montacute, 1575:—

"And for a further proofe, he shewed in hys hat

Thys token which the Mountacutes did beare alwaies, for that

They covet to be knowne from Capels, where they pass,

For ancient grutch whych long ago 'tweene these two houses was."

39. I will bite my thumb at them. An insult explained by Cotgrave, Fr. Dict. (ed. 1632): "Nique, faire la nique, to threaten or defie, by putting the thumbe naile into the mouth, and with a ierke (from th' upper teeth) make it to knocke."

44. Of our side. On our side (on = of, as often).

55. Here comes one, etc. "Gregory may mean Tybalt, who enters directly after Benvolio, but on a different part of the stage. The eyes of the servant may be directed the way he sees Tybalt coming, and in the mean time Benvolio enters on the opposite side" (Steevens).

60. Swashing blow. A dashing or smashing blow (Schmidt). Cf. Jonson, Staple of News, v. 1: "I do confess a swashing blow." Cf. also swash = bully, bluster; as in A.Y.L. i. 3. 122: "I'll have a martial and a swashing outside."

63. Art thou drawn? Cf. Temp. ii. 1. 308: "Why are you drawn?" Heartless = cowardly, spiritless; as in R. of L. 471, 1392.

69. Have at thee. Cf. iv. 5. 119 below; also C. of E. iii. 1. 51, etc.

70. Clubs. The cry of Clubs! in a street affray is of English origin, as the bite my thumb is of Italian. It was the rallying-cry of the London apprentices. Cf. Hen. VIII. v. 4. 53, A.Y.L. v. 2. 44, etc. Bills were the pikes or halberds formerly carried by the English infantry and afterwards by watchmen. The partisan was "a sharp two-edged sword placed on the summit of a staff for the defence of foot-soldiers against cavalry" (Fairholt). Cf. Ham. i. 1. 140: "Shall I strike at it with my partisan?"

71. Enter Capulet in his gown. Cf. Ham. (quarto) iii. 4. 61: "Enter the ghost in his night gowne;" that is, his dressing-gown. See also Macb. ii. 2. 70: "Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us And show us to be watchers;" and Id. v. 1. 5: "I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her," etc. It is early morning, and Capulet comes out before he is dressed.

72. Long sword. The weapon used in active warfare; a lighter and shorter one being worn for ornament (see A.W. ii. 1. 32: "no sword worn But one to dance with"). Cf. M.W. ii. 1. 236: "with my long sword I would have made you four tall fellows skip like rats."

73. A crutch, a crutch! The lady's sneer at her aged husband. For her own age, see on i. 3. 51 below.

75. In spite. In scornful defiance. Cf. 3 Hen. VI. i. 3. 158, Cymb. iv. 1. 16, etc.

79. Neighbour-stained. Because used in civil strife.

84. Mistemper'd. Tempered to an ill end (Schmidt). Steevens explains it as = angry. The word occurs again in K. John, v. 1. 12: "This inundation of mistemper'd humour."

85. Moved. That is, "mov'd to wrath" (T.A. i. 1. 419). Cf. L. L. L. v. 2. 694, J.C. iv. 3. 58, etc.

89. Ancient. Not of necessity old in years, but long settled there and accustomed to peace and order (Delius).

90. Grave beseeming. Grave and becoming. Cf. Ham. iv. 7. 79:—

"for youth no less becomes

The light and careless livery that it wears,

Than settled age his sables and his weeds,

Importing health and graveness."

92. Canker'd with peace, etc. Canker'd (= corroded) is applied literally to the partisans long disused, and figuratively to their owners. Cf. K. John, ii. 1. 194: "A canker'd grandam's will."

99. Freetown. S. takes the name from Brooke's poem. It translates the Villa Franca of the Italian story.

101. S. uses set abroach only in a bad sense. Cf. 2 Hen. IV. iv. 2. 14: "Alack, what mischiefs might be set abroach;" and Rich. III. i. 3. 325: "The secret mischiefs that I set abroach."

109. Nothing hurt withal. Nowise harmed by it. Who = which; as often.

110. While we, etc. This line, with the change of we to they, is found in the 1st quarto in iii. 1, where Benvolio describes the brawl in which Mercutio and Tybalt are slain (Daniel).

113. Saw you him to-day? This use of the past tense is not allowable now, but was common in Elizabethan English. Cf. Cymb. iv. 2. 66: "I saw him not these many years," etc.

115. The worshipp'd sun. Cf. iii. 2. 25 below: "And pay no worship to the garish sun." See also Lear, i. 1. 111: "the sacred radiance of the sun;" and Cymb. iv. 4. 41: "the holy sun." It is remarkable that no German commentator has tried to make S. a Parsee.

116. Forth. Cf. M.N.D. i. 1. 164: "Steal forth thy father's house," etc.

118. Sycamore. According to Beisly and Ellacombe, the Acer pseudo-platanus, which grows wild in Italy. It had been introduced into England before the time of S. He mentions it also in L. L. L. v. 2. 89 and Oth. iv. 3. 41.

119. Rooteth. Cf. W.T. i. 1. 25: "there rooted betwixt them such an affection," etc.

121. Ware. Aware; but not to be printed as a contraction of that word. Cf. ii. 2. 103 below.

123. Affections. Feelings, inclinations. Cf. Ham. iii. 1. 170: "Love! his affections do not that way tend," etc.

124. Which then, etc. "The plain meaning seems to be that Benvolio, like Romeo, was indisposed for society, and sought to be most where most people were not to be found, being one too many, even when by himself" (Collier). Some editors follow Pope in reading (from 1st quarto) "That most are busied when they're most alone."

127. Who. Him who; the antecedent omitted, as often when it is easily supplied.

131. All so soon. All is often used in this "intensive" way.

134. Heavy. S. is fond of playing on heavy and light. Cf. R. of L. 1574, T.G. of V. i. 2. 84, M. of V. v. 1. 130, etc.

142. Importun'd. Accented on the second syllable, as regularly in S.

148. With. By; as often of the agent or cause.

150. Sun. The early eds. all have "same." The emendation is due to Theobald and is almost universally adopted.

156. To hear. As to hear; a common ellipsis.

157. Is the day so young? Is it not yet noon? Good morrow or good day was considered proper only before noon, after which good den was the usual salutation. Cf. i. 2. 57 below.

158. New. Often used by S. in this adverbial way = just, lately. Cf. v. 3. 197 below. For Ay me! see on ii. 1. 10.

166. In his view. In appearance; opposed to proof = experience. Cf. Ham. iii. 2. 179: "What my love is, proof hath made you know," etc.

168. Alas, that love, whose view, etc. Alas "that love, though blindfolded, should see how to reach the lover's heart" (Dowden). View here = sight, or eyes.

172. Here's much, etc. Romeo means that the fray has much to do with the hate between the rival houses, yet affects him more, inasmuch as his Rosaline is of the Capulet family.

173-178. O brawling love! etc. Cf. iii. 2. 73 fol. below.

187. Rais'd. The reading of the 1st quarto, adopted by the majority of editors. The other early eds. have "made."

188. Purg'd. That is, from smoke.

191. A choking gall, etc. That is, "love kills and keeps alive, is a bane and an antidote" (Dowden).

195. Some other where. Cf. C. of E. iv. 1. 30: "How if your husband start some other where?"

196. Sadness. Seriousness. Cf. A.W. iv. 3. 230: "In good sadness, I do not know," etc. So sadly just below = seriously, as in Much Ado, ii. 3. 229.

203. Mark-man. The 3d and 4th folios have "marks-man." S. uses the word nowhere else.

206. Dian's wit. Her way of thinking, her sentiments. S. has many allusions to Diana's chastity, and also to her connection with the moon.

207. Proof. Used technically of armour. Cf. Rich. II. i. 3. 73: "Add proof unto mine armour with thy prayers;" Ham. ii. 2. 512: "Mars's armour forg'd for proof eterne," etc.

209. The siege, etc. Cf. V. and A. 423:—