William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (185 page)

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Authors: William Shakespeare

Tags: #Drama, #Literary Criticism, #Shakespeare

BOOK: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition
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He offers to stab himself, and the Nurse snatches the dagger away

 
FRIAR LAURENCE Hold thy desperate hand.
Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art.
Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote
The unreasonable fury of a beast.
Unseemly woman in a seeming man,
And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!
Thou hast amazed me. By my holy order,
I thought thy disposition better tempered.
Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself,
And slay thy lady that in thy life lives
By doing damned hate upon thyself?
Why rail‘st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth,
Since birth and heaven and earth, all three, do meet
In thee at once, which thou at once wouldst lose?
Fie, fie, thou 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 vowed to cherish;
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 afire by thine own ignorance,
And thou dismembered 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 slewest Tybalt: there art thou happy.
The law that threatened death becomes thy friend,
And turns it to exile: there art thou happy.
A pack of blessings light upon thy back,
Happiness courts thee in her best array,
But, like a mishavèd and sullen wench,
Thou pout’st upon thy fortune and thy love.
Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed.
Ascend her chamber; hence and comfort her.
But look thou stay not till the watch be set,
For then thou canst not pass to Mantua,
Where thou shalt live till we can find a time
To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,
Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back
With twenty hundred thousand times more joy
Than thou went’st forth in lamentation.
Go before, Nurse. Commend me to thy lady,
And bid her hasten all the house to bed,
Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto.
Romeo is coming.
NURSE
O Lord, I could have stayed here all the night
To hear good counsel! O, what learning is!
My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come.
ROMEO
Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.

Nurse offers to go in, and turns again

 
NURSE (
giving the ring
)
Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir.
Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.
ROMEO
How well my comfort is revived by this.
Exit Nurse
FRIAR LAURENCE
Go hence, good night, and here stands all your state.
Either be gone before the watch be set,
Or by the break of day disguised from hence.
Sojourn in Mantua. I’ll find out your man,
And he shall signify from time to time
Every good hap to you that chances here.
Give me thy hand. ’Tis late. Farewell. Good night.
ROMEO
But that a joy past joy calls out on me,
It were a grief so brief to part with thee.
Farewell.
Exeunt

severally

3.4
Enter Capulet, his Wife, and Paris
 
CAPULET
Things have fall’n out, sir, so unluckily
That we have had no time to move our daughter.
Look you, she loved her kinsman Tybalt dearly,
And so did I. Well, we were born to die.
’Tis very late. She’ll not come down tonight.
I promise you, but for your company
I would have been abed an hour ago.
PARIS
These times of woe afford no times to woo.
Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter.
CAPULET’S WIFE
I will, and know her mind early tomorrow.
Tonight she’s mewed up to her heaviness.

Paris offers to go in, and Capulet calls him again

 
CAPULET
Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender
Of my child’s love. I think she will be ruled
In all respects by me. Nay, more, I doubt it not.
Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed.
Acquaint her here of my son Paris’ love,
And bid her-mark you me?—on Wednesday next—
But soft—what day is this?
PARIS Monday, my lord.
CAPULET
Monday. Ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon.
O’ Thursday let it be. 0’ 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 tomorrow.
CAPULET
Well, get you gone. O’ Thursday be it, then.
(
To his Wife
) 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

Capulet and his wife at one door, Paris at another door

 
3.5
Enter Romeo and Juliet aloft

with the ladder of cords

 
JULIET
Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fear-full hollow of thine ear.
Nightly she sings on yon pom’granate tree.
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
ROMEO
It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
JULIET
Yon light is not daylight; I know it, I.
It is some meteor that the sun exhaled
To be to thee this night a torchbearer
And light thee on thy way to Mantua.
Therefore stay yet. Thou need’st not to be gone.
ROMEO
Let me be ta‘en, let me be put to death.
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye,
’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow;
Nor that is not the lark whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.
I have more care to stay than will to go.
Come, death, and welcome; Juliet wills it so.
How is’t, my soul? Let’s talk. It is not day.
JULIET
It is, it is. Hie hence, be gone, away.
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us.
Some say the lark and loathed toad changed eyes.
O, now I would they had changed voices, too,
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day.
O, now be gone! More light and light it grows.
ROMEO
More light and light, more dark and dark our woes.
Enter the Nurse

hastily

 
NURSE Madam.
JULIET Nurse.
NURSE
Your lady mother is coming to your chamber.
The day is broke; be wary, look about. Exit
JULIET
Then, window, let day in, and let life out.
ROMEO
Farewell, farewell! One kiss, and I’ll descend.

He lets down the ladder of cords and goes down

 
JULIET
Art thou gone so, love, lord, my husband, friend?
I must hear from thee every day in the hour,
For in a minute there are many days.
O, by this count I shall be much in years
Ere I again behold my Romeo.
ROMEO Farewell.
I will omit no opportunity
That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
JULIET
O, think’st thou we shall ever meet again?
ROMEO
I doubt it not, and all these woes shall serve
For sweet discourses in our times to come.
⌈JULIET⌉
O God, I have an ill-divining soul!
Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low,
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 ⌈
pulling up the ladder and weeping

O fortune, fortune, all men call thee fickle.
If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him
That is renowned for faith? Be fickle, fortune,
For then I hope thou wilt not keep him long,
But send him back.
Enter Capulet’s Wife

below

CAPULET’S WIFE Ho, daughter, are you up?
JULIET
Who is’t that calls? It is my lady mother.
Is she not down so late, or up so early?
What unaccustomed cause procures her hither?

She goes down and enters below

 
CAPULET’S WIFE
Why, how now, Juliet?
JULIET Madam, I am not well.
CAPULET’S WIFE
Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death?
What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live,
Therefore have done. Some grief shows much of love,
But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
JULIET
Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
CAPULET’S WIFE
So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend
Which you so weep for.
JULIET Feeling so the loss,
I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
CAPULET’S WIFE
Well, girl, thou weep’st not so much for his death
As that the villain lives which slaughtered him.
JULIET
What villain, madam?
CAPULET’S WIFE That same villain Romeo.
JULIET (
aside
)
Villain and he be many miles asunder.
(
To her mother
) God pardon him—I do, with all my
heart,
And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.
CAPULET’S WIFE
That is because the traitor murderer lives.
JULIET
Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands.
Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death.
CAPULET’S WIFE
We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not.
Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua,
Where that same banished runagate doth live,
Shall give him such an unaccustomed dram
That he shall soon keep Tybalt company;
And then I hope thou wilt be satisfied.
JULIET
Indeed, I never shall be satisfied
With Romeo till I behold him, dead,
Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vexed.
Madam, if you could find out but a man
To bear a poison, I would temper it
That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof,
Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors
To hear him named and cannot come to him
To wreak the love I bore my cousin
Upon his body that hath slaughtered him!
CAPULET’S
WIFE
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?
CAPULET’S WIFE
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 looked not for.
JULIET
Madam, in happy time. What day is that?
CAPULET’S WIFE
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.

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