Romeo and Juliet contains some of Shakespeare’s most beautiful poetry, including such well-loved lines as “a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet” and “But, soft, what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” It also contains some of his most raucous bawdy. Seconds before Romeo identifies Juliet with the rising sun, Mercutio makes a baser comparison: “O, that she were / An open arse and thou a pop’rin pear!” The image depends on the resemblance of the fruit known as a medlar to the female genitals and the Poperinghe species of pear to the male. Mercutio’s ribbing of Romeo also puns on “to meddle” and “pop it in,” both meaning to have sex, and on “O” as a sign of the vagina. The juxtaposition of such matter to Romeo’s glorious aria on the transformative effect of love at first sight is typical of Shakespeare’s unsentimental robustness. Youthful as the lovers are, Juliet especially, this is a very grown-up play, which recognizes that love and sex are inseparable.
Shakespeare often thought in pairs. Give him an idea and he is equally interested in its opposite. Sometimes he will handle similar material in successive works, trying it out as comedy in one case and tragedy in the other. A Midsummer Night’s Dream turns on comedy’s ancient plot of young people finding true love in the face of parental opposition. In the final act, the opposite ending of the same story is invoked: Bottom and his friends perform the Roman poet Ovid’s story of Pyramus and Thisbe, a pair of lovers from rival households who lose their lives in a tragedy of bad timing and misapprehension. Though played in the style of parody, the “very tragical mirth” of Pyramus and Thisbe is a reminder that in the matter of love all does not necessarily end well. Romeo and Juliet is the companion piece. As Dream is a comedy darkened by something of the night, so Romeo is a tragedy that keeps surprising us with flashes of comedy. The shock of Juliet’s apparent death is heightened by proximity to the cheerful bustle of the wedding preparations and the comic dialogue of clown and musicians. Equally, Shakespeare takes character types from the comic tradition—the tyrannical father, the bawdy servant, the meddling friar, the witty and cynical friend—and transforms them into such complex, many-layered beings as Old Capulet, the Nurse, and Mercutio.
The spirit of the play is fundamentally Ovidian, although the story is closely based on a different source, an Italian Renaissance novella that was mediated to Shakespeare via a drearily written poem called The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet. As in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, “violent delights have violent ends”: intense passions lead to dramatic transformations, the bright flame of young love is swiftly and cruelly snuffed out, but something of constancy endures at the close. Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe meet by an ancient tomb outside the city. They fall to earth in death, but their love is symbolically remembered in the ripening of the blood-dark mulberry. A couplet of Friar Laurence’s neatly sums up the structure of feeling that underlies this and so many other of Ovid’s transformations: “The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb: / What is her burying grave, that is her womb.” Taken as a whole, the friar’s soliloquy cuts to the quick of Shakespeare’s double vision. It is structured around the rhetorical figure of oxymoron, the paradox whereby opposites are held together. Not only womb and tomb, but also day and night, herbs and flowers that are simultaneously poisonous and medicinal, virtue and vice, God’s grace and our own desires: “such opposèd kings encamp them still / In man as well as herbs.”
In Peter Quince’s staging of Pyramus and Thisbe, Snout memorably plays the part of the Wall that divides the households of the two lovers. Romeo and Juliet begins with Samson, a servant of the house of Capulet, bragging of how he will thrust the Montague maids up against a wall. That is to say, having beaten up the rival men, he will have their women: sex is a matter of taking not giving. Samson boasts the biblical name of a man capable of bringing walls tumbling down, but what actually happens is that Romeo lightly o’erleaps the orchard wall—like Ovid’s Hercules entering the fabulous gardens of the Hesperides—and moves the action into a new key. The lovers give themselves to each other and, though they are then taken in death, the wall of division crumbles away. The memory of Romeo and Juliet binds together the houses of Montague and Capulet, bringing their ancient grudge to an end.
Romeo himself has some rapid growing up to do along the way. At the beginning of the play, he is in love with Rosaline. Or rather, he is in love with the idea of being in love. We never actually see Rosaline: she exists solely as the idealized love-object of Romeo. She is nothing more than a literary type, the beautiful but unavailable mistress of the sonnet tradition that goes back to the Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch. The Petrarchan lover thrives on artifice and paradox. The fire in Romeo’s heart is dependent on his lady’s icy maidenhood—“Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, / Still-waking sleep that is not what it is!” As the Friar recognizes, this is mere “doting,” not true loving. And so long as Mercutio is around, the bubble of poetic language keeps on being pricked—is it not just a matter of rhyming “love” with “dove”?
Romeo still poeticizes on seeing Juliet, though he speaks in richly textured imagery instead of the banal oxymorons inspired by Rosaline: “It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night / As a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear.” When the lovers meet at the Capulet ball, they weave a verbal dance that answers to the motions of their bodies and hands: their initial dialogue is wrapped into the form of a sonnet. But over the next few scenes their language evolves into something more fluid and more natural. You can hear Shakespeare growing as a poet even as you see the love between Juliet and Romeo growing from infatuation at first sight to the conviction that each has found the other’s soul mate. Love is a chemistry that begins from a physiological transformation—Romeo is “bewitched by the charm of looks”—but it becomes a discovery of the very core of human being: “Can I go forward when my heart is here? / Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.”
The great Romantic critic and essayist William Hazlitt read Shakespeare as profoundly as he meditated upon love. “Romeo is Hamlet in love,” he said. For Hazlitt, falling in love is like coming home to your dreams. But what also haunts the lover—remember the teasing paradoxes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—is the suspicion that it might all be a dream. Mercutio spins a tale of how love is but the mischief of Queen Mab, midwife of illusion. Romeo blesses the night, but then acknowledges his fear that “Being in night, all this is but a dream, / Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.”
Juliet has to deal with another fear. For a girl in Shakespeare’s time, chastity was a priceless commodity. To lose her virtue without the prospect of marriage would be to lose herself. In the speech that begins “Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face,” Juliet reveals quite remarkable self-understanding. She is acutely aware that in love the stakes for a woman are far higher than they are for a man. Here Shakespeare’s poetic language becomes the vehicle of both argument and emotion. The artifice of rhyme is replaced by blank verse that moves with the suppleness of thought itself.
In the original production, the lines would have been spoken by a young male actor of perhaps around the same thirteen years as the character of Juliet. By highlighting extreme youthfulness (in the source, Juliet is sixteen), Shakespeare makes a bold implicit claim for his poetic drama. Both actor and character are speaking with maturity far beyond their years: such, the dramatist implies, is the metamorphic potency of the mingled fire and powder of love and art. Though younger than Romeo, Juliet is more knowing. She senses the danger in his talk of idolatry. In the soaring love-duet that is their final scene together before Romeo’s exile, she wills the song to be that of the nightingale rather than the lark because she knows that the break of day will mean the end of their night of love and the dawn of a harsh reality in which she will be reduced to the status of a bargaining chip in the negotiations between Verona’s powerful families.
According to the social code of the time, it is the duty of the young to obey the old. Marriage is a matter not of love, but of the consolidation and perpetuation of wealth and status. Arthur Brooke, author of the Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet which Shakespeare had before him as he wrote, told his readers that the moral of the story was that young lovers who submit to erotic desire, neglecting the authority and advice of parents and listening instead to drunken gossips and superstitious friars, will come to a deservedly sticky end. Shakespeare’s play, by contrast, glories in the energy of youth. It does not seek to advance a moral or to condemn what Juliet calls the “disobedient opposition” of child to parent. The drama offers instead the tragic paradox that the heat in the blood that animates the star-crossed lovers is the same ardor that leads young men to scrap in the street and to kill out of loyalty to their friends. The kinship of love and revenge, the perpetual war between the generations: Shakespeare will return to this territory in later plays such as Hamlet and King Lear.
It is sometimes said that Romeo and Juliet is a lesser work than these “mature” tragedies because its catastrophe is provoked by fate rather than the actions of the characters themselves. Shakespeare does impose an artistic shape upon the plot through the device of the Chorus, with its emphasis on events being written in the stars. But the misadventure that provokes the disastrous ending is not merely a piece of bad luck: the reason Romeo does not get Friar Laurence’s crucial letter is that Friar John is detained for fear that he might have been infected with plague. Plague was an everyday reality in Shakespeare’s London. Puritan preachers may have proclaimed it as a judgment sent by an angry God, but that is not how it would have seemed to Shakespeare’s original audience. Everybody in the theater would have known families whose future had been blighted by plague.
Parents are supposed to die before their children, the old before the young. With plague, it is not always like that. The tragic irony of Romeo and Juliet is that the houses of both Capulet and Montague escape the plague, yet still the children die first. The final scene takes place in an ancestral tomb, but those who lie dead are the flower of a city’s youth—Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Juliet, and her Romeo.
PLOT: A long-standing feud between the Montagues and the Capulets flares up in a brawl on the streets of Verona, halted only by the arrival of Prince Escalus. Romeo, only son of the Montagues, is hopelessly in love with the unattainable Rosaline. Attempting to shake him out of his melancholy, his friends Mercutio and Benvolio persuade him to go to a party at the Capulets’ house. There he meets and falls instantly in love with Juliet, the Capulets’ only daughter, and she with him. With the help of Juliet’s Nurse, they are secretly married the next day by Friar Laurence. Juliet’s cousin Tybalt quarrels with Romeo and in the fight which ensues Mercutio is killed. Romeo avenges his friend’s death and kills Tybalt, for which he is banished from Verona on pain of death. After spending a single night with his bride, he escapes to Mantua. Juliet learns that her parents plan to marry her to Count Paris. Distraught, she turns to Friar Laurence, who devises a plan. He gives her a drug which will make her appear to be dead. The intention is that her parents will place her in the family tomb and when she awakes from her drugged sleep, Romeo will be waiting to escape with her to Mantua. When Romeo returns to Verona, he believes her really to be dead and kills himself. Waking to find Romeo dead beside her, Juliet kills herself. The two families, united in grief, vow to end their feud.
MAJOR PARTS: (with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage) Romeo (20%/163/14), Juliet (18%/118/11), Friar Laurence (11%/55/7), Nurse (9%/90/11), Capulet (9%/51/9), Mercutio (8%/62/4), Benvolio (5%/64/7), Lady Capulet (4%/45/10), Escalus (3%/16/3), Paris (2%/23/5), Montague (1%/10/3).
LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 90% verse, 10% prose.
DATE: 1595–96. Includes part for Will Kemp, who joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1594; published 1597, with assignment to “Lord Hunsdon’s Men” (the name of Shakespeare’s company from July 1596 to April 1597); astrological allusions and earthquake reference may suggest composition in 1595–96; close links with A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
SOURCES: Based on Arthur Brooke’s long narrative poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which was itself based on an Italian novella by Matteo Bandello (1554, possibly known to Shakespeare via William Painter’s English translation in his 1567 Palace of Pleasure). Shakespeare’s alterations to Brooke include considerable expansion of the roles of the Nurse and Mercutio.
TEXT: The First Quarto (1597) is poorly printed, so has traditionally been assumed to be an orally reconstructed or “reported” text, though this assumption was challenged in the late twentieth century; it seems to have had a playhouse origin. The Second Quarto (1599) is longer and better printed, justifying its title-page claim “Newly corrected, augmented, and amended”; it is generally thought to have been derived from Shakespeare’s manuscript. A Third Quarto (1609) reprinted the Second, and a fourth (1622) reprinted the Third, but with intelligent corrections, some of them deriving from consultation of the First Quarto. The 1623 First Folio text was printed from the Third Quarto, though introducing its own intelligent corrections and additional stage directions, but also many new errors as a result of its being printed almost entirely by “Compositor E,” by far the least competent of the workmen who set the Folio into print. Modern editions are traditionally based on the Second Quarto, but we respect the intentions of the Folio, seeking to retain the innovations of its original editor while eliminating what we judge to be its compositorial errors by means of emendation from the Second Quarto (and occasionally the other Quartos). The Folio lacks the Prologue, an omission we highlight by enclosing the lines within asterisks. Folio follows the Second Quarto in including a number of repeated lines (e.g., the description of dawn at the end of Act 2 Scene 1 and the beginning of Act 2 Scene 2); the likeliest explanation on each of the three occasions when this occurs is that the first of the duplicated passages represents authorial “first thoughts” intended for deletion: these lines are retained in our text but are indicated by enclosure within double solidi (// //).
CHORUS
ROMEO
MONTAGUE, Romeo’s father
LADY MONTAGUE, Romeo’s mother
BENVOLIO, Montague’s nephew
ABRAHAM, Montague’s servingman
BALTHASAR, Romeo’s man
JULIET
CAPULET, Juliet’s father
LADY CAPULET, Juliet’s mother
NURSE, to Juliet
TYBALT, Capulet’s nephew
SECOND CAPULET
Petruchio
MUSICIANS
SERVINGMEN
PRINCE, Escalus of Verona
PAGE to Paris
Mercutio’s Page
FRIAR LAURENCE
FRIAR JOHN
APOTHECARY
OFFICER
CITIZENS
CONSTABLE
WATCHMEN
In fair Verona,2 where we lay our scene,
From ancient3 grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil4 blood makes civil hands unclean.
5 From forth the fatal5 loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed6 lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured7 piteous overthrows;
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful9 passage of their death-marked love,;
10 And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but11 their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic12 of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss,14 our toil shall strive to mend.
Down with the Montagues!
And flourishes his blade in spite of63 me.
Profaners67 of this neighbour-stainèd steel—
Will they not hear?— What, ho! You men, you beasts,
That quench the fire of your pernicious69 rage
70 With purple fountains issuing from your veins:
On pain of torture, from those bloody hands
Throw your mistempered72 weapons to the ground,
And hear the sentence of your movèd73 prince.
Three civil broils, bred of an airy word,
75 By thee, Old Capulet, and Montague,
Have thrice disturbed the quiet of our streets,
And made Verona’s ancient77 citizens
Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments78
To wield Old partisans, in hands as old,
80 Cankered80 with peace, to part your cankered hate:
If ever you disturb our streets again,
Your lives shall pay82 the forfeit of the peace.
For this time, all the rest depart away:
You Capulet, shall go along with me,
85 And, Montague, come you this afternoon,
To know our further pleasure86 in this case,
To old Freetown, our common judgement-place.
Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.
90 Speak, nephew, were you by90 when it began?
And yours, close fighting ere92 I did approach:
I drew to part them: in the instant came
The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepared,94
95 Which, as he breathed defiance to my ears,
He swung about his head and cut the winds,
Who nothing hurt withal97 hissed him in scorn:
While we were interchanging thrusts and blows,
Came more and more, and fought on part and part,99
100 Till the prince came, who parted either part.
Right glad am I he was not at this fray.
Peered forth104 the golden window of the east,
105 A troubled mind drave105 me to walk abroad,
Where, underneath the grove of sycamore
That westward107 rooteth from the city side,
So early walking did I see your son:
Towards him I made, but he was ware109 of me
110 And stole into the covert110 of the wood:
I, measuring his affections111 by my own,
Which then112 most sought where most might not be found,
Being one too many by my weary self,
Pursued my humour,114 not pursuing his,
115 And gladly shunned who115 gladly fled from me.
With tears augmenting the fresh morning’s dew,
Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs,
But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
120 Should in the farthest east begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora’s121 bed,
Away from light steals home my heavy122 son,
And private in his chamber pens himself,
Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out
125 And makes himself an artificial night:
Black126 and portentous must this humour prove,
Unless good counsel may the cause remove.
But he, his own affections’ counsellor,
Is to himself — I will not say how true133 —
But to himself so secret and so close,134
135 So far from sounding135 and discovery,
As is the bud bit with an envious136 worm,
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the same.
Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow,
140 We would as willingly give cure as know.
I’ll know his grievance, or be much denied.
To hear true shrift.144— Come, madam, let’s away.
Was that my father that went hence so fast?
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!157
Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
160 Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love:
Why, then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O anything of nothing first create!164
165 O heavy lightness, serious vanity,165
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming166 forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking168 sleep that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
170 Dost thou not laugh?
175 Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,
Which thou wilt propagate,176 to have it pressed
With more of thine: this love177 that thou hast shown
Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,
180 Being purged,180 a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes,
Being vexed,181 a sea nourished with loving tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,182
A choking gall183 and a preserving sweet.
Farewell, my coz.184
An if186 you leave me so, you do me wrong.
This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.
A word ill-urged to one that is so ill.
In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.
With Cupid’s arrow,199 she hath Dian’s wit,
200 And in strong proof200 of chastity well armed,
From love’s201 weak childish bow she lives uncharmed.
She will not stay202 the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide203 th’encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope204 her lap to saint-seducing gold:
205 O, she is rich in beauty, only poor
That206 when she dies with beauty dies her store.
For beauty starved209 with her severity
210 Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
She is too fair,211 too wise, wisely too fair,
To merit212 bliss by making me despair.
She hath forsworn to213 love, and in that vow
Do I live dead that live to tell it now.
Examine other beauties.
220 To call hers exquisite, in question more:
These happy221 masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows
Being black puts us in mind they hide the fair.
He that is strucken223 blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost:
225 Show me a mistress that is passing225 fair,
What doth her beauty serve, but as a note226
Where I may read who passed227 that passing fair?
Farewell, thou canst not teach me to forget.
In penalty alike, and ’tis not hard, I think,
For men so old as we to keep the peace.
5 And pity ’tis you lived at odds so long.
But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?6
My child is yet a stranger in the world,
She hath not seen the change9 of fourteen years,
10 Let two more summers wither in their pride,10
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
Earth14 hath swallowed all my hopes but she:
15 She’s the hopeful15 lady of my earth.
But woo her, gentle16 Paris, get her heart:
My will to her consent is but a part;
An18 she agree, within her scope of choice
Lies my consent and fair according19 voice.
20 This night I hold an old accustomed20 feast,
Whereto I have invited many a guest,
Such as I love, and you among the store,22
One more, most welcome, makes my number more.
At my poor house look to behold this night
25 Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light.
Such comfort26 as do lusty young men feel
When well-apparelled27 April on the heel
Of limping winter treads, even such delight
Among fresh fennel29 buds shall you this night
30 Inherit30 at my house: hear all, all see,
And like her most whose merit most shall be,
Which32 one more view, of many mine being one,
May stand in number, though in reck’ning33 none.
Come, go with me.— Go, sirrah,34 trudge about To Servingman
35 Through fair Verona, find those persons out Gives a list
Whose names are written there and to them say,
My house and welcome on their pleasure stay.37
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish:
45 Turn giddy, and be holp45 by backward turning:
One desperate grief cures with another’s languish:46
Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.
Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
55 Whipped and tormented and— Good e’en,55 good fellow.
‘Signior Martino and his wife and daughters, County Anselme and his beauteous sisters, the lady widow of Utruvio, Signior Placentio and his lovely nieces, Mercutio and his brother Valentine, mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters, my fair niece Rosaline, Livia, Signior Valentio and his cousin Tybalt, Lucio and the lively Helena.’ A fair assembly: whither67 should they come?
and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come and crush75 a cup of wine. Rest you merry.
Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so loves,
With all the admired beauties of Verona:
80 Go thither, and with unattainted80 eye,
Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.
Maintains84 such falsehood, then turn tears to fire,
85 And these,85 who often drowned could never die,
Transparent86 heretics, be burnt for liars.
One fairer than my love! The all-seeing sun
Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.
90 Herself poised90 with herself in either eye:
But in that crystal scales let there be weighed
Your lady’s love92 against some other maid
That I will show you shining at this feast,
And she shall scant94 show well that now seems best.
But to rejoice in splendour96 of mine own.
I bade her come. What,3 Iamb! What, ladybird!
God forbid,4 where’s this girl? What, Juliet!
We must talk in secret.— Nurse, come back again,
10 I have remembered me, thou’s10 hear our counsel.
Thou know’st my daughter’s of a pretty11 age.
45 I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,
How stands your disposition46 to be married?
wisdom from thy teat.49
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are made already mothers. By my count,
I was your mother much53 upon these years
That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief:
55 The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.
This night you shall behold him at our feast:
Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face,
And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen,
Examine every several64 lineament,
65 And see how one another lends content65
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent67 of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound68 lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover.69
70 The fish lives in the sea, and ’tis much pride
For fair without the71 fair within to hide.
That book72 in many’s eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps73 locks in the golden story:
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
75 By having him, making yourself no less.
But no more deep will I endart mine eye79
80 Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
Or shall we on without apology?
We’ll have no Cupid4 hoodwinked with a scarf,
5 Bearing a Tartar’s5 painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper.6
But let them measure7 us by what they will,
We’ll measure8 them a measure, and be gone.
10 Being but heavy,10 I will bear the light.
With nimble soles, I have a soul of lead
So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
And soar with them above a common bound.16
To soar with his light feathers and so bound,18
I cannot bound a pitch19 above dull woe:
20 Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.
Too great oppression22 for a tender thing.
Too rude,24 too boist’rous, and it pricks like thorn.
Prick26 love for pricking, and you beat love down.
Give me a case27 to put my visage in,
A visor28 for a visor! What care I Puts on a mask
What curious eye doth quote29 deformities?
30 Here are the beetle brows30 shall blush for me.
But every man betake32 him to his Iegs.
Tickle34 the senseless rushes with their heels,
35 For I am proverbed35 with a grandsire phrase,
I’ll36 be a candle-holder, and look on.
The37 game was ne’er so fair, and I am done.
If thou art dun, we’ll draw39 thee from the mire
40 Or — save your reverence40 — love, wherein thou stick’st
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight,41 ho!
We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day.
45 Take45 our good meaning, for our judgement sits
Five times in that ere once in our five wits.
But ’tis no wit48 to go.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone57
On the forefinger of an alderman,58
Drawn with a team of little atomies59
60 Over men’s noses as they lie asleep:
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners’61 legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
Her traces63 of the smallest spider’s web,
Her collars of the moonshine’s wat’ry beams,
65 Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash65 of film,
Her wagoner66 a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm67
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid,
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
70 Made by the joiner70 squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love,
On courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies74 straight,
75 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 breath with sweetmeats78 tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
80 And then dreams he of smelling80 out a suit:
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s81 tail
Tickling a parson’s nose as a lies asleep,
Then he dreams of another benefice.83
Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
85 And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches,86 ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep,87 and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
90 And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plaits the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes92 the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
This is the hag,94 when maids lie on their backs,
95 That presses them and learns95 them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:96
This is she—
Thou talk’st of nothing.99
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot102 of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
105 Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And being angered puffs away from thence,
Turning his side107 to the dew-dropping south.
Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful112 date
With this night’s revels and expire113 the term
Of a despisèd life closed in my breast
115 By some vile forfeit115 of untimely death.
But he that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my suit. On, lusty gentlemen!
Unplagued with corns will walk a bout132 with you.
Ah, my mistresses, which of you all
Will now deny134 to dance? She that makes dainty,
135 She I’ll swear hath corns. Am135 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.
140 You are welcome, gentlemen! Come, musicians, play.
A hall,141 hall, give room! And foot it, girls.
More light, you knaves, and turn142 the tables up,
And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.
Ah, sirrah,144 this unlooked-for sport comes well.
145 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?
’Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,
Come Pentecost152 as quickly as it will,
Some five and twenty years, and then we masked.
155 His son is thirty.
His son was but a ward157 two years ago.
Of yonder knight?
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s163 ear:
Beauty164 too rich for use, for earth too dear!
165 So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I’ll watch her167 place of stand,
And touching hers, make blessèd my rude168 hand.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it,169 sight,
170 For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.
Fetch me my rapier,172 boy.— What dares the slave
Come hither, covered with an antic173 face,
To fleer174 and scorn at our solemnity?
175 Now, by the stock175 and honour of my kin,
To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.
Wherefore storm you so?
A villain that is hither come in spite,
180 To scorn at our solemnity this night.
A bears him like a portly184 gentleman,
185 And to say truth, Verona brags of him
To be a virtuous and well-governed youth.
I would not for the wealth of all this town
Here in my house do him disparagement:
Therefore be patient, take no note of him.
190 It is my will, the which if thou respect,
Show a fair presence and put off these frowns,
An ill-beseeming semblance192 for a feast.
I’ll not endure him.
What, goodman boy?196 I say, he shall: go to.
Am I the master here or you? Go to.
You’ll not endure him? God198 shall mend my soul,
You’ll make a mutiny among my guests?
200 You will set cock-a-hoop?200 You’ll be the man?
You are a saucy203 boy. Is’t so, indeed?
This trick may chance to scathe204 you, I know what.
205 You must contrary205 me? Marry, ’tis time.—
Well said,206 my hearts!— You are a princox. Go, To Dancers/To Tybalt
Be quiet, or— More light, more light!— for shame, To Servants/To Tybalt
I’ll make you quiet.— What, cheerly, my hearts! To Dancers
210 Makes my flesh tremble in their different210 greeting.
I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall
Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall.
This holy shrine,214 the gentle sin is this:
215 My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Which mannerly218 devotion shows in this,
For saints219 have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
220 And palm to palm is holy palmers’220 kiss.
They pray, grant thou,224 lest faith turn to despair.
Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged. Kisses her
230 Give me my sin again. Kisses her again
235 Her mother is the lady of the house,
And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous.
I nursed her daughter, that you talked withal.237
I tell you, he that can lay hold of238 her
Shall have the chinks.239
O, dear account!241 My life is my foe’s debt.
245 We have a trifling foolish banquet245 towards.
Is it e’en so? Why then I thank you all.
I thank you, honest247 gentlemen, goodnight.—
More torches here!— Come on, then let’s to bed. To Servingmen
Ah, sirrah, by my fay,249 it waxes late:
250 I’ll to my rest.
My grave is like258 to be my wedding bed.
260 The only son of your great enemy.
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious263 birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathèd enemy.
Of one I danced withal.
Come, let’s away: the strangers all are gone.
And young affection gapes2 to be his heir:
That fair3 for which love groaned for and would die,
With tender Juliet matched,4 is now not fair.
5 Now Romeo is beloved and loves again,5
Alike6 bewitchèd by the charm of looks,
But to his foe supposed7 he must complain,
And she steal love’s sweet bait from fearful8 hooks.
Being held a foe, he may not have access
10 To breathe such vows as lovers use10 to swear,
And she as much in love, her means much less
To meet her new-belovèd anywhere:
But passion lends them power, time means, to meet,
Temp’ring extremities14 with extreme sweet.
Turn back, dull earth,2 and find thy centre out. Stands aside
5 And on my life hath stol’n him home to bed.
Call, good Mercutio.
Romeo! Humours!9 Madman! Passion! Lover!
10 Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh,
Speak but one rhyme,11 and I am satisfied:
Cry but ‘Ay me’, pronounce but ‘love’ and ‘dove’,
Speak to my gossip13 Venus one fair word,
One nickname for her purblind14 son and heir,
15 Young Abraham Cupid,15 he that shot so true,
When King16 Cophetua loved the beggar-maid!—
He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not, Aside
The18 ape is dead, and I must conjure him.—
I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes,
20 By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,
By her fine foot, straight leg and quiv’ring thigh,
And the demesnes22 that there adjacent lie,
That in thy likeness thou appear to us.
To raise a spirit26 in his mistress’ circle
Of some strange27 nature, letting it there stand
Till she had laid28 it and conjured it down:
That were some spite.29 My invocation
30 Is fair and honest,30 and in his mistress’ name
I conjure only but to raise up him.
To be consorted with33 the humorous night:
Blind is his love and best befits the dark.
Now will he sit under a medlar36 tree,
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.—
O39 Romeo, that she were, O, that she were
40 An open arse40 and thou a pop’rin pear!
Romeo, goodnight: I’ll to my truckle-bed,41
This field-bed42 is too cold for me to sleep.—
Come, shall we go?
45 To seek him here that means not to be found.
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,
50 Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid51 art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious:
Her vestal livery53 is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it, cast it off.
55 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:
60 Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres62 till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
65 As daylight doth a lamp, her eye 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,
70 That I might touch that cheek!
O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art
As glorious74 to this night, being o’er my head
75 As is a wingèd messenger of heaven
Unto the white upturnèd76 wond’ring eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy puffing clouds,
And sails upon the bosom of the air.
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.
Thou art thyself, though86 not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name.
90 What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet,
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes93
Without that title. Romeo, doff94 thy name,
95 And for95 thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized,
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
So stumblest on my counsel?101
I know not how to tell thee who I am:
My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
105 Because it is an enemy to thee.
Had I it written, I would tear the word.
Of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound:
Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?
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.
For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do that dares love attempt:
Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.
Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet,
And I am proof122 against their enmity.
125 And but125 thou love me, let them find me here:
My life were better ended by their hate,
Than death proroguèd,127 wanting of thy love.
130 He lent me counsel130 and I lent him eyes.
I am no pilot,131 yet wert thou as far
As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea,
I should adventure for such merchandise.
135 Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight
Fain137 would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny
What I have spoke: but farewell compliment!138
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay’,
140 And I will take thy word. Yet if thou swear’st,
Thou mayst prove false: at lovers’ perjuries
They say Jove142 laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce143 it faithfully:
Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won,
145 I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay,
So146 thou wilt woo, but else not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,147
And therefore thou mayst think my behaviour light:148
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
150 Than those that have more coying150 to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ware,152
My true love’s passion: therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love,
155 Which155 the dark night hath so discoverèd.
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—
That monthly changes in her circlèd orb,159
160 Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious163 self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
165 And I’ll believe thee.
I have no joy of this contract168 tonight:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
170 Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say ‘It lightens’. Sweet, goodnight!
This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Goodnight, goodnight, as sweet repose and rest
175 Come to thy heart as that within my breast!
180 And yet I would it were180 to give again.
And yet I wish but for the thing I have.
My bounty184 is as boundless as the sea,
185 My love as deep: the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu!—
Anon, good nurse!— Sweet Montague, be true.
Stay but a little, I will come again. [Exit, above]
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
If that thy bent194 of love be honourable,
195 Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow,
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.
200 I come, anon.— But if thou mean’st not well,
I do beseech thee—
By and by, I come.—
To cease thy strife,203 and leave me to my grief.
Tomorrow will I send.
Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books,
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. Romeo starts to go
To lure this tassel-gentle211 back again!
Bondage is hoarse,212 and may not speak aloud,
Else would I tear the cave where Echo213 lies,
And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine,
215 With repetition of my ‘Romeo’.
How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night,
Like softest music to attending ears!
I have forgot why I did call thee back.
Rememb’ring how I love thy company.
Forgetting any other home but this.
And yet no further than a wanton’s231 bird,
That lets it hop a little from his hand,
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,233
And with a silken thread plucks it back again,
235 So loving-jealous of his liberty.
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
Goodnight, goodnight! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
240 That I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.
Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!
// The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, //
// Check’ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light, //
245 // And darkness fleckled245 like a drunkard reels //
// From forth246 day’s pathway, made by Titan’s wheels. //
Hence will I to my ghostly247 friar’s close cell,
His help to crave, and my dear hap248 to tell.
Check’ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And fleckled3 darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth4 day’s path and Titan’s burning wheels:
5 Now, ere the sun advance5 his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night’s dank dew to dry,
I must upfill this osier cage7 of ours
With baleful8 weeds and precious-juicèd 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 divers11 kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find:
Many for many virtues excellent,
None14 but for some and yet all different.
15 O, mickle15 is the powerful grace that lies
In plants, herbs, 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 aught19 so good but strained from that fair use
20 Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
And vice sometime by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this weak flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power:
25 For this, being smelt, with that part25 cheers each part,
Being tasted, slays26 all senses with the heart.
Two such opposèd kings encamp them still27
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will:
And where the worser is predominant,
30 Full soon the canker30 death eats up that plant.
What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?
Young son, it argues34 a distempered head
35 So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed:
Care36 keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie,
But where unbruisèd youth with unstuffed brain
Doth couch39 his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign:
40 Therefore thy earliness doth me assure
Thou art uproused with some distemp’rature,
Or if not so, then here I hit it right,
Our Romeo hath not been in bed tonight.
I have forgot that name, and that name’s woe.
50 I have been feasting with mine enemy,
Where on a sudden one hath wounded me,
That’s by me wounded: both our remedies
Within thy help and holy physic53 lies.
I bear no hatred, blessèd man, for lo,54
55 My intercession55 likewise steads my foe.
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.57
On the fair daughter of rich Capulet:
60 As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;
And all combined, save what thou must combine
By holy marriage. When and where and how
We met, we wooed and made exchange of vow,
I’ll tell thee as we pass, but this I pray,
65 That thou consent to marry us today.
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.
70 Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine
Hath washed 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,
75 Thy old75 groans yet ringing in my ancient ears:
Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
Of an old tear that is not washed off yet.
If e’er thou wast thyself and these woes thine,
Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline.
80 And art thou changed? Pronounce this sentence80 then:
Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.
To lay one in, another out to have.
Doth grace88 for grace and love for love allow:
The other did not so.
Thy love did read by rote91 that could not spell.
But come, young waverer, come, go with me,
In one respect93 I’ll thy assistant be:
For this alliance may so happy prove,
95 To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.
Came he not home tonight?2
5 Torments him so, that he will sure run mad.
Hath sent a letter to his father’s house.
second cause. Ah, the immortal passado,20 the punto reverso, the hay!
whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy75 the argument no longer.
An old hare hoar, Sings
And an old hare hoar,
Is very good meat104 in Lent.
105 But a hare that is hoar105
Is too106 much for a score,
When it hoars107 ere it be spent.
Romeo, will you come to your father’s?
We’ll to dinner, thither.
135 Some means to come to shrift135 this afternoon,
And there she shall at Friar Laurence’ cell
Be shrived137 and married. Here is for thy pains. Attempts to give money
Within this hour my man shall be with thee
And bring thee cords143 made like a tackled stair,
Which to the high top-gallant144 of my joy
145 Must be my convoy in the secret night.
Farewell, be trusty and I’ll quit146 thy pains.
Farewell, commend me to thy mistress.
‘Two151 may keep counsel, putting one away’?
In half an hour she promised to return.
Perchance she cannot meet him: that’s not so.
O, she is lame!4 Love’s herald should be thoughts,
5 Which ten times faster glides than the sun’s beams,
Driving back shadows over louring6 hills:
Therefore do nimble-pinioned7 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 bandy14 her to my sweet love,
15 And his to me.
But old folks, many feign as they were dead,
Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.
O God, she comes! O honey nurse, what news?
Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.
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.
Fie, how my bones ache! What a jaunt26 have I had!
Nay, come, I pray thee speak, good, good nurse, speak.
30 Do you not see that I am out of 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.
35 Is thy news good or bad? Answer to that.
Say either, and I’ll stay the circumstance:36
Let me be satisfied, is’t good or bad?
45 What says he of our marriage? What of that?
It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.
My back o’t’other side — O, my back, my back!
Beshrew49 your heart for sending me about,
50 To catch my death with jaunting up and down!
Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?
Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest:
‘Your love says, like an honest gentleman,
Where is your mother?’
60 Are you so hot?60 Marry, come up, I trow.
Is this the poultice61 for my aching bones?
Henceforward do your messages yourself.
There stays a husband to make you a wife:
Now comes the wanton68 blood up in your cheeks,
They’ll be in scarlet straight at any news.
70 Hie you to church, I must another way,
To fetch a ladder, by the which your love
Must climb a bird’s nest72 soon when it is dark:
I am the drudge and toil in your delight,
But you shall bear the burden74 soon at night.
75 Go, I’ll to dinner: hie you to the cell.
That after-hours with sorrow chide us not.
It cannot countervail4 the exchange of joy
5 That one short minute gives me in her sight:
Do thou but close6 our hands with holy words,
Then love-devouring death do what he dare,
It is enough I may but call her mine.
10 And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,10
Which as they kiss consume.11 The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,
And in the taste confounds13 the appetite:
Therefore love moderately, long love doth so:
15 Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot
Will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint:17
A lover may bestride the gossamers18
That idles in the wanton19 summer air,
20 And yet not fall, so light20 is vanity.
25 Be heaped like mine, and that25 thy skill be more
To blazon26 it, then sweeten with thy breath
This neighbour air, and let rich music’s tongue27
Unfold the imagined28 happiness that both
Receive in either29 by this dear encounter.
Brags of his substance, not of ornament:31
They are but beggars that can count their worth,
But my true love is grown to such excess
I cannot sum up sum34 of half my wealth.
For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone
Till holy church incorporate two in one.
The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,
And if we meet, we shall not scape3 a brawl,
For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
Gentlemen, good e’en, a word with one of you.
Either withdraw unto some private place,
40 Or reason coldly40 of your grievances,
Or else depart: here all eyes gaze on us.
I will not budge for no man’s pleasure, I.
Marry, go46 before to field, he’ll be your follower:
Your worship in that sense may call him ‘man’.
No better term than this: thou art a villain.
Doth much excuse51 the appertaining rage
To such a greeting: villain am I none;
Therefore farewell, I see thou know’st me not.
55 That thou hast done me: therefore turn and draw.
But love thee better than thou canst devise,57
Till thou shalt know the reason of my love:
And so, good Capulet — which name I tender59
60 As dearly as my own — be satisfied.
Alla stoccado62 carries it away.
Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?63 Draws his sword
Gentlemen, for shame, forbear73 this outrage!
Tybalt, Mercutio, the prince expressly hath Tries to part them
75 Forbidden bandying75 in Verona streets:
Hold,76 Tybalt! Good Mercutio! Tybalt stabs Mercutio
A plague o’both the houses! I am sped.78
Is he gone and hath nothing?
Where is my page? Go, villain,82 fetch a surgeon.
Or I shall faint. A plague o’both your houses!
They have made worms’ meat of me. I have it,
And soundly too. Your houses! Benvolio helping
My very96 friend, hath got his mortal hurt
In my behalf: my reputation stained
With Tybalt’s slander — Tybalt, that an hour
Hath been my cousin. O sweet Juliet,
100 Thy beauty hath made me effeminate,
And in my temper101 softened valour’s steel!
That gallant spirit hath aspired103 the clouds,
Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.
This but begins the woe others106 must end.
Away to heaven, respective lenity,109
110 And fire and fury be my conduct110 now!
Now, Tybalt, take the ‘villain’ back again,
That late thou gav’st me, for Mercutio’s soul
Is but a little way above our heads,
Staying for thine to keep him company:
115 Either thou or I, or both, must go with him.
Shalt with him hence.
120 The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain.
Stand not amazed:121 the prince will doom thee death,
If thou art taken. Hence, begone, away!
Tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he?
I charge129 thee in the prince’s name, obey.
The unlucky132 manage of this fatal brawl:
There lies the man, slain by young Romeo,
That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.
O prince! O cousin! Husband! O, the blood is spilled
Of my dear kinsman! Prince, as thou art true,
For blood of ours, shed blood of Montague.
O cousin, cousin!
Romeo that spoke him fair, bid him bethink
How nice143 the quarrel was, and urged withal
Your high displeasure: all this utterèd
145 With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bowed,
Could not take truce146 with the unruly spleen
Of Tybalt, deaf to peace, but that he tilts147
With piercing steel at bold Mercutio’s breast,
Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point,
150 And with150 a martial scorn, with one hand beats
Cold death aside, and with the other sends
It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity
Retorts153 it. Romeo he cries aloud,
‘Hold, friends! Friends, part!’ and swifter than his tongue,
155 His agile arm beats down their fatal points,
And ’twixt them rushes, underneath whose arm
An envious157 thrust from Tybalt hit the life
Of stout158 Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled.
But by and by159 comes back to Romeo,
160 Who had but newly entertained 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.
Affection166 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:
170 Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.
Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?
His fault concludes but what the law should end,
175 The life of Tybalt.
Immediately we do exile him hence.
I have an interest178 in your hearts’ proceeding,
My blood179 for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding:
180 But I’ll amerce180 you with so strong a fine
That you shall all repent the loss of mine.
It will be deaf to pleading and excuses,
Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses:183
Therefore use none. Let Romeo hence in haste,
185 Else, when he is found, that hour is his last.
Bear hence this body and attend our will:
Mercy187 but murders, pardoning those that kill.
Towards Phoebus’2 lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon3 would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
5 Spread thy close5 curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway’s6 eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalked 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, civil10 night,
Thou sober-suited matron all in black,
And learn12 me how to lose a winning match,
Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:13
Hood14 my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks,
15 With thy black mantle, till strange15 love grow 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 upon a raven’s back.
20 Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-browed night,
Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die,21
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
25 And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possessed27 it, and though I am sold,
Not yet enjoyed. 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.—
Now, nurse, what news? What hast thou there? The cords
35 That Romeo bid thee fetch?
We are undone,39 lady, we are undone.
40 Alack the day, he’s gone, he’s killed, he’s dead!
Though heaven cannot: O Romeo, Romeo!
Whoever would have thought it? Romeo!
This torture should be roared 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:49
50 I am not I, if there be such an ay,
Or those eyes shut,51 that makes thee answer ‘Ay’.
If he be slain, say ‘Ay’, or if not, ‘No’:
Brief sounds determine of my weal53 or woe.
55 God55 save the mark! — here on his manly breast: Points
A piteous corpse, a bloody piteous corpse;
Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaubed in blood,
All in gore-blood:58 I swoonèd at the sight.
60 To prison, eyes, ne’er look on liberty!
Vile earth,61 to earth resign, end motion here,
And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!62
O courteous Tybalt, honest gentleman,
65 That ever I should live to see thee dead!
Is Romeo slaughtered, and is Tybalt dead,
My dearest cousin, and my dearer lord?68
Then, dreadful trumpet,69 sound the general doom,
70 For who is living, if those two are gone?
Romeo that killed him, he is banishèd.
Did ever dragon keep76 so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical,
Dove-feathered raven, wolvish-ravening lamb,
Despisèd substance of divinest show!
80 Just80 opposite to what thou justly seem’st,
A damnèd saint, an honourable villain!
O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell,
When thou didst bower83 the spirit of a fiend
In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?
85 Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace!
No faith, no honesty in men: all perjured,
90 All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.90
Ah, where’s my man? Give me some aqua vitae:91
These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.
Shame come to Romeo!
95 For such a wish! He was not born to shame:
Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit;
For ’tis a throne where honour may be crowned
Sole monarch of the universal earth.
O, what a beast was I to chide at him!
Ah, poor my lord,102 what tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I, thy three-hours’ wife, have mangled it?
But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?—
105 That villain cousin would have killed my husband.
Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring,
Your tributary107 drops belong to woe,
Which you mistaking offer up to joy.
My husband lives that Tybalt would have slain,
110 And Tybalt 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 murdered me. I would forget it fain,
But, O, it presses to my memory,
115 Like damnèd guilty deeds to sinners’ minds:
‘Tybalt is dead, and Romeo banishèd.’
That ‘banishèd’, that one word ‘banishèd’,
Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt’s death
Was woe enough if it had ended there:
120 Or if sour woe delights in fellowship
And needly121 will be ranked with other griefs,
Why followed not, when she said ‘Tybalt’s dead’,
Thy123 father, or thy mother, nay, or both,
Which modern124 lamentation might have moved?
125 But with a rearward125 following Tybalt’s death,
‘Romeo is banishèd’: to speak that word,
Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
All slain, all dead. ‘Romeo is banishèd’!
There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
130 In that word’s death:130 no words can that woe sound.
Where is my father and my mother, nurse?
Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.
135 When theirs are dry, for Romeo’s banishment.
Take up those cords.— Poor ropes, you are beguiled,136
Both you and I, for Romeo is exiled:
He made you for a highway to my bed,
But I, a maid, die maiden-widowèd.
140 Come cord, come nurse, I’ll to my wedding-bed,
And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!
To comfort you: I wot143 well where he is.
Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night.
145 I’ll to him, he is hid at Laurence’ cell.
And bid him come to take his last farewell.
Affliction is enamoured of thy parts,2
And thou art wedded to calamity.
5 What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand,
That I yet know not?
Is my dear son with such sour company:
I bring thee tidings of the prince’s doom.
Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.
For exile hath more terror in his look,
15 Much more than death. Do not say ‘banishment’.
Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
20 Hence banishèd20 is banished from the world,
And world’s exile21 is death: then banishèd,
Is death mistermed. Calling death banishèd,
Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden axe,
And smil’st upon the stroke that murders me.
Thy26 fault our law calls death, but the kind prince,
Taking thy part, hath rushed27 aside the law,
And turned that black word ‘death’ to ‘banishment’.
This is dear mercy, and thou see’st it not.
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,34
35 More honourable state, more courtship35 lives
In carrion-flies36 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 vestal39 modesty,
40 Still blush, as thinking their own kisses40 sin.
This may flies do, when I from this must fly —
And say’st thou yet that exile is not death? —
But Romeo may not: he is banishèd.
Hadst thou no poison mixed, no sharp-ground knife,
45 No sudden mean45 of death, though ne’er so mean,
But46 ‘banishèd’ to kill me? ‘Banishèd’?
O friar, the damnèd use that word in hell,
Howling attends it: how hast thou the heart,
Being a divine,49 a ghostly confessor,
50 A sin-absolver, and my friend professed,
To mangle me with that word ‘banishèd’?
55 Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,
To comfort thee, though thou art banishèd.
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant59 a town, reverse a prince’s doom,
60 It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more.
65 Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,
An hour but married, Tybalt murderèd,
Doting67 like me and like me banishèd,
Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,
And fall upon the ground as I do now,
70 Taking the measure of an unmade grave.
Mist-like, enfold me from the search of eyes.
75 Thou wilt be taken.75— Stay awhile!— Stand up,
Run to my study.— By and by!— God’s will, Romeo does not move
What simpleness77 is this?— I come, I come!
Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? What’s your will?
80 I come from Lady Juliet.
Where’s my lady’s lord? Where’s Romeo?
Just in her case. O, woeful sympathy!86
Piteous predicament! Even so lies she,
Blubb’ring and weeping, weeping and blubb’ring.
Stand89 up, stand up, stand, an you be a man:
90 For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand.
Why should you fall into so deep an O?91
95 Doth not she think me an old95 murderer,
Now I have stained the childhood of our joy
With blood removed but little from her own?
Where is she? And how doth she? And what says
My concealed lady to our cancelled99 love?
And now falls on her bed, and then starts up,
And Tybalt calls, and then on Romeo cries,102
And then down falls again.
105 Shot from the deadly level105 of a gun,
Did murder her, as that name’s cursèd hand
Murdered her kinsman. O, tell me, friar, tell me,
In what vile part of this anatomy
Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack109
110 The hateful mansion. Draws his sword
Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art:
Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote
The unreasonable fury of a beast.
115 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.118
Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself?
120 And slay thy lady that in thy life lives,
By doing damnèd hate upon thyself?
Why rail’st thou on thy birth, the heaven and earth?
Since birth, and heaven, and earth,123 all three do meet
In thee at once, which thou at once wouldst lose.
125 Fie,125 fie, thou sham’st thy shape, thy love, thy wit,
Which126 like a usurer abound’st in all,
And usest none in127 that true use indeed
Which should bedeck128 thy shape, thy love, thy wit.
Thy noble shape is but a form of wax,
130 Digressing130 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,
Misshapen134 in the conduct of them both,
135 Like powder135 in a skilless soldier’s flask,
Is set afire by thine own ignorance,
And thou dismembered137 with thine own defence.
What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive,
For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead:139
140 There art thou happy.140 Tybalt would kill thee,
But thou slew’st Tybalt: there art thou happy.
The law that threatened death became thy friend
And turned it to exile: there art thou happy.
A pack of blessings light upon thy back,
145 Happiness courts thee in her best array,145
But like a mishavèd146 and sullen wench,
Thou pouts upon thy fortune and thy love:
Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
Go, get thee to thy love as was decreed,149
150 Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her:
But look thou stay not till the watch be set,151
For then thou canst not pass to Mantua,
Where thou shalt live till we can find a time
To blaze154 your marriage, reconcile your friends,
155 Beg pardon of thy 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,
155 Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto:160
Romeo is coming.
To hear good counsel. O, what learning is!—
My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come.
Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.
170 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 signify173 from time to time
Every good hap174 to you that chances here.
175 Give me thy hand, ’tis late. Farewell, goodnight.
It were a grief, so brief177 to part with thee. Farewell.
That we have had no time to move2 our daughter:
Look you, she loved her kinsman Tybalt dearly,
And so did I.— Well, we were born to die.
5 ’Tis very late, she’ll not come down tonight.
I promise you, but for your company,
I would have been abed an hour ago.
Madam, goodnight, commend me to your daughter.
Tonight she is mewed11 up to her heaviness.
Of my child’s love: I think she will be ruled
In all respects by me, nay, more, I doubt it not.—
15 Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed,
Acquaint her here of my son16 Paris’ love,
And bid her, mark you me,17 on Wednesday next —
But, soft, what day is this?
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 ado24 — a friend or two,
25 For hark you, Tybalt being slain so late,25
It may be thought we held him carelessly,26
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?
Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed, To Lady Capulet
Prepare her, wife, against33 this wedding day.—
Farewell, my lord. Light to my chamber, ho!
35 Afore me!35 It is so very late,
That we may call it early by and by.
Goodnight.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pom’granate tree.
5 Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
No nightingale: look, love, what envious7 streaks
Do lace the severing8 clouds in yonder east:
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund9 day
10 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountains tops.
I must be gone and live or stay and die.
It is some meteor13 that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torchbearer,
15 And light thee on thy way to Mantua.
Therefore stay yet: thou need’st not to be gone.
I am content, so18 thou wilt have it so.
I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye,
20 ’Tis but the pale reflex20 of Cynthia’s brow,
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty22 heaven so high above our heads.
I have more care23 to stay than will to go:
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
25 How is’t, my soul? Let’s talk, it is not day.
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining28 harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;29
30 This doth not so, for she divideth us:
Some say the lark and loathèd toad change31 eyes,
O, now I would they had changed voices too,
Since arm from arm33 that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up34 to the day.
35 O, now begone, more light and light it grows.
40 The day is broke, be wary, look about.
I must hear from thee every day in the hour,
45 For in a minute there are many days.
O, by this count I shall be much in years46
Ere I again behold my Romeo!
I will omit no opportunity
50 That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
For sweet discourses in our time to come.
55 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.
Dry59 sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu!
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.
Is she not67 down so late, or up so early?
What unaccustomed cause procures68 her hither? Juliet could exit aloft and enter below
What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
An if73 thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live:
Therefore, have done. Some grief shows much of love,
75 But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
Which you weep for.
80 I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
As that the villain lives which slaughtered him.
God pardon him! I do with all my heart:
And yet no man like87 he doth grieve my heart.
90 Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death!
Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua,
Where that same banished runagate93 doth live,
Shall give him such an unaccustomed dram,94
95 That he shall soon keep Tybalt company,
And then I hope, thou wilt be satisfied.
With Romeo, till I behold him — dead98 —
Is my poor heart so for a kinsman99 vexed.
100 Madam, if you could find out but a man
To bear a poison, I would temper101 it,
That Romeo should upon receipt thereof,
Soon sleep in quiet.103 O, how my heart abhors
To hear him named and cannot come to him,
105 To wreak105 the love I bore my cousin
Upon his body that hath slaughtered him!
But now I’ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.
110 What are they, beseech your ladyship?
One who, to put thee from thy heaviness,
Hath sorted out113 a sudden day of joy,
That thou expects not, nor I looked not for.114
The gallant, young and noble gentleman,
The County Paris, at St Peter’s Church,
Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.
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,
125 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!
And see how he will take it at your hands.
But for the sunset of my brother’s son
It rains downright.
How now? A conduit,133 girl? What, still in tears?
Evermore show’ring? In one little body
135 Thou counterfeits135 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:138 the winds, thy sighs,
Who, raging with thy tears and they with them,
140 Without a sudden calm, will overset140
Thy tempest-tossèd body. How now, wife?
Have you delivered to her our decree?
I would144 the fool were married to her grave.
How,146 will she none? Doth she not give us thanks?
Is she not proud? Doth she not count her147 blest,
Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought148
So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom?
Proud can I never be of what I hate,
But thankful even for hate,152 that is meant love.
‘Proud’ and ‘I thank you’ and ‘I thank you not’,
155 And yet ‘not proud’, mistress minion you?
Thank me no thankings nor proud me no prouds,
But fettle157 your fine joints gainst Thursday next,
To go with Paris to St Peter’s Church,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle159 thither.
160 Out,160 you green-sickness carrion, out, you baggage,
You tallow-face!161
Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
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.169 Wife, we scarce thought us blest
170 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!173
175 You are to blame, my lord, to rate175 her so.
Good prudence, smatter177 with your gossips, go.
Utter your gravity182 o’er a gossip’s bowl,
For here we need it not.
Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play,
Alone, in company, still187 my care hath been
To have her matched: and having now provided
A gentleman of noble parentage,
190 Of fair demesnes,190 youthful, and nobly allied,
Stuffed, as they say, with honourable parts,191
Proportioned as one’s thought would wish a man,
And then to have a wretched puling193 fool,
A whining mammet,194 in her fortune’s tender,
195 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 pardon197 you:
Graze where you will you shall not house with me.
Look to’t, think on’t, I do199 not use to jest.
200 Thursday is near, lay hand on heart, advise:200
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.
205 Trust to’t, bethink you, I’ll not be forsworn.205
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!
Delay this marriage for a month, a week,
210 Or if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument211 where Tybalt lies.
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.
215 My husband is on earth, my faith215 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 practise219 stratagems
220 Upon so soft a subject as myself!
What say’st thou? Hast thou not a word of joy?
Some comfort, nurse.
Romeo is banished, and all224 the world to nothing,
225 That he dares ne’er come back to challenge225 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!
230 Romeo’s a dishclout230 to him. An eagle, madam,
Hath not so green, so quick,231 so fair an eye
As Paris hath. Beshrew232 my very heart,
I think you are happy in this second match,
For it excels your first: or if it did not,
235 Your first is dead, or ’twere as good he were,
As living here and you no use236 of him.
Or else beshrew them both.
Go in and tell my lady I am gone,
Having displeased my father, to Laurence’ cell,
245 To make confession and to be absolved.
Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,248
Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue
250 Which she hath praised him with above compare
So many thousand times? Go, counsellor,
Thou and my bosom252 henceforth shall be twain.
I’ll to the friar, to know his remedy:
If all else fail, myself have power to die.
And I am nothing slow3 to slack his haste.
5 Uneven is the course, I like it not.
And therefore have I little talk of love,
For Venus8 smiles not in a house of tears.
Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous
10 That she doth give her sorrow so much sway,10
And in his wisdom hastes our marriage,
To stop the inundation of her tears,
Which too much minded13 by herself alone
May be put from her by society:14
15 Now do you know the reason of this haste.
Look, sir, here comes the lady towards my cell.
Being spoke behind your back, than to your face.
For it was bad enough before their spite.
35 And what I spake, I spake it to my face.35
Are you at leisure, holy father, now,
Or shall I come to you at evening mass?
My lord, we must entreat the time alone.
Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye:
Till then, adieu, and keep this holy kiss. Kisses Juliet on forehead or hand or cheek
Come weep with me, past hope, past care, past help!
It strains me past the compass48 of my wits:
I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue49 it,
50 On Thursday next be married to this county.
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,
55 And with this knife I’ll help it presently.55 Shows a dagger
God joined my heart and Romeo’s, thou our hands,
And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo sealed,
Shall be the label58 to another deed,
Or my true heart with treacherous revolt
60 Turn to another, this shall slay them both:60
Therefore, out of thy long-experienced time,61
Give me some present counsel, or, behold,
’Twixt my extremes63 and me this bloody knife
Shall play the umpire,64 arbitrating that
65 Which the commission65 of thy years and art
Could to no issue66 of true honour bring.
Be not so long to speak, I long to die,
If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy.
70 Which craves as desp’rate an execution
As that is desperate which we would prevent.
If, rather than to marry County Paris,
Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,
Then is it likely thou wilt undertake
75 A thing like death to chide away this shame,
That cop’st76 with death himself to scape from it:
And if thou dar’st, I’ll give thee remedy.
From off the battlements of any tower,
80 Or walk in thievish ways,80 or bid me lurk
Where serpents are, chain me with roaring bears,
Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house,82
O’er-covered quite with dead men’s rattling bones,
With reeky shanks84 and yellow chapless skulls,
85 Or bid me go into a new-made grave
And hide me with a dead man in his tomb —
Things that to hear them told have made me tremble —
And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live an unstained wife to my sweet love.
To marry Paris. Wednesday is tomorrow:
Tomorrow night look that thou lie alone,
Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber:
Take thou this vial, being then in bed, Shows a vial
95 And this distilling95 liquor drink thou off,
When presently through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour,97 for no pulse
Shall keep his native98 progress, but surcease.
No warmth, no breath shall testify thou liv’st:
100 The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade
To wanny101 ashes, thy eyes’ windows fall,
Like death when he shuts up the day of life.
Each part, deprived of supple government,103
Shall stiff and stark and cold appear like death:
105 And in this borrowed 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:
110 Then as the manner of our country is,
In thy best robes uncovered on the bier,
// Be borne to burial in thy kindred’s grave //
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.
115 In the mean time, against115 thou shalt awake,
Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift,116
And hither shall he come, and he and I
Will watch thy waking, and that very night
Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.
120 And this shall free thee from this present shame,
If no inconstant toy,121 nor womanish fear,
Abate thy valour in the acting it.
125 In this resolve: I’ll send a friar with speed
To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.
Farewell, dear father!
Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning2 cooks.
We shall be much unfurnished8 for this time.
What, is my daughter gone to Friar Laurence?
A peevish12 self-willed harlotry it is.
Of disobedient opposition
To you and your behests,17 and am enjoined ↓Falls prostrate or kneels↓
By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here,
To beg your pardon. Pardon, I beseech you!
20 Henceforward I am ever ruled by you.
I’ll have this knot knit up tomorrow morning.
And gave him what becomèd24 love I might,
25 Not stepping o’er the bounds of modesty.
This is as’t should be. Let me see the county.
Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.
Now, afore God, this reverend holy friar,
30 All our whole city is much bound to him.
To help me sort such needful ornaments32
As you think fit to furnish me tomorrow?
’Tis now near night.
And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife:
40 Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her:40
I’ll not to bed tonight, let me alone.
I’ll play the housewife for this once. What, ho!
They43 are all forth. Well, I will walk myself
To County Paris, to prepare him up
45 Against tomorrow. My heart is wondrous light,
Since this same wayward girl is so reclaimed.
I pray thee leave me to myself tonight,
For I have need of many orisons3
To move the heavens to smile upon my state,
5 Which, well thou know’st, is cross5 and full of sin.
As are behoveful8 for our state tomorrow.
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.
Get thee to bed, and rest, for thou hast need.
I have a faint cold fear thrills16 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?
20 My dismal20 scene I needs must act alone.
Come, vial.
What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married then tomorrow morning?
No, no, this shall forbid it.— Lie thou there.— Lays down a dagger
25 What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly26 hath ministered to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonoured,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is, and yet methinks it should not,
30 For he hath still30 been tried a holy man.
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? There’s a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,
35 To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere36 my Romeo comes?
Or if I live, is it not very like,37
The horrible conceit38 of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place —
40 As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where for these many hundred years the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,43
Lies fest’ring in his shroud, where, as they say,
45 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 mandrakes48 torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad —
50 O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,50
Environèd51 with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefather’s joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And in this rage,54 with some great kinsman’s bone,
55 As with a club, dash out my desp’rate brains?
O, look! Methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
Seeking out Romeo that did spit57 his body
Upon a rapier’s point. Stay,58 Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, Romeo, Romeo! Here’s drink: I drink to thee.
She drinks and falls onto the bed within the curtains
The curfew-bell4 hath rung, ’tis three o’clock.
5 Look to the baked meats,5 good Angelica:
Spare not for cost.
Get you to bed. Faith, you’ll be sick tomorrow
For this night’s watching.9
All night for less cause, and ne’er been sick.
But I will watch13 you from such watching now. Exeunt Lady and Nurse
15 Now fellow, what is there? Calls
Sirrah, fetch drier logs:
Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.
And never trouble Peter for the matter.
The county will be here with music straight,24
25 For so he said he would. I hear him near.—
Nurse! Wife! What, ho! What, Nurse, I say!
Go waken Juliet, go and trim her up,27
I’ll go and chat with Paris. Hie, make haste,
Make haste: the bridegroom he is come already.
30 Make haste, I say.
Fast,32 I warrant her, she.— Approaches the bed
Why, lamb, why, lady! Fie, you slug-a-bed!
Why, love, I say, madam, sweetheart, why, bride!
35 What, not a word? You take your pennyworths35 now,
Sleep for a week, for the next night, I warrant,
The County Paris hath set37 up his rest,
That you shall rest but little. God forgive me,
Marry and amen.— How sound is she asleep!
40 I must needs wake her. Madam, madam, madam!
Ay, let the county take41 you in your bed,
He’ll fright42 you up, i’faith. Will it not be? Draws the curtains
What, dressed, and in your clothes, and down43 again?
I must needs wake you: lady, lady, lady!—
45 Alas, alas! Help, help! My lady’s dead!
O, welladay, that ever I was born!
Some aqua vitae, ho! My lord! My lady!
Revive, look up, or I will die with thee!
Help, help! Call help.
Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff.
60 Life and these lips have long been separated:
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak.
O son, the night before thy wedding-day To Paris
70 Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies,
Flower as she was, deflowered by him.
Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir:
My daughter he hath wedded. I will die,
And leave him all: life, living,74 all is Death’s.
And doth it give me such a sight as this?
Most miserable hour that e’er time saw
In lasting79 labour of his pilgrimage!
80 But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,
But one thing to rejoice and solace in,
And cruel death hath catched82 it from my sight!
Most lamentable day, most woeful day,
85 That ever, ever, I did yet behold!
O day, O day, O day, O hateful day!
Never was seen so black a day as this:
O woeful day, O woeful day!
90 Most detestable death, by thee beguiled,
By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown!
O love, O life! Not life, but love in death!
Uncomfortable94 time, why cam’st thou now
95 To murder, murder our solemnity?95
O child, O child! My soul, and not my child!
Dead art thou! Alack, my child is dead,
And with my child my joys are burièd.
100 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.
105 The most you sought was her promotion,105
For ’twas your heaven106 she should be advanced:
And weep ye now, seeing she is advanced
Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
O, in this love, you love your child so ill
110 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 stick113 your rosemary
On this fair corpse, and as the custom is,
115 And in her best array bear her to church:
For though some nature bids us all lament,
Yet nature’s tears are reason’s merriment.117
Turn from their office119 to black funeral:
120 Our instruments to melancholy bells,
Our wedding cheer121 to a sad burial feast,
Our solemn122 hymns to sullen dirges change,
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corpse,
And all things change them to the contrary.
And go, Sir Paris: everyone prepare
To follow this fair corpse unto her grave.
The heavens do lour128 upon you for some ill,
Move129 them no more by crossing their high will.
Musicians may enter here
For well you know this is a pitiful case.132
When153 griping griefs the heart doth wound,
Then music with her silver sound—
Why ‘silver sound’? Why ‘music with her silver sound’? What say you, Simon Catling?156
Then music with her silver sound
165 With speedy help doth lend redress.
My dreams presage2 some joyful news at hand:
My bosom’s lord3 sits lightly in his throne,
And all this day an unaccustomed spirit
5 Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead —
Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think! —
And breathed such life with kisses in my lips,
That I revived, and was an emperor.
10 Ah me, how sweet is love itself possessed,10
When but love’s shadows11 are so rich in joy!
News from Verona!— How now, Balthasar!
Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar?
How doth my lady? Is my father well?
15 How doth my lady Juliet? That I ask again,
For nothing can be ill, if she be well.
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 post21 to tell it you.
O, pardon me for bringing these ill news,
Since you did leave it for my office,23 sir.
25 Thou know’st my lodging, get me ink and paper,
And hire post-horses:26 I will hence tonight.
Your looks are pale and wild, and do import28
Some misadventure.29
Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do.
Hast thou no letters to me from the friar?
35 And hire those horses, I’ll be with thee straight.—
Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight.
Let’s see for37 means. O mischief, thou art swift
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
I do remember an apothecary,39
40 And hereabouts a40 dwells, which late I noted
In tattered weeds,41 with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples:42 meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones,
And in his needy44 shop a tortoise hung,
45 An alligator stuffed, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes, and about his shelves
A beggarly account47 of empty boxes,
Green earthen48 pots, bladders and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread49 and old cakes of roses,
50 Were thinly scattered, to make up a show.
Noting this penury, to myself I said
‘An if a man did need a poison now,
Whose53 sale is present death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff54 wretch would sell it him.’
55 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 holy-day, the beggar’s shop is shut.
What, ho, apothecary!
Hold, there is forty ducats:62 let me have Shows gold
A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear63
As will disperse itself through all the veins
65 That65 the life-weary taker may fall dead
And that the trunk66 may be discharged of breath
As violently as hasty powder fired
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.
70 Is death to any he70 that utters them.
And fear’st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,
Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back:
75 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 it77 and take this.
And drink it off, and if you had the strength
Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.
Doing more murder in this loathsome world,
85 Than these poor compounds85 that thou mayst not sell.
I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.
Farewell, buy food, and get87 thyself in flesh.—
Come, cordial88 and not poison, go with me
To Juliet’s grave, for there must I use thee.
Welcome from Mantua: what says Romeo?
Or if his mind be writ, give me his letter.
One of our order, to associate6 me,
Here in this city visiting the sick,
And finding him, the searchers8 of the town,
Suspecting that we both were in a house
10 Where the infectious pestilence10 did reign,
Sealed up the doors, and would not let us forth,
So that my speed12 to Mantua there was stayed.
15 Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
So fearful were they of infection.
The letter was not nice18 but full of charge,
Of dear import,19 and the neglecting it
20 May do much danger.20 Friar John, go hence,
Get me an iron crow,21 and bring it straight
Unto my cell.
25 Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake:
She will beshrew me much that Romeo
Hath had no notice of these accidents,27
But I will write again to Mantua,
And keep her at my cell till Romeo come.
30 Poor living corpse, closed in a dead man’s tomb!
Yet put it out, for I would not be seen.
Under yon yew trees lay3 thee all along,
Holding thy ear close to the hollow ground,
5 So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread,
Being6 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.
Here in the churchyard, yet I will adventure.11 Stands back
O woe, thy canopy13 is dust and stones —
Which with sweet water nightly I will dew,
15 Or wanting that, with tears distilled by moans;
The obsequies16 that I for thee will keep
Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep.
The boy gives warning something doth approach.
What cursèd foot wanders this way tonight,
20 To cross20 my obsequies and true love’s rite?
What, with a torch? Muffle me, night, awhile. Stands back
Hold, take this letter: early in the morning Gives a letter
See thou deliver it to my lord and father.
25 Give me the light. Upon thy life, I charge thee, Takes a torch
Whate’er thou hear’st or see’st, 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:32 therefore hence, begone.
But if thou, jealous,33 dost return to pry
In what I further shall intend to do,
35 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.
Live and be prosperous, and farewell, good fellow.
His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.44 Stands aside
Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth:
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
And in despite48 I’ll cram thee with more food.
50 That murdered my love’s cousin, with which grief
It is supposèd the fair creature died,
And here is come to do some villainous shame
To the dead bodies. I will apprehend him.—
Stop thy unhallowed54 toil, vile Montague! Comes forward
55 Can vengeance be pursued further than death?
Condemnèd villain, I do apprehend thee:
Obey and go with me, for thou must die.
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desp’rate man,
60 Fly hence, and leave me: think upon these gone,60
Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,
Put not another sin upon my head,
By urging me to fury: O, begone!
By heaven, I love thee better than myself,
65 For I come hither armed against myself.
Stay not, begone, live, and hereafter say,
A madman’s mercy bid thee run away.
And apprehend thee for a felon here.
Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. Dies
75 Mercutio’s kinsman, noble County Paris!
What said my man, when my betossèd soul
Did not attend him as we rode? I think He told me
Paris should have78 married Juliet:
Said he not so? Or did I dream it so?
80 Or am I mad, hearing him80 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 triumphant83 grave. Opens the tomb, revealing Juliet
A grave? O no, a lantern,84 slaughtered youth,
85 For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence86 full of light.
Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interred.
How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry, which their keepers89 call
90 A light’ning before death. O, how may I
Call this a light’ning? O my love, my wife!
Death that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquered, beauty’s ensign94 yet
95 Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advancèd96 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 his100 that was thy enemy?
Forgive me, cousin.— Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial103 death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps
105 Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that, I still106 will stay with thee,
And never from this palace of dim night
// Depart again. Come lie thou in my arms. //
// Here’s to thy health, where’er thou tumblest in. //
110 // O true110 apothecary, //
// Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.//
Depart again. Here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chambermaids: O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
115 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 bargain119 to engrossing death! Kisses Juliet
120 Come, bitter conduct,120 come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing122 rocks thy seasick weary bark!
Here’s to my love. O true apothecary, Drinks
Thy drugs are quick.124 Thus with a kiss I die. Dies
Have my old feet stumbled at graves! Who’s there?
What torch is yon that vainly129 lends his light
130 To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern,
It burneth in the Capels’ monument.
One that you love.
140 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.
O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing.
I dreamt my master and another fought,
And that my master slew him.
Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains
150 The stony entrance of this sepulchre?
What mean these masterless and gory swords
To lie discoloured by this place of peace?
Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris too?
And steeped in blood? Ah, what an unkind154 hour
155 Is guilty of this lamentable chance!
The lady stirs.
I do remember well where I should be,
And there I am. Where is my Romeo?
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,
165 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, I dare no longer stay.
170 What’s here? A cup closed in my true love’s hand?
Poison I see hath been his timeless171 end.
O churl,172 drink all and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips,
Haply174 some poison yet doth hang on them,
175 To make me die with a restorative. Kisses him
Thy lips are warm.
This is thy sheath: there rust, and let me die.
Go, some of you, whoe’er you find attach.182
Pitiful sight! Here lies the county slain,
And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,
185 Who here hath lain these two days burièd.
Go, tell the prince, run to the Capulets,
Raise up the Montagues, some others search.
We see the ground whereon these woes do lie,
But the true ground189 of all these piteous woes
190 We cannot without circumstance190 descry.
We took this mattock and this spade from him,
195 As he was coming from this churchyard side.
That calls our person from our morning rest?
Some ‘Juliet’, and some ‘Paris’, and all run
With open outcry toward our monument.
205 And Romeo dead, and Juliet, dead before,
Warm and new killed.
With instruments upon them, fit to open
210 These dead men’s tombs.
This dagger hath mista’en212 — for lo his house
Is empty on the back of Montague —
And is mis-sheathèd in my daughter’s bosom!
That warns216 my old age to a sepulchre.
To see thy son and heir now early down.
220 Grief of my son’s exile hath stopped her breath.
What further woe conspires against my age?
To press before thy father to a grave?
Till we can clear these ambiguities, ↓The tomb may be closed↓
And know their spring, their head,227 their true descent,
And then will I be general228 of your woes,
And lead you even to death.229 Meantime forbear,
230 And let mischance be slave to230 patience.—
Bring forth the parties of suspicion.
Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against234 me of this direful murder:
235 And here I stand both to impeach and purge
Myself condemnèd and myself excused.235
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
240 Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet,
And she, there dead, that’s Romeo’s faithful wife:
I married them and their stol’n marriage day
Was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death
Banished the new-made bridegroom from this city,
245 For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betrothed and would have married her perforce247
To County Paris. Then comes she to me,
And with wild looks bid me devise some means
250 To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her — so tutored by my art252—
A sleeping potion, which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought254 on her
255 The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo
That he should hither come as256 this dire night
To help to take her from her borrowed grave,
Being the time the potion’s force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
260 Was stayed260 by accident, and yesternight
Returned my letter back. Then all alone,
At the prefixèd hour of her waking,
Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault,
Meaning to keep her closely264 at my cell,
265 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 true268 Romeo dead.
She wakes, and I entreated her come forth,
270 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
275 Her nurse is privy:275 and if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrificed, some hour before the time,277
Unto the rigour of severest law.
280 Where’s Romeo’s man? What can he say to this?
And then in post282 he came from Mantua
To this same place, to this same monument.
This letter he early bid me give his father, Shows letter
285 And threatened me with death, going in the vault,
If I departed not and left him there.
Where is the county’s page, that raised the watch?—
Sirrah, what made289 your master in this place?
And bid me stand aloof, and so I did:
Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb,
And by and by293 my master drew on him,
And then I ran away to call the watch.
Their course of love, the tidings of her death:
And here he writes that he did buy a poison
Of a poor ’pothecary, and therewithal298
Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.
300 Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague?
See, what a scourge301 is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys302 with love.
And I for winking at303 your discords too
Have lost a brace304 of kinsmen: all are punished.
This is my daughter’s jointure,306 for no more
Can I demand.
For I will raise309 her statue in pure gold,
310 That whiles Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure311 at such rate be set
As that of true and faithful Juliet.
Poor sacrifices of314 our enmity!
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head.
Go hence to have more talk of these sad things:
Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd,
For never was a story of more woe
320 Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Q1 = First Quarto text of 1597 (of uncertain authority)
Q2 = Second Quarto text of 1599
Q1/Q2 = a reading in which the First Quarto and Second Quarto agree
Q3 = Third Quarto text of 1609
Q4 = Fourth Quarto text of 1622
F = First Folio text of 1623
F2 = a correction introduced in the Second Folio text of 1632
Ed = a correction introduced by a later editor
SD = stage direction
SH = speech heading (i.e., speaker’s name)
List of parts = Ed
Prologue…mend = Q2. Not in F
1.1.22 in = Q1. Not in F 49 swashing = Q4. F = washing 61 SH LADY CAPULET = Ed. F = Wife (or Mo. or Old La. throughout) 65 SH LADY MONTAGUE = Ed. F = 2. Wife 86 further = Q1/Q2. F = Fathers 114 humour = Q2. F = Honor 131 other = Q2. F = others 164 create = Q1. F = created 166 well-seeming = Q4. F = welseeing 203 bide = Q2. F = bid 204 ope = Q2. F = open
1.2.41 are here = Q2. F = are 47 thy = Q2. F = the 56 God…e’en spelled Godgigoden in F 63 daughters = Q2. F = daughter 94 she…show = Q1/Q2. F (uncorrected) = she shew scant shell. F (corrected) = she shall scant shell seems = Q2. F = shewes
1.3.27 eleven = Q2. F = a eleuen 33 should = Q1/Q2. F = shall 34 Jule = Q2. F = Iulet. Q1 = Juliet 35 SH LADY CAPULET = Ed. F = Old La. 47, 48 honour = Q1. F = houre 80 it = Q1. Not in F 84 SH LADY CAPULET = Ed. F = Mo.
1.4.18 so = Q2. F = to 43 in = Q2. F = I 44 light lights = Ed. F = lights lights 46 five = Ed. F = fine 55–93 O…bodes = prose in Q2/F, verse in Q 57 an = Q1/Q2. Not in F 65 film = F2. F = Philome 68 maid = Q1. F = man 74 curtsies spelled Cursies in F 75 dream = Q2. F = dreamed 81 a = Q1/Q2. Not in F 88 ear = Q2. F = eares 92 elflocks = Q1. F = Elk-locks 119 SH CHIEF SERVINGMAN = Ed. F = Ser. 131 SH CAPULET = Ed. F = 1. Capu. 132 a bout = Ed. F = about 140 SD they = Q2. F = the 156 SH CAPULET = Q2 (1. Capu.). F = 3. Cap. 187 this = Q2. F = the 199 my = Q2. F = the 215 ready = Q1. F = did ready 258 wedding = Q1/Q2. F = wedded 266 learned = Q1/Q2. F = learne
2.0.1 SH CHORUS = Ed. Not in F
2.1.8 SH MERCUTIO Nay…too = Q1. Line assigned to Benvolio in F 12 but = Q2. F = me but pronounce = Q1. F = Prouant dove = Q1. F = day 14 heir = Q1. F = her 18 and I = Q2. F = I 27 it there = Q2. F = it 40 open arse and = Ed. F = open, or. Q1 = open Et caetera 65 eye = F. Q1 = eyes 88 nor any other part = Q1. Not in F 89 Belonging…name = Ed. F = O be some other name / Belonging to a man 90 What’s…name? = Q1. F = What? in a names 139 love me = Q2. F = Loue 142 laughs = Q2. F = laught 150 more = Q1. Not in F 156 blessèd moon = Q2. F = Moone 209 toward = Q2. F = toward 214 mine = Q1. Not in F 220 nyas = Ed. F = Neece 239–40 Parting…morrow assigned to Juliet as in Q1. F assigns to Romeo 241 SH ROMEO Sleep…breast! = Q1. F assigns to Juliet
2.2.95 households’ = Q2. F = houshould
2.3.18 minim rests = Q2. F = minum 22 phantasimes = Ed. F = phantacies 34 the = Q2. F = the the 37 good Mercutio = Q2. F = Mercutio 41 curtsy spelled cursie in F 53 Switch spelled Swits in F 62 then well = Q2. F = well 74 for = Q1/Q2. F = or 83, 84 good e’en spelled gooden in F 89 well said = Q2. F = said 128 SH ROMEO = Q1/Q2. F = Nur. 141 stay = Q2. F = stay thou 152 man’s = Q2. F = man 155 see a toad = Q2. F = a see Toade
2.4.11 Is = Q2. F = I 39 leg = Q2. F = legs 42 gentle as = Q2. F = gentle 44 this = Q2. F = this this 51 that = Q2. F = that that not = Q2. F = so
2.5.23 is his = Q2. F = in his 33 such = Q2. F = such such 34 sum up sum spelled sum vp some in F
3.1.22 ribbon spelled Riband in F 57 love = Q2. F = lou’d 62 stoccado spelled stucatho in F 102 Mercutio is = Q1/Q2. F = Mercutio’s is 105 more spelled mo in F 129 prince’s name = Q2. F = Princes names 140 bloody fray = Q2. F = Fray 147 Tybalt = Q2. F = Tybalts 155 agile = Q1. F = aged 173 SH MONTAGUE = Q4. F = Cap. 183 out = Q2. F = our 187 but = Q1/Q2. F = not
3.2.9 By = Q4. F = And by 38 welladay spelled welady in F he’s dead = Q2. F omits third repetition 51 shut spelled shot in F 56 corpse spelled Coarse in F throughout 58 swoonèd spelled sounded in F 62 one spelled on in F 74 SH NURSE = Q1. Assigned to Juliet in F 75 SH JULIET = Q1. Assigned to the Nurse in F 78 Dove-feathered = Ed. F = Rauenous Doue-feather’d 81 damnèd = Q4. F = dimne 99 chide at = Q2. F = chide 112 word = Q2. F = words 125 with = Q2. F = which
3.3.48 Howling = Q2. F = Howlings 52 a little speak = Q2. F = speake 63 dispute = Q1/Q2. F = dispaire 65 I, Juliet thy = Q2. F = Iuliet my 78 will? F here prints a redundant entry direction for the Nurse 99 cancelled = Q1/Q2. F = conceal’d 105 deadly = Q2. F = dead 120 lives = F2. F = lies 144 of = Q1/Q2. F = or blessings = Q1/Q2. F = blessing 146 mishavèd = Q2. F = mishaped 147 pouts upon = Q4. F = puttest vp
3.4.35 very late = Q2. F = late
3.5.21 the = Q1. Not in F 35 light it = Q1/Q2. F = itli ght 36 SD Enter Nurse = Ed. F = Enter Madam and Nurse 66 It is = Q2. F = Is it 86 him = Q4. Not in F 115 that = Q2. F = this 119 thee there = Q2. F = thee 123 woo = Q2. F = woe 139 thy = Q2. F = the 151 hate = Q1/Q2. F = haue 155 And…you? = Q2. Line omitted in F, probably due to compositorial eyeskip 177 gossips = Q2. F = gossip 179 SH CAPULET = Q1. F = Father (printed as part of the dialogue) 180 SH NURSE = Q4. Not in F 182 bowl = Q2. F = bowles 186 tide = Q2. F = ride 219 Alack = Q2. F = Hlacke 248 Is it = Q1/Q2. F = It is
4.1.35 my face = Q2. F = thy face 41 we = Q1/Q2. F = you 48 strains = Q2. F = streames 55 with this = Q2. F = with’ his 76 from = Q1/Q2. F = fro 79 off spelled of in F 84 chapless = Q1. F = chappels 86 tomb = Ed (Q1 = Or lay me in tombe with one new dead). F = graue 101 wanny = Ed. F = many thy = Q2. F = the 102 shuts = Q2. F = shut 117–18 and…waking = Q3. Not in F, due to compositorial eyeskip 123 fear = Q2. F = care
4.3.17 life = Q2. F = fire 50 wake = Q4. F = walke 58 a = Q2. F = my
4.4.15 what is = Q2. F = what 16 SH SERVINGMAN = Q1. F = Fel. 20 SH ANOTHER SERVINGMAN = Q1 (Ser:). F = Fel. 106 should = Q2. F = shouldst 116 us all = Q2. F = all us 130 SH FIRST MUSICIAN = Ed. F = Mu. 137 of woe = Q4. Not in F 137–8 O…me = Q2. Not in F, probably due to compositorial eyeskip 158, 160 Prates = Q2. F = Pratest
5.1.3 lord abbreviated L. in F 4 this day = Q2. F = thisan day 17 SH BALTHASAR = Q1. F = Man. (throughout scene) 19 lives = Q2. F = live 34 No = Q2. F = Mo 35 SD Exit Man = positioned here in Q1, two lines earlier in F 40 a dwells = Q2. F = dwells
5.3.1 aloof = Q2. F = aloft 3 yew = Q1. F = young 19 way = Q2. F = wayes 20 rite spelled right in F 21 SD Balthasar = Q1. F = Peter 40 SH BALTHASAR = Q1. F = Pet. (throughout scene) 60 these = Q2. F = those 71 SH PAGE = Q4. F = Pet. 94 art = Q2. F = are 102–3 Shall…That = Ed. F = I will beleeue, / Shall I beleeue, that 143 Fear = Q2. F = feares 145 yew = Ed. F = young 169 not away = Q2. F = notuaway 172 left = Q2. F = lest 177 SH CONSTABLE = Ed. F = Match. (for Watch., but has Con. at 192 and 196) 179 This is = Q2. F = ’Tis in 180 SH PAGE = Ed. F = Boy. 191 SH SECOND WATCHMAN = Ed. F = Watch 198 morning = Q2. F = mornings 202 our = Q2. F = out 223 is in = Q1/Q2. F = in is 281 SH BALTHASAR = Q2. F = Boy. 311 such = Q2. F = that