Scene 3
Friar Laurence’s cell.
Enter FRIAR LAURENCE
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man: Affliction is enamour’d of thy parts, And thou art wedded to calamity.
Enter ROMEO
ROMEO:
Father, what news? what is the prince’s doom? What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand, That I yet know not?
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Too familiar Is my dear son with such sour company: I bring thee tidings of the prince’s doom.
ROMEO:
What less than dooms-day is the prince’s doom?
FRIAR LAURENCE:
A gentler judgment vanish’d from his lips, Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.
ROMEO:
Ha, banishment! be merciful, say ’death;’ For exile hath more terror in his look, Much more than death: do not say ’banishment.’
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Hence from Verona art thou banished: Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.
ROMEO:
There is no world without Verona walls, But purgatory, torture, hell itself. Hence-banished is banish’d from the world, And world’s exile is death: then banished, Is death mis-term’d: calling death banishment, Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden axe, And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.
FRIAR LAURENCE:
O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness! Thy fault our law calls death; but the kind prince, Taking thy part, hath rush’d aside the law, And turn’d that black word death to banishment: This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not.
ROMEO:
’Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven is here, Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog And little mouse, every unworthy thing, Live here in heaven and may look on her; But Romeo may not: more validity, More honourable state, more courtship lives In carrion-flies than Romeo: they my seize On the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand And steal immortal blessing from her lips, Who even in pure and vestal modesty, Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin; But Romeo may not; he is banished: Flies may do this, but I from this must fly: They are free men, but I am banished. And say’st thou yet that exile is not death? Hadst thou no poison mix’d, no sharp-ground knife, No sudden mean of death, though ne’er so mean, But ’banished’ to kill me?-’banished’? O friar, the damned use that word in hell; Howlings attend it: how hast thou the heart, Being a divine, a ghostly confessor, A sin-absolver, and my friend profess’d, To mangle me with that word ’banished’?
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Thou fond mad man, hear me but speak a word.
ROMEO:
O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.
FRIAR LAURENCE:
I’ll give thee armour to keep off that word: Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy, To comfort thee, though thou art banished.
ROMEO:
Yet ’banished’? Hang up philosophy! Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom, It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more.
FRIAR LAURENCE:
O, then I see that madmen have no ears.
ROMEO:
How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.
ROMEO:
Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel: Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love, An hour but married, Tybalt murdered, Doting like me and like me banished, Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair, And fall upon the ground, as I do now, Taking the measure of an unmade grave.
Knocking within
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Arise; one knocks; good Romeo, hide thyself.
ROMEO:
Not I; unless the breath of heartsick groans, Mist-like, infold me from the search of eyes.
Knocking
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Hark, how they knock! Who’s there? Romeo, arise; Thou wilt be taken. Stay awhile! Stand up;
Knocking
Run to my study. By and by! God’s will, What simpleness is this! I come, I come!
Knocking
Who knocks so hard? whence come you? what’s your will?
Nurse:
Let me come in, and you shall know my errand; I come from Lady Juliet.
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Welcome, then.
Enter Nurse
Nurse:
O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar, Where is my lady’s lord, where’s Romeo?
FRIAR LAURENCE:
There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.
Nurse:
O, he is even in my mistress’ case, Just in her case! O woful sympathy! Piteous predicament! Even so lies she, Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering. Stand up, stand up; stand, and you be a man: For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand; Why should you fall into so deep an O?
ROMEO:
Nurse!
Nurse:
Ah sir! ah sir! Well, death’s the end of all.
ROMEO:
Spakest thou of Juliet? how is it with her? Doth she not think me an old murderer, Now I have stain’d the childhood of our joy With blood removed but little from her own? Where is she? and how doth she? and what says My conceal’d lady to our cancell’d love?
Nurse:
O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps; And now falls on her bed; and then starts up, And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries, And then down falls again.
ROMEO:
As if that name, Shot from the deadly level of a gun, Did murder her; as that name’s cursed hand Murder’d her kinsman. O, tell me, friar, tell me, In what vile part of this anatomy Doth my name lodge? tell me, that I may sack The hateful mansion.
Drawing his sword
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Hold thy desperate hand: Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art: Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote The unreasonable fury of a beast: Unseemly woman in a seeming man! Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! Thou hast amazed me: by my holy order, I thought thy disposition better temper’d. Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself? And stay thy lady too that lives in thee, By doing damned hate upon thyself? Why rail’st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth? Since birth, and heaven, and earth, all three do meet In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose. Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit; Which, like a usurer, abound’st in all, And usest none in that true use indeed Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit: Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, Digressing from the valour of a man; Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury, Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish; Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, Misshapen in the conduct of them both, Like powder in a skitless soldier’s flask, Is set afire by thine own ignorance, And thou dismember’d with thine own defence. What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive, For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead; There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee, But thou slew’st Tybalt; there are thou happy too: The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend And turns it to exile; there art thou happy: A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back; Happiness courts thee in her best array; But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench, Thou pout’st upon thy fortune and thy love: Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable. Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed, Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her: But look thou stay not till the watch be set, For then thou canst not pass to Mantua; Where thou shalt live, till we can find a time To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, Beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back With twenty hundred thousand times more joy Than thou went’st forth in lamentation. Go before, nurse: commend me to thy lady; And bid her hasten all the house to bed, Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto: Romeo is coming.
Nurse:
O Lord, I could have stay’d here all the night To hear good counsel: O, what learning is! My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come.
ROMEO:
Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.
Nurse:
Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir: Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.
Exit
ROMEO:
How well my comfort is revived by this!
FRIAR LAURENCE:
Go hence; good night; and here stands all your state: Either be gone before the watch be set, Or by the break of day disguised from hence: Sojourn in Mantua; I’ll find out your man, And he shall signify from time to time Every good hap to you that chances here: Give me thy hand; ’tis late: farewell; good night.
ROMEO:
But that a joy past joy calls out on me, It were a grief, so brief to part with thee: Farewell.
Exeunt
Scene 4
A room in Capulet’s house.
Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, and PARIS
CAPULET:
Things have fall’n out, sir, so unluckily, That we have had no time to move our daughter: Look you, she loved her kinsman Tybalt dearly, And so did I:-Well, we were born to die. ’Tis very late, she’ll not come down to-night: I promise you, but for your company, I would have been a-bed an hour ago.
PARIS:
These times of woe afford no time to woo. Madam, good night: commend me to your daughter.
LADY CAPULET:
I will, and know her mind early to-morrow; To-night she is mew’d up to her heaviness.
CAPULET:
Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender Of my child’s love: I think she will be ruled In all respects by me; nay, more, I doubt it not. Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed; Acquaint her here of my son Paris’ love; And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday next- But, soft! what day is this?
PARIS:
Monday, my lord,
CAPULET:
Monday! ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon, O’ Thursday let it be: o’ Thursday, tell her, She shall be married to this noble earl. Will you be ready? do you like this haste? We’ll keep no great ado,-a friend or two; For, hark you, Tybalt being slain so late, It may be thought we held him carelessly, Being our kinsman, if we revel much: Therefore we’ll have some half a dozen friends, And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?
PARIS:
My lord, I would that Thursday were to-morrow.
CAPULET:
Well get you gone: o’ Thursday be it, then. Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed, Prepare her, wife, against this wedding-day. Farewell, my lord. Light to my chamber, ho! Afore me! it is so very very late, That we may call it early by and by. Good night.
Exeunt
Scene 5
Capulet’s orchard.
Enter ROMEO and JULIET above, at the window
JULIET:
Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
ROMEO:
It was the lark, the herald of the morn, No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east: Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
JULIET:
Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I: It is some meteor that the sun exhales, To be to thee this night a torch-bearer, And light thee on thy way to Mantua: Therefore stay yet; thou need’st not to be gone.
ROMEO:
Let me be ta’en, let me be put to death; I am content, so thou wilt have it so. I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye, ’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow; Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat The vaulty heaven so high above our heads: I have more care to stay than will to go: Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so. How is’t, my soul? let’s talk; it is not day.
JULIET:
It is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away! It is the lark that sings so out of tune, Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps. Some say the lark makes sweet division; This doth not so, for she divideth us: Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes, O, now I would they had changed voices too! Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray, Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day, O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.
ROMEO:
More light and light; more dark and dark our woes!
Enter Nurse, to the chamber
Nurse:
Madam!
JULIET:
Nurse?
Nurse:
Your lady mother is coming to your chamber: The day is broke; be wary, look about.
Exit
JULIET:
Then, window, let day in, and let life out.
ROMEO:
Farewell, farewell! one kiss, and I’ll descend.
He goeth down
JULIET:
Art thou gone so? love, lord, ay, husband, friend! I must hear from thee every day in the hour, For in a minute there are many days: O, by this count I shall be much in years Ere I again behold my Romeo!
ROMEO:
Farewell! I will omit no opportunity That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
JULIET:
O think’st thou we shall ever meet again?
ROMEO:
I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve For sweet discourses in our time to come.
JULIET:
O God, I have an ill-divining soul! Methinks I see thee, now thou art below, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb: Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.
ROMEO:
And trust me, love, in my eye so do you: Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu!
Exit
JULIET:
O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle: If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him. That is renown’d for faith? Be fickle, fortune; For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long, But send him back.
LADY CAPULET:
Ho, daughter! are you up?
JULIET:
Who is’t that calls? is it my lady mother? Is she not down so late, or up so early? What unaccustom’d cause procures her hither?
Enter LADY CAPULET
LADY CAPULET:
Why, how now, Juliet!
JULIET:
Madam, I am not well.
LADY CAPULET:
Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death? What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears? An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live; Therefore, have done: some grief shows much of love; But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
JULIET:
Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
LADY CAPULET:
So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend Which you weep for.
JULIET:
Feeling so the loss, Cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
LADY CAPULET:
Well, girl, thou weep’st not so much for his death, As that the villain lives which slaughter’d him.
JULIET:
What villain madam?
LADY CAPULET:
That same villain, Romeo.
JULIET:
Villain and he be many miles asunder.- God Pardon him! I do, with all my heart; And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.
LADY CAPULET:
That is, because the traitor murderer lives.
JULIET:
Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands: Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death!
LADY CAPULET:
We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not: Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua, Where that same banish’d runagate doth live, Shall give him such an unaccustom’d dram, That he shall soon keep Tybalt company: And then, I hope, thou wilt be satisfied.
JULIET:
Indeed, I never shall be satisfied With Romeo, till I behold him-dead- Is my poor heart for a kinsman vex’d. Madam, if you could find out but a man To bear a poison, I would temper it; That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof, Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors To hear him named, and cannot come to him. To wreak the love I bore my cousin Upon his body that slaughter’d him!
LADY CAPULET:
Find thou the means, and I’ll find such a man. But now I’ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.
JULIET:
And joy comes well in such a needy time: What are they, I beseech your ladyship?
LADY CAPULET:
Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child; One who, to put thee from thy heaviness, Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy, That thou expect’st not nor I look’d not for.
JULIET:
Madam, in happy time, what day is that?
LADY CAPULET:
Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn, The gallant, young and noble gentleman, The County Paris, at Saint Peter’s Church, Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.
JULIET:
Now, by Saint Peter’s Church and Peter too, He shall not make me there a joyful bride. I wonder at this haste; that I must wed Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo. I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam, I will not marry yet; and, when I do, I swear, It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, Rather than Paris. These are news indeed!
LADY CAPULET:
Here comes your father; tell him so yourself, And see how he will take it at your hands.
Enter CAPULET and Nurse
CAPULET:
When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew; But for the sunset of my brother’s son It rains downright. How now! a conduit, girl? what, still in tears? Evermore showering? In one little body Thou counterfeit’st a bark, a sea, a wind; For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea, Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is, Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs; Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them, Without a sudden calm, will overset Thy tempest-tossed body. How now, wife! Have you deliver’d to her our decree?
LADY CAPULET:
Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks. I would the fool were married to her grave!
CAPULET:
Soft! take me with you, take me with you, wife. How! will she none? doth she not give us thanks? Is she not proud? doth she not count her blest, Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom?
JULIET:
Not proud, you have; but thankful, that you have: Proud can I never be of what I hate; But thankful even for hate, that is meant love.
CAPULET:
How now, how now, chop-logic! What is this? ’Proud,’ and ’I thank you,’ and ’I thank you not;’ And yet ’not proud,’ mistress minion, you, Thank me no thankings, nor, proud me no prouds, But fettle your fine joints ’gainst Thursday next, To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church, Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither. Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage! You tallow-face!
LADY CAPULET:
Fie, fie! what, are you mad?
JULIET:
Good father, I beseech you on my knees, Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
CAPULET:
Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch! I tell thee what: get thee to church o’ Thursday, Or never after look me in the face: Speak not, reply not, do not answer me; My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest That God had lent us but this only child; But now I see this one is one too much, And that we have a curse in having her: Out on her, hilding!
Nurse:
God in heaven bless her! You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.
CAPULET:
And why, my lady wisdom? hold your tongue, Good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go.
Nurse:
I speak no treason.
CAPULET:
O, God ye god-den.
Nurse:
May not one speak?
CAPULET:
Peace, you mumbling fool! Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl; For here we need it not.
LADY CAPULET:
You are too hot.
CAPULET:
God’s bread! it makes me mad: Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play, Alone, in company, still my care hath been To have her match’d: and having now provided A gentleman of noble parentage, Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train’d, Stuff’d, as they say, with honourable parts, Proportion’d as one’s thought would wish a man; And then to have a wretched puling fool, A whining mammet, in her fortune’s tender, To answer ’I’ll not wed; I cannot love, I am too young; I pray you, pardon me.’ But, as you will not wed, I’ll pardon you: Graze where you will you shall not house with me: Look to’t, think on’t, I do not use to jest. Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise: An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend; And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, For, by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee, Nor what is mine shall never do thee good: Trust to’t, bethink you; I’ll not be forsworn.
Exit
JULIET:
Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, That sees into the bottom of my grief? O, sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for a month, a week; Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.
LADY CAPULET:
Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word: Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.
Exit
JULIET:
O God!-O nurse, how shall this be prevented? My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven; How shall that faith return again to earth, Unless that husband send it me from heaven By leaving earth? comfort me, counsel me. Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems Upon so soft a subject as myself! What say’st thou? hast thou not a word of joy? Some comfort, nurse.
Nurse:
Faith, here it is. Romeo is banish’d; and all the world to nothing, That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you; Or, if he do, it needs must be by stealth. Then, since the case so stands as now it doth, I think it best you married with the county. O, he’s a lovely gentleman! Romeo’s a dishclout to him: an eagle, madam, Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart, I think you are happy in this second match, For it excels your first: or if it did not, Your first is dead; or ’twere as good he were, As living here and you no use of him.
JULIET:
Speakest thou from thy heart?
Nurse:
And from my soul too; Or else beshrew them both.
JULIET:
Amen!
Nurse:
What?
JULIET:
Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much. Go in: and tell my lady I am gone, Having displeased my father, to Laurence’ cell, To make confession and to be absolved.
Nurse:
Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.
Exit
JULIET:
Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend! Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn, Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue Which she hath praised him with above compare So many thousand times? Go, counsellor; Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. I’ll to the friar, to know his remedy: If all else fail, myself have power to die.