Jul. O, serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!

Just opposite to what thou justly seem❜st;
A damned saint," an honourable villain !—
O, nature! what hadst thou to do in hell,
When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?
Was ever book, containing such vile matter,
So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell

In such a gorgeous palace!

Nurse.

There's no trust,

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

All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.

Ah! where's my man? give me some aqua vitæ:·

These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old. Shame come to Romeo!

Jul.

Blister'd be thy tongue,

For such a wish! 12 he was not born to shame :
Upon his brow shame is asham'd to sit;

For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd
Sole monarch of the universal earth.

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

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

Jul. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? Ah, poor my lord! what tongue shall smooth thy

11 So the undated quarto: the other old copies have dim instead of damned.

H.

12 Note the Nurse's mistake of the mind's audible struggles with itself for its decision in toto.- COLERIDGE.

H.

13 To smooth is to speak fair; it is here metaphorically used for to mitigate or assuage the asperity of censure with which Romeo's name would be now mentioned.

When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it? But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin? That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband : Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring; Your tributary drops belong to woe,

Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.

My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain ; And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband:

All this is comfort; wherefore weep I, then?

Some word there was, worser than Tybalt's death,
That murder'd me: I would forget it fain;
But, O! it presses to my memory,
Like damned guilty deeds to sinners' minds:
"Tybalt is dead, and Romeo - banished!"
That -66
"banished," that one word "banished,"
Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts.14 Tybalt's death.
Was woe enough, if it had ended there:

15

And needly will be rank'd with other griefs,
Why follow'd not, when she said, Tybalt's dead,
Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both,
Which modern lamentation might have mov'd?
But, with a rear-ward following Tybalt's death,
"Romeo is banished!"-to speak that word,
Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
All slain, all dead: -"Romeo is banished!"
There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
In that word's death; no words can that woe
sound.

Where is my father, and my mother, nurse?

14 That is, is worse than the loss of ten thousand Tybalts. 15 Modern is trite, common. So in As You Like It: "Full of wise saws and modern instances."

Nurse. Weeping and wailing over Tybalt's corse : Will you go to them? I will bring you thither. Jul. Wash they his wounds with tears? mine shall be spent,

When theirs are dry, for Romeo's banishment. Take up those cords. - Poor ropes, you are beguil❜d, Both you and I, for Romeo is exil'd:

He made you for a highway to my bed,

But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.

Come, cords; come, nurse: I'll to my wedding bed; And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!

Nurse. Hie to your chamber; I'll find Romeo To comfort you: -I wot well where he is.

Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night:
I'll to him; he is hid at Laurence' cell.

Jul. O, find him! give this ring to my true knignt, And bid him come to take his last farewell.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III. Friar LAURENCE's Cell.

Enter Friar LAURENCE and ROMEO.

Fri. Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful

man:

Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts,

And thou art wedded to calamity.

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

What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand,
That I yet know not?

Fri.

Is

my

Too familiar

dear son with such sour company :

I bring thee tidings of the prince's doom.

Rom. What less than dooms-day is the prince's

doom?

Fri. A gentler judgment vanish'd from his lips; Not body's death, but body's banishment.

Rom. Ha! banishment? be merciful, say, death; For exile hath more terror in his look,

Much more than death: do not say, banishment.
Fri. Hence from Verona art thou banished:
Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.
Rom. 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 misterm'd calling death banishment,'
Thou cut'st my head off with a golden axe,
And smil'st upon the stroke that murders me.

Fri. 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.

Rom. '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,2 More honourable state, more courtship lives In carrion flies, than Romeo: they may seize

1 So the first quarto; the later copies, banished instead of ban

ishment.

H.

2 Validity is often employed to signify worth, value. See King Lear, Act i. sc. 1, note 13. By courtship, courtesy, courtly behaviour is meant. Bullokar defines "compliment to be ceremony, court-ship, fine behaviour." So in Ford's Fancies Chaste and Noble :

"Whilst the young lord of Telamon, her husband,
Was packeted to France, to study courtship,
Under, forsooth, a colour of employment."

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.

This may flies do, when I from this must fly:
And say'st thou yet, that exile is not death? 3
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?

Fri. Thou fond mad man, hear me but speak a word.1

Rom. O! thou wilt speak again of banishment. Fri. I'll give thee armour to keep off that word; Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy,

To comfort thee, though thou art banished.

Rom. Yet banished? - Hang up philosophy! Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,

3 We here follow the arrangement of the first folio, except that we transpose the line, "But Romeo may not, he is banished;" which is there evidently misplaced after the line, "This may flies do, when I from this must fly." The quartos of 1599 and 1609 jumble various readings together thus:

"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 banished.

Flies may do this, but I from this must fly:
They are free men, but I am banished."

H.

4 So the oldest copy: the later copies have Then instead of Thou, and "hear me a little speak," instead of "hear me but speak a word.". -Fond here means foolish: often so used.

H.