Jul. Then, window, let day in, and let life out.
Rom. Farewell, farewell! one kiss, and I'll de-
scend.
[ROMEO descends.
Jul. Art thou gone so? my love! my lord! my
friend!

I must hear from thee every day i' 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.

Rom. Farewell! I will omit no opportunity
That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.

Jul. O, think'st thou, we shall ever meet again? Rom. I doubt it not; and all these woes shall

serve

For sweet discourses in our time to come,

Jul. Alas, 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 eye-sight fails, or thou look'st pale. Rom. And trust me, love, in mine eye so do you: Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu! adieu! [Exit ROMEO. Jul. 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.

La. Cap. [Within.] Ho, daughter! are you up. Jul. 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 2 her hither?

I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
La. Cap. Well, girl, thou weep'st not so much
for his death,

As that the villain lives which slaughter'd him.
Jul. What villain, madam?
La. Cap.

That same villain, Romeo.
Jul. Villain and he are many miles asunder.
Heaven pardon him! I do, with all my heart;
And yet no man, like he, doth grieve my heart.
La. Cap. That is, because the traitor murderer
lives.

Jul. Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands.

'Would, none but I might 'venge my cousin's death! La. Cap. We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not:

Then weep no more. I'll send to one in Man

tua,

That shall bestow on him so sure a draught, That he shall soon keep Tybalt company: And then, I hope, thou wilt be satisfied.

Jul. Indeed, I never shall be satisfied With Romeo, till I behold him — dead — Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vex'd: Madam, if you could find out but a man To bear a poison, I would temper it; That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof, Soon sleep in quiet. — O, how my heart abhors To hear him nam'd, and cannot come to him,To wreak the love I bore my cousin Tybalt Upon his body that hath slaughter'd him!

La. Cap. Find thou the means, and I'll find such

a man.

But now, I'll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.

Jul. And joy comes well in such a needful time:

What are they, I beseech your ladyship?

La. Cap. 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.
Jul. Madam, in happy time, what day is that?
La. Cap. 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.

Jul. 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

I

Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo. 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! La. Cap. Here comes your father: tell him so yourself,

And see how he will take it at your hands.

Enter CAPULET and Nurse.

Cap. 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?
Ever more 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 ?

.

Jul. That may be, sir, when I may be a wife. Par. That may be, must be, love, on Thursday

next.

Jul. What must be shall be.
Fri.

That's a certain text.
Par. Come you to make confession to this father?
Jul. To answer that, were to confess to you.
Par. Do not deny to him, that you love me.
Jul. I will confess to you, that I love him.
Par. So will you, I am sure, that you love me.
Jul. If I do so, it will be of more price,
Being spoke behind your back, than to your face.
Par. Poor soul, thy face is much abus'd with tears.
Jul. The tears have got small victory by that;
For it was bad enough, before their spite.
Par. Thou wrong'st it, more than tears, with that
report.

Jul. That is no slander, sir, that is a truth; And what I spake, I spake it to my face. Par. Thy face is mine, and thou hast slander'd it. Jul. It may be so, for it is not mine own. Are you at leisure, holy father, now; Or shall I come to you at evening mass?

Fri. My leisure serves me, pensive daughter,

now:

My lord, we must entreat the time alone.

Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,
O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones
With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless skulls;
Or bid me go into a new-made grave,
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;
Things that, to hear them told, have made
tremble;

And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love.

Fri. Hold, then; go home, be merry, give consent
To marry Paris: Wednesday is to-morrow;
To-morrow night look that thou lie alone,
Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber:
Take thou this phial, being then in bed,
And this distilled liquor drink thou off:
When, presently, through all thy veins shall rus
A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize
Each vital spirit; for no pulse shall keep
His natural progress, but surcease to beat:
No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou liv'st;
The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade
To paly ashes; thy eyes' windows fall,
Like death, when he shuts up the day of life;
Each part, depriv'd of supple government,
Shall stiff, and stark, and cold, appear like death:
And in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death

votion!

Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse you:
Till then, adieu! and keep this holy kiss.

[Exit PARIS.
Jul. O, shut the door! and when thou hast done so,
Come weep with me; Past hope, past cure, past help!
Fri. Ah, Juliet, I already know thy grief;
It strains me past the compass of my wits:
I hear thou must, and nothing must prorogue it,
On Thursday next be married to this county.
Jul. Tell me not, friar, that thou hear'st of this,
Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it:
If, in thy wisdom, thou canst give no help,
Do thou but call my resolution wise,
And with this knife I'll help it presently.
Love join'd my heart and Romeo's, thou our hands;
And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd,
Shall be the label to another deed,
Or my true heart with treacherous revolt
Turn to another, this shall slay them both:
Therefore, out of thy long-experienc'd time,
Give me some present counsel; or, behold,
'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
Shall play the umpire 3; arbitrating that
Which the commission 4 of thy years and art
Could to no issue of true honour bring.
Be not so long to speak; I long to die,
If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy.

Fri. Hold, daughter; I do spy a kind of hope,
Which craves as desperate 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

A thing like death to chide away this shame,
That cop'st with death himself to scape from it;
And, if thou dar'st, I'll give thee remedy.

Jul. O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
From off the battlements of yonder tower;
Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk
Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears;

3 Decide the struggle between me and my distresses.
• Authority or power.

And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.
Now when the bridegroom in the morning comes
To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead:
Then (as the manner of our country is,)
In thy best robes uncover'd on the bier,
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault,
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.
In the mean time, against thou shalt awake,
Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift;
And hither shall he come; and he and I
Will watch thy waking, and that very night
Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.
And this shall free thee from this present shame:
If no inconstant toy, nor womanish fear,
Abate thy valour in the acting it.

Jul. Give me, O give me! tell me not of fear.
Fri. Hold; get you gone, be strong and prosperous
In this resolve: I'll send a friar with speed
To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.
Jul. Love, give me strength! and strength sal
help afford.
Farewell, dear father!

Το you, and your behests 5; and am enjoin'd By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here, And beg your pardon : - Pardon, I beseech you! Henceforward I am ever rul'd by you.

Cap. Send for the county; go tell him of this; I'll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning. Jul. I met the youthful lord at Laurence' cell; And gave him what becomed 6 love I might, Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty.

Cap. Why, I am glad on't; this is well,-stand up:

This is as 't should be. Let me see the county;
Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.-
Now, by my life, this reverend holy friar,
All our whole city is much bound to him.

Jul. Nurse, will you go with me into my closet,
To help me sort such needful ornaments
As you think fit to furnish me to-morrow?

La. Cap. No, not till Thursday; there is time enough.

Cap. Go, nurse, go with her: -we'll to church to-morrow. [Exeunt JULIET and Nurse. La. Cap. We shall be short in our provision; 'Tis now near night.

La. Cap. What, are you busy? do you need my help?

Jul. No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries
As are behoveful for our state to-morrow:
So please you let me now be left alone,

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,

La. Cap.
Good night!
Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.
[Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse.
Jul. Farewell! - Heaven knows, when we shall

What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead;
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear, it is and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man :
I will not entertain so bad a thought.
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,

The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies fest'ring in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;
Alack, alack! is it not like, that I,
So early waking, · what with loathsome smell,
And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad ;-
O! if I wake, shall I not be distraught 9,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefathers' joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks, I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point: Stay, Tybalt, stay!.
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

[She throws herself on the Bed.

SCENE IV. - Capulet's Hall.

Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse.

La. Cap. Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse.

Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry, I

Enter CAPULET.

Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow'd,

The curfeu bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock:
Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica :
Spare not for cost.
Nurse.
Go, go, you cot-quean, go,
Get you to bed; 'faith, you'll be sick to-morrow
For this night's watching.

Cap. No, not a whit: What! I have watch'd ere

now

All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick. La. Cap. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time;

But I will watch you from such watching now. [Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse. Cap. A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood! — Now, fellow,

What's there?

8 The fabulous accounts of the plant called a mandrake give it a degree of animal life, and when it is torn from the ground it groans, which is fatal to him that pulls it up.

Distracted.

The room where pies were made,