ACT 2
Scene 3

...hap to tell.
Enter Friar Lawrence alone with a basket.
The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Check’ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels.
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night’s dank dew to dry,
I must upfill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juicèd flowers.
The Earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave, that is her womb;
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some, and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities.
For naught so vile that on the Earth doth live
But to the Earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
And vice sometime by action dignified.

Enter Romeo.
Within the infant rind of this weak flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power:
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposèd kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs—grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

...Good morrow, father.
Benedicite.
What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?
Young son, it argues a distempered head
So soon to bid “Good morrow” to thy bed.
Care 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 couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.
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.

...rest was mine.
God pardon sin! Wast thou with Rosaline?

...that name’s woe.
That’s my good son. But where hast thou been then?

...steads my foe.
Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift.
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.

...marry us today.
Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!
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.
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,
Thy old groans yet ringing in mine 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.
And art thou changed? Pronounce this sentence then:
Women may fall when there’s no strength in men.

...for loving Rosaline.
For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

...me bury love.
Not in a grave
To lay one in, another out to have.

...did not so.
O, she knew well
Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell.
But come, young waverer, come, go with me.
In one respect I’ll thy assistant be,
For this alliance may so happy prove
To turn your households’ rancor to pure love.

...on sudden haste.
Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast.
They exit.

Scene 6

...Honest nurse, farewell.
Enter Friar Lawrence and Romeo.
So smile the heavens upon this holy act
That after-hours with sorrow chide us not.

...call her mine.
These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so.
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

Enter Juliet.
Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot
Will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint.
A lover may bestride the gossamers
That idles in the wanton summer air,
And yet not fall, so light is vanity.

...my ghostly confessor.
Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.

...half my wealth.
Come, come with me, and we will make short work,
For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone
Till Holy Church incorporate two in one.
They exit.

ACT 3
Scene 3

...his last farewell.
Enter Friar Lawrence.
Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man.
Affliction is enamored of thy parts,
And thou art wedded to calamity.

...yet know not?
Too familiar
Is my dear son with such sour company.
I bring thee tidings of the Prince’s doom.

...the Prince’s doom?
A gentler judgment vanished from his lips:
Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.

...not say “banishment.”
Here from Verona art thou banishèd.
Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.

...that murders me.
O deadly sin, O rude unthankfulness!
Thy fault our law calls death, but the kind prince,
Taking thy part, hath rushed aside the law
And turned that black word “death” to “banishment.”
This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not.

...that word “banishèd”?
Thou fond mad man, hear me a little speak.

...again of banishment.
I’ll give thee armor to keep off that word,
Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,
To comfort thee, though thou art banishèd.

...Talk no more.
O, then I see that madmen have no ears.

...have no eyes?
Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.

...grave. Knock within.
Arise. One knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.

...of eyes. Knock.
Hark, how they knock!—Who’s there?—Romeo, arise.
Thou wilt be taken.—Stay awhile.—Stand up.

Knock.
Run to my study.—By and by.—God’s will,
What simpleness is this?—I come, I come.

Knock.
Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? What’s your will?

...from Lady Juliet.
admitting the Nurse
Welcome, then.

...lord? Where’s Romeo?
There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.

...draws his dagger.
Hold thy desperate hand!
Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art.
Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote
The unreasonable fury of a beast.
Unseemly woman in a seeming man,
And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!
Thou hast amazed me. By my holy order,
I thought thy disposition better tempered.
Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself,
And slay thy lady that in thy life lives,
By doing damnèd hate upon thyself?
Why railest 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 valor of a man;
Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,
Killing that love which thou hast vowed to cherish;
Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
Misshapen in the conduct of them both,
Like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask,
Is set afire by thine own ignorance,
And thou dismembered with thine own defense.
What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive,
For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead:
There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,
But thou slewest Tybalt: there art thou happy.
The law that threatened death becomes thy friend
And turns it to exile: there art thou happy.
A pack of blessings light upon thy back;
Happiness courts thee in her best array;
But, like a misbehaved 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.
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.

...revived by this!
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.

...with thee. Farewell.
They exit.

ACT 4
Scene 1

...power to die.
Enter Friar Lawrence and County Paris.
On Thursday, sir? The time is very short.

...slack his haste.
You say you do not know the lady’s mind?
Uneven is the course. I like it not.

...of this haste.
aside
I would I knew not why it should be slowed.—
Look, sir, here comes the lady toward my cell.

...be shall be.
That’s a certain text.

...at evening Mass?
My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now.—
My lord, we must entreat the time alone.

...care, past help.
O Juliet, I already know thy grief.
It strains me past the compass of my wits.
I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it,
On Thursday next be married to this County.

...not of remedy.
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 darest, I’ll give thee remedy.

...my sweet love.
Hold, then. Go home; be merry; give consent
To marry Paris. Wednesday is tomorrow.
Tomorrow night look that thou lie alone;
Let not the Nurse lie with thee in thy chamber. Holding out a vial.
Take thou this vial, being then in bed,
And this distilling liquor drink thou off;
When presently through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humor; for no pulse
Shall keep his native progress, but surcease.
No warmth, no breath shall testify thou livest.
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, deprived of supple government,
Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death,
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.
Then, as the manner of our country is,
In thy best robes uncovered on the bier
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.
In the meantime, 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 valor in the acting it.

...me of fear!
giving Juliet the vial
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.

...Farewell, dear father.
They exit in different directions.

Scene 5

...let me speak.
Enter Friar Lawrence and the County Paris, with Musicians.
Come, is the bride ready to go to church?

...joys are burièd.
Peace, ho, for shame! Confusion’s cure lives not
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.
The most you sought was her promotion,
For ’twas your heaven she should be advanced;
And weep you now, seeing she is advanced
Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
O, in this love you love your child so ill
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 stick your rosemary
On this fair corse, and, as the custom is,
And in her best array, bear her to church,
For though fond nature bids us all lament,
Yet nature’s tears are reason’s merriment.

...to the contrary.
Sir, go you in, and, madam, go with him,
And go, Sir Paris. Everyone prepare
To follow this fair corse unto her grave.
The heavens do lour upon you for some ill.
Move them no more by crossing their high will.
All but the Nurse and the Musicians exit.

ACT 5
Scene 2

...friar, brother, ho!
Enter Friar Lawrence.
This same should be the voice of Friar John.—
Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo?
Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.

...there was stayed.
Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo?

...it is again—
Returning the letter.

...they of infection.
Unhappy fortune! By my brotherhood,
The letter was not nice but full of charge,
Of dear import, and the neglecting it
May do much danger. Friar John, go hence.
Get me an iron crow and bring it straight
Unto my cell.

...bring it thee.
Now must I to the monument alone.
Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake.
She will beshrew me much that Romeo
Hath had no notice of these accidents.
But I will write again to Mantua,
And keep her at my cell till Romeo come.
Poor living corse, closed in a dead man’s tomb!
He exits.

Scene 3

...die. He dies.
Enter Friar Lawrence with lantern, crow, and spade.
Saint Francis be my speed! How oft tonight
Have my old feet stumbled at graves!—Who’s there?

...knows you well.
Bliss be upon you. Tell me, good my friend,
What torch is yond that vainly lends his light
To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern,
It burneth in the Capels’ monument.

...that you love.
Who is it?

... Romeo.
How long hath he been there?

...half an hour.
Go with me to the vault.

...on his intents.
Stay, then. I’ll go alone. Fear comes upon me.
O, much I fear some ill unthrifty thing.

...master slew him.
moving toward the tomb
Romeo!—
Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains
The stony entrance of this sepulcher?
What mean these masterless and gory swords
To lie discolored by this place of peace?
Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris too?
And steeped in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour
Is guilty of this lamentable chance!
The lady stirs.

...is my Romeo?
I hear some noise.—Lady, come from that nest
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,
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.

...will not away.
He exits.

...Prince come hither.
Enter Friar Lawrence and another Watchman.

...parties of suspicion.
I am the greatest, able to do least,
Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me, of this direful murder.
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemnèd and myself excused.

...know in this.
I will be brief, for my short date of breath
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet,
And she, there dead, that 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,
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betrothed and would have married her perforce
To County Paris. Then comes she to me,
And with wild looks bid me devise some mean
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her (so tutored by my art)
A sleeping potion, which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo
That he should hither come as 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,
Was stayed 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 closely at my cell
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo.
But when I came, some minute ere the time
Of her awakening, here untimely lay
The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
She wakes, and I entreated her come forth
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
Her nurse is privy. And if aught in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrificed some hour before his time
Unto the rigor of severest law.

...and her Romeo.
All exit.