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Fri. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.

Rom. Thou canst not speak of what thou dost not Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,

An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,

Doting like me, and like me banished,

And fall upon the ground, as I do now,

[feel:

[hair,

Then might'st thou speak, then might'st thou tear thy

Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

A LOVER'S IMPATIENCE.

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' mansion; such a waggoner
As Phaton would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.—
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night!
That run-away's eyes may wink; and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of, and unseen!-
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties: or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night.

RELUCTANCE OF LOVERS TO PART.

SCENE. JULIET'S Chamber.

Jul. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Rom. 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.
Jul. 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.

Rom. 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.

ACT IV.

JULIET'S RESOLUTION.

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;
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 sculls ;
Or bid me go into a new-made grave,

And hide me with a dead man in his shroud; [ble;
Things that, to hear them told, have made me trem-
And I will do it without fear or doubt,

To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love.

JOY CHANGED TO SORROW.

All things, that we ordained for festival,
Turn from their office to black funeral;
Our instruments, to melancholy bells ;
Our wedding cheer, to a sad burial feast;
Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change;
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
And all things change them to the contrary.

* Reflection of the moon.

+ Inclination.

[merged small][graphic]

Farewell!-God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills 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?

My dismal scene I needs must act alone.-
Come, phial.-

What if this mixture do not work at all?
Must I of force be married to the county?—
No, no;-this shall forbid it :-lie thou there.-

[Laying down a dagger.
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 smells;
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 †,
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, Tibalt, stay !—
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

[She throws herself on the Bed.

ACT V.

ROMEO'S DESCRIPTION AND DISCOURSE WITH THE
APOTHECARY.

WELL, Juliet, I will lie with thee to night.
Let's see for means:-0, mischief, thou art swift
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
I do remember an apothecary,—

And hereabouts he dwells,-whom late I noted
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,

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.

Culling of simples*; meagre were his looks,
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
Sharp misery had worn him to to the bones :
An alligator stuff'd, and other skins

Of ill-shap'd fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,

Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
Remants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show.
Noting this penury, to myself I said-
And if a man did need a poison now,
Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff-wretch would sell it him.
O, this same thought did but fore-run my need.
And this same needy man must sell it me.
As I remember, this should be the house:
Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut.-
What, ho! apothecary!

[merged small][graphic]

Ap.

Who calls so loud?

Rom. Come hither, man.-I see, that thou art poor; Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have

A dram of poison; such soon-speeding geert

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