Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say, Good night, till it be morrow. [Exit. Rom. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy

breast!

'Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!
Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell;
His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell.

SCENE III. Friar Laurence's Cell.

Enter FRIAR LAURENCE, with a basket.

[Exit.

Fri. The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,'

Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
And flecked 2 darkness like a drunkard reels

From forth day's path-way, made by Titan's wheels.3
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry,
I must fill up this osier cage of ours,

With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced 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 herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities;
For nought 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.

1 In the folio, and the three later quartos, these four lines are printed twice over, and given once to Romeo and once to the friar.

2 Flecked is spotted, dappled, streaked, or variegated.

3 This is the reading of the second folio. The quarto of 1597 reads:"From forth day's path and Titan's firy wheels.”

The quarto of 1599, and the folio, have "burning wheels."

4 Efficacious virtue.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometime's by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower,
Poison hath residence, and med'cine power;
For this, being smelt, with that part1 cheers each part ;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed foes 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.

Enter ROMEO.

Rom. Good morrow, father!

Benedicite!

Fri.
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 unbruised youth with unstuffed brain
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.
Therefore thy earliness doth me assure,

Thou art uproused by some distemperature;
Or if not so, then here I hit it right—
Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.

Rom. That last is true, the sweeter rest was mine.
Fri. God pardon sin! wast thou with Rosaline?
Rom. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No;
I have forgot that name, and that name's woe.
Fri. That's my good son; but where hast thou
been, then?

Rom. I'll tell thee, ere thou ask it me again.

I have been feasting with mine enemy;

Where, on a sudden, one hath wounded me,
That's by me wounded; both our remedies
Within thy help and holy physic lies.

1 i. e. with its odor.

2 In the Anglo-Saxon and very old English, the third person plural of the present tense ends in eth, and often familiarly in es, as might be

I bear no hatred, blessed man; for, lo,
My intercession likewise steads my foe.

Fri. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift; Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.

Rom. Then plainly know, my heart's dear love is set On the fair daughter of rich Capulet.

As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;

And all combined, save what thou must combine
By holy marriage. When, and where, and how,
We met, we wooed, and made exchange of vow,
I'll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,
That thou consent to marry us this day.

eyes.

Fri. Holy saint Francis! what a change is here!
Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,
So soon forsaken? Young men's love then lies
Not truly in their hearts, but in their
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 ring yet in my 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.
Rom. Thou chid'st me oft for loving Rosaline.'
Fri. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

Rom. And bad'st me bury love.

Fri.

To lay one in, another out to have.

Not in a grave,

Rom. I pray thee, chide not. She, whom I love now, Doth grace for grace, and love for love allow;

The other did not so.

Fri.

O, she knew well,

Thy love did read by rote, and could not spell.

exemplified from Chaucer and others. This idiom was not worn out in Shakspeare's time.

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.
Rom. O, let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.1
Fri. Wisely, and slow; they stumble that run fast.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV. A Street.

Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO.

Mer. Where the devil should this Romeo be?— Came he not home to-night?

Ben. Not to his father's; I spoke with his man.
Mer. Ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that
Rosaline,

Torments him so, that he will sure run mad.
Ben. Tybalt, the kinsman of old Capulet,
Hath sent a letter to his father's house.
Mer. A challenge, on my life.

Ben. Romeo will answer it.

Mer. Any man, that can write, may answer a letter. Ben. Nay, he will answer the letter's master, how he dares, being dared.

Mer. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! Stabbed with a white wench's black eye; shot thorough the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft. And is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

2

Ben. Why, what is Tybalt?

Mer. More than prince of cats, I can tell you. O, he is the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance,

1 "It is incumbent upon me, or it is of importance to me, to use extreme haste."

2 The allusion is to archery. The clout, or white mark, at which the arrows were directed, was fastened by a black pin, placed in the centre of it. To hit this, was the highest ambition of every marksman.

3 Tybert, the name given to a cat, in the old story-book of Renard the Fox.

and proportion; rests me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom; the very butcher of a silk button,1 a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house,-of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal passado! the punto reverso! the hay!3

Ben. The what?

2

Mer. The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents!-By Jesu, a very good blade!-a very tall man-a very good whore!-Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardonnez-moys, who stand so much on the new form, that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? O, their bons, their bons!

Enter ROMEO.

Ben. Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo. Mer. Without his roe, like a dried herring.-O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!—Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in; Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench ;-marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme her: Dido, a dowdy; Cleopatra, a gypsy; Helen and Hero, hildings and harlots; Thisbe, a gray eye or so, but not to the purpose.-Seignior Romeo, bon jour! there's a French salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.

1 So in the Return from Parnassus :

"Strikes his poinado at a button's breadth."

2 i. e. one who understands the whole science of quarrelling, and will tell you of the first cause, and the second cause, for which a man is to fight. The clown, in As You Like It, talks of the seventh cause, in the same

sense.

3 All the terms of the fencing-school were originally Italian; the rapier being first used in Italy. The hay is the word hai, you have it, used when a thrust reaches the antagonist.

4 Apostrophizing his ancestors, whose sober times were unacquainted with the fopperies here complained of.

5 During the ridiculous fashion which prevailed, of great "boulstered breeches," it is said, that it was necessary to cut away hollow places in the benches of the house of commons, to make room for those monstrous protuberances, without which those who stood on the new form could not sit at ease on the old bench.

6 A gray eye appears to have meant what we now call a blue eye. 7 The slop was a kind of wide-kneed breeches, or rather trousers.