Was woe enough, if it had ended there;
Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship,
And needly will be ranked with other griefs,-
Why followed not, when she said-Tybalt's dead,
Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both,
Which modern1 lamentation might have moved?
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?

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 beguiled,
Both you and I; for Romeo is exiled.

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 knight, 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 enamored of thy parts,
And thou art wedded to calamity.

1 Modern is trite, common.

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 doomsday is the prince's doom?

Fri. A gentler judgment vanished 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 banishment
Is death mistermed; 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 rushed aside the law,
And turned 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,
More honorable state, more courtship lives
In carrion flies, than Romeo. They may seize
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand,

2

1 The quarto, 1597, reads "This is mere mercy," i. e. absolute mercy. 2 Validity is again employed to signify worth, value, as in the first scene of King Lear. By courtship, is meant that freedom with which a lover is indulged.

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

And say'st thou yet, that exile is not death?
Hadst thou no poison mixed, 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 professed,

To mangle me with that word-banishment?

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

Rom. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.
Fri. I'll give thee armor 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,
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom;
It helps not, it prevails not; talk no more.

Fri. O, then I see that madmen have no ears.

Rom. How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?

Fri. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.1

Rom. Thou canst not speak of what thou dost not feel.

Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,

An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,
Doting like me, and like me banished,

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

1 The same phrase, and with the same meaning, occurs in The Winter's Tale:

Know man from man! dispute his own estate?”

i. e. his own affairs, or the present state he is in?

And fall upon the ground, as I do now,
Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

Fri. Arise; one knocks; good Romeo, hide thyself.

[Knocking within. Rom. Not I; unless the breath of heart-sick groans, Mist-like, infold me from the search of eyes.

[Knocking. Fri. Hark, how they knock!-Who's there?— Romeo, arise?

Thou wilt be taken.-Stay awhile: stand up;

[Knocking.

Run to my study.-By and by ;-God's will!
What wilfulness is this?-I come, I come.

[Knocking.

Who knocks so hard? whence come you? what's

will?

your

Nurse. [Within.] Let me come in, and you shall know my errand;

I come from lady Juliet.

Fri.

Welcome, then.

Enter Nurse.

Nurse. O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar,

Where is my lady's lord, where's Romeo?

Fri. There, on the ground, with his own tears made

drunk.

Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering.-
Stand up, stand up; stand, an you be a man.

For Juliet's sake, for her sake, rise and stand;
Why should you fall into so deep an O?

Rom. Nurse!

Nurse. Ah sir! ah sir!-Well, death's the end of all.

Rom. Spak'st thou of Juliet? How is it with her?

Doth she not think me an old murderer,

Now I have stained the childhood of our joy
With blood removed but little from her own?

Where is she? and how doth she? and what says
My concealed lady' to our cancelled love?

Nurse. O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and

weeps;

And now falls on her bed, and then starts up,
And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,
And then down falls again.

Rom.

As if that name,
Shot from the deadly level of a gun,

Did murder her; as that name's cursed hand
Murdered her kinsman.-O, tell me, friar, tell me,
In what vile part of this anatomy

Doth my name lodge? tell me, that I may sack

The hateful mansion.

Fri.

[Drawing his sword.

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!
Or 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 too, that lives in thee,
By doing damned hate upon thyself?

Why rail'st 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 sham'st thy shape, thy love, thy wit;
Which, like an 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,

1 "My lady, whose being so, together with our marriage which made her so, is concealed from the world."

2 The lines from Why rail'st thou on thy birth, &c., to thy own defence, are not in the first copy; they are formed on a passage in the poem.