If no unconstant toy,' nor womanish fear,
Abate thy valor in the acting it.

Jul. Give me, give me! O, tell me not of fear.
Fri. Hold; get you gone; be strong and

In this resolve. I'll send a friar with speed
To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.

prosperous

Jul. Love, give me strength! and strength shall help afford.

Farewell, dear father!

[Exeunt.

SCENE II. A Room in Capulet's House.

Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, Nurse, and Servants.
Cap. So many guests invite as here are writ.—
[Exit Servant.
Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.

2 Serv. You shall have none ill, sir; for I'll try if they can lick their fingers.

Cap. How canst thou try them so?

2 Serv. Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers; therefore he that cannot lick his fingers, goes not with me.

Cap. Go, begone.

[Exit Servant.

We shall be much unfurnished for this time.

What, is my daughter gone to friar Laurence?

Nurse. Ay, forsooth.

Cap. Well, he may chance to do some good on her; A peevish, self-willed harlotry it is.

Enter JULIET.

Nurse. See, where she comes from shrift 2 with merry look.

Cap. How now, my headstrong? where have you been gadding?

1 If no fickle freak, no light caprice, no change of fancy, hinder the performance.

2 i. e. confession.

Jul. Where I have learned me to repent the sin Of disobedient opposition

Το

you, and your behests; and am enjoined

By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here,
And beg your pardon.-Pardon, I beseech you!
Henceforward I am ever ruled 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 becomed1 love I might,
Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty.

Cap. Why, I am glad on't; this is well,-stand
This is as't should be.-Let me see the county;
Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.-
Now, afore God, this reverend, holy friar,
All our whole city is much bound to him.2
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?

up;

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

morrow.

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

Cap.

Tush! I will stir about,

And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife.
Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her;

I'll not to bed to-night;-let me alone;
I'll play the housewife for this once.-What, ho!
They are all forth. Well, I will walk myself
To county Paris, to prepare him up
Against to-morrow; my heart is wondrous light,
Since this same wayward girl is so reclaimed.

[Exeunt.

1 Becomed for becoming; one participle for another; a frequent practice with Shakspeare.

2 Thus the folio and the quartos 1599 and 1609. The oldest quarto reads, perhaps more grammatically:

"All our whole city is much bound unto."

SCENE III. Juliet's Chamber.

Enter JULIET and Nurse.

Jul. Ay, those attires are best.-But, gentle nurse, I pray thee, leave me to myself to-night;

For I have need of many orisons

To move the Heavens to smile upon my state,
Which, well thou know'st, is cross and full of sin.

Enter LADY CAPULET.

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

Jul. No, madam; we have culled 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.

Jul. Farewell!

again.

[Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse. God knows when we shall meet

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.

1 This speech received considerable additions after the first copy was published.

2 This stage direction has been supplied by the modern editions. The quarto of 1597 reads:-" Knife, lie thou there."

"Daggers, or, as they were more commonly called, knives (says Mr.

What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath ministered to have me dead;
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonored,
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 bones

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,
Of all my buried ancestors are packed;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;-
Alack, alack! is it not like, that I,

1

So early waking,-what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad; 2-
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

Gifford), were worn at all times by every woman in England; whether they were so worn in Italy, Shakspeare, I believe, never inquired, and I cannot tell."-Works of Ben Jonson, vol. v. p. 221.

1 To fester is to corrupt.

2 The mandrake (says Thomas Newton in his Herbal) has been idly represented as "a creature having life."

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 [Exit Nurse.

pastry.1

Enter CAPULET.

Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath

crowed,

The curfew bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock.

Look to the baked meats, good Angelica:

Spare not for cost.

La. Cap.

Go, go, you cot-quean,2 go,

Get you to bed; 'faith, you'll be sick to-morrow

For this night's watching.3

Cap. No, not a whit; what! I have watched ere

now

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

time;

But I will watch you from such watching now.

your

[Exit LADY CAPULET. Cap. A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!-Now, fellow, What's there?

1 The room where the pastry was made.

2 A man that troubles himself with women's affairs-probably cookquean.

3 This speech, which in the old copies is attributed to the nurse, should surely be given to lady Capulet.

4 The animal called the mouse-hunt is the weasel. The intrigues of this animal, like those of the cat kind, are usually carried on in the night.