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
If no unconstant toy, nor womanish fear,
Abate thy valour in the acting it.
Juliet's Soliloquy on Drinking the Potion.
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?
Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?
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 stified 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, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
Juliet after taking the Potion.
Her blood is settled; and her joints are stiff;
Life and these lips have long been separated:
Death lies on her, like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
Joy changed to Grief.
All things that we ordained 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.
If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep,
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand :
My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne;
And, all this day, an unaccustom'd spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead;
(Strange dream! that gives a dead man leave to think,
And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips,
That I reviv'd, and was an emperor.
Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess❜d,
When but love's shadows are so rich in joy?
Romeo's conference with the Apothecary.
ROMEO. O, 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 o'erwhelming brow,
Culling of simples,* meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones :
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuff'd, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
Remnants 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!
APOTHECARY. Who calls so loud?
ROMEO. Come hither, man. -I see that thou art poor,
Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have
A dram of poison; such soon-speeding geer*
As will disperse itself through all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may fall dead;
And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath
As violently as hasty powder fir'd
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.
APOTHECARY. Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law
Is death to any he that utters them.
ROMEO. Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness,
And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,
Upon thy back hangs ragged misery;
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law:
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
APOTHECARY. My poverty,
* Such swiftly acting poison.
ROMEO. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will. APOTHECARY. Put this in any liquid thing you will, And drink it off; and, if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would despatch you straight.
ROMEO. There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world
Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell :
I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.
Farewell; buy food, and get thyself in flesh.
Come, cordial, and not poison; go with me
To Juliet's grave, for there must I use thee.
Romeo and Paris at the Tomb.
ROMEO. Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
Gorg'd with the dearest morsel of the earth,
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
[Breaking open the door of the Monument.
And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food!
PARIS. This is that banish'd haughty Montague,
That murder'd my love's cousin ;—with which grief,
It is supposed the fair creature died,—
And here is come to do some villanous shame
To the dead bodies: I will apprehend him.—
Stop thy unhallow'd toil, vile Montague;
Can vengeance be pursu'd farther than death?
Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee:
Obey, and go with me; for thou must die.
ROMEO. I must, indeed; and therefore came I
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man,
Fly hence, and leave me ;-think upon these gone;
Let them affright thee.-I beseech thee, youth,
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