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 banished from the world,
And world's exile is death:-then banishment
Is death mis-term'd: 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 rush'd aside the law,
And turn'd that black word death to banishment:
This is dear mercy and thou see'st 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 honourable state, more courtship lives
In carrion flies, than Romeo; they may seize
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand,
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 mix'd, 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 profess'd,
To mangle me with that word-banishment?
Fri. Thou fond madman, hear me but speak a word. Rom. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment. Fri. I'll give thee armour 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 cars. Rom. How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?
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,
Then might'st thou speak, then might'st thou tear thy
And fall upon the ground, as I do now,
Taking the measure of an unmade grave.
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, l;
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 gray is not the morning's eye,
Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;*
Yor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heav'n so high above our heads:
I have more caret 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.
i 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 skulls;
Or bid me go into a new-made grave,
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;
Things that, to hear them told, have made me
tremble;
And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love.
JULIET'S SOLILOQUY ON DRINKING THE OPIATE. 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,
* Reflection of the moon.
Because he marry'd 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, it is 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.
[She throws herself on the bed.
*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.
JOY CHANGED TO SORROW.
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.
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,
Culling of simples;* meagre were his looks,
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
Sharp misery had worn him 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,
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.
, 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!
Enter Apothecary.
Who calls so loud?
Rom. Come hither, man.-I see that thou art
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