ROMEO AND JULIET

by Shakespeare · Cluster: Verona

Abstract

Lyric tragedy of the star-crossed young lovers of feuding Verona houses, ending in their double suicide and the families’ reconciliation. Central themes: romantic love, fate, the feud, the conflict of love and death, youth.

Capitoli / Chapters

• Act I, Scene 1
• Act I, Scene 2
• Act I, Scene 3
• Act I, Scene 4
• Act II, Scene 0
• Act II, Scene 1
• Act II, Scene 2
• Act II, Scene 3
• Act II, Scene 4
• Act II, Scene 5
• Act III, Scene 1
• Act III, Scene 2
• Act III, Scene 3
• Act III, Scene 4
• Act III, Scene 5
• Act IV, Scene 1
• Act IV, Scene 2
• Act IV, Scene 3
• Act IV, Scene 4
• Act V, Scene 1
• Act V, Scene 2
• Act V, Scene 3

Connections

Topoi: Love as Religion, Dawn Alba Archetypes: Lover, Mentor Motifs: Light and Dark, Death, Stars, Night, Poison Themes & Concepts: Romantic Love, Fate and Free Will, Mortality, Grief and Loss, Unrequited Frustrated Love Forms & Genres: Tragedy, Blank Verse, Lyric Settings: Verona Characters: Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, Tybalt, Friar Laurence, Nurse, Capulet, Benvolio, Paris (2), Prince Escalus

Testo integrale / Full text

ROMEO AND JULIET ON its first appearance in print, in 1597, Romeo and Juliet was described as ‘An excellent conceited tragedy’ that had ‘been often (with great applause) played publicly’; its popularity is witnessed by the fact that this is a pirated version, put together from actors’ memories as a way of cashing in on its success. A second printing, two years later, offered a greatly superior text apparently printed from Shakespeare’s working papers. Probably he wrote it in 1594 or 1595. The story was already well known, in Italian, French, and English. Shakespeare owes most to Arthur Brooke’s long poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which had already supplied hints for The Two Gentlemen of Verona; he may also have looked at some of the other versions. In his address ‘To the Reader’, Brooke says that he has seen ‘the same argument lately set forth on stage with more commendation than I can look for’, but no earlier play survives. Shakespeare’s Prologue neatly sketches the plot of the two star-crossed lovers born of feuding families whose deaths ‘bury their parents’ strife’; and the formal verse structure of the Prologue—a sonnet—is matched by the carefully patterned layout of the action. At the climax of the first scene, Prince Escalus stills a brawl between representatives of the houses of Montague (Romeo’s family) and Capulet (Juliet’s); at the end of Act 3, Scene 1, he passes judgement on another, more serious brawl, banishing Romeo for killing Juliet’s cousin Tybalt after Tybalt had killed Romeo’s friend and the Prince’s kinsman, Mercutio; and at the end of Act 5, the Prince presides over the reconciliation of Montagues and Capulets. Within this framework of public life Romeo and Juliet act out their brief tragedy: in the first act, they meet and declare their love—in another sonnet; in the second, they arrange to marry in secret; in the third, after Romeo’s banishment, they consummate their marriage and part; in the fourth, Juliet drinks a sleeping draught prepared by Friar Laurence so that she may escape marriage to Paris and, after waking in the family tomb, run off with Romeo; in the fifth, after Romeo, believing her to be dead, has taken poison, she stabs herself to death. The play’s structural formality is offset by an astonishing fertility of linguistic invention, showing itself no less in the comic bawdiness of the servants, the Nurse, and (on a more sophisticated level) Mercutio than in the rapt and impassioned poetry of the lovers. Shakespeare’s mastery over a wide range of verbal styles combines with his psychological perceptiveness to create a richer gallery of memorable characters than in any play written up to this time; and his theatrical imagination compresses Brooke’s leisurely narrative into a dramatic masterpiece. THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY CHORUS

ROMEO MONTAGUE, his father MONTAGUE’S WIFE BENVOLIO, Montague’s nephew ABRAHAM, Montague’s servingman BALTHASAR, Romeo’s man JULIET CAPULET, her father CAPULET’S WIFE TYBALT, her nephew His page PETRUCCIO CAPULET’S COUSIN Juliet’s NURSE Other SERVINGMEN MUSICIANS Escalus, PRINCE of Verona FRIAR LAURENCE FRIAR JOHN An APOTHECARY CHIEF WATCHMAN Other CITIZENS OF THE WATCH

Masquers, guests, gentlewomen, followers of the Montague and Capulet factions

The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet Prologue Enter Chorus CHORUS Two households, both alike in dignity In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life, Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife. The fearful passage of their death-marked love And the continuance of their parents’ rage— Which but their children’s end, naught could remove— Is now the two-hours’ traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. Exit

Atto 1, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Samson and Gregory, of the house of Capulet, with swords and
(didascalia)	bucklers
SAMSON	Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.
GREGORY	No, for then we should be colliers.
SAMSON	I mean an we be in choler, we’ll draw.
GREGORY	Ay, while you live, draw your neck out of collar.
SAMSON	I strike quickly, being moved.
GREGORY	But thou art not quickly moved to strike.
SAMSON	A dog of the house of Montague moves me.
GREGORY	To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand, therefore if thou art moved, thou runn’st away.
SAMSON	A dog of that house shall move me to stand. I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s.
GREGORY	That shows thee a weak slave, for the weakest goes to the wall.
SAMSON	’Tis true, and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall; therefore I will push Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall.
GREGORY	The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.
SAMSON	’Tis all one. I will show myself a tyrant: when I have fought with the men I will be civil with the maids—I will cut off their heads.
GREGORY	The heads of the maids?
SAMSON	Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads, take it in what sense thou wilt.
GREGORY	They must take it in sense that feel it.
SAMSON	Me they shall feel while I am able to stand, and ’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.
GREGORY	’Tis well thou art not fish. If thou hadst, thou hadst been poor-john.
(didascalia)	Enter Abraham and another servingman of the Montagues
GREGORY	Draw thy tool. Here comes of the house of Montagues.
SAMSON	My naked weapon is out. Quarrel, I will back thee.
GREGORY	How—turn thy back and run?
SAMSON	Fear me not.
GREGORY	No, marry—I fear thee!
SAMSON	Let us take the law of our side. Let them begin.
GREGORY	I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.
SAMSON	Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it. He bites his thumb
ABRAHAM	Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
SAMSON	I do bite my thumb, sir.
ABRAHAM	Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
SAMSON	(to Gregory) Is the law of our side if I say ’Ay’ ?
GREGORY	No.
SAMSON	(to Abraham) No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.
GREGORY	(to Abraham) Do you quarrel, sir?
ABRAHAM	Quarrel, sir? No, sir.
SAMSON	But if you do, sir, I am for you. I serve as good a man as you.
ABRAHAM	No better.
SAMSON	Well, sir.
(didascalia)	Enter Benvolio
GREGORY	Say ‘better’. Here comes one of my master’s kinsmen.
SAMSON	(to Abraham) Yes, better, sir.
ABRAHAM	You lie.
SAMSON	Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy washing blow. They draw and fight
BENVOLIO	(drawing) Part, fools. Put up your swords. You know not what you do.
(didascalia)	Enter Tybalt
TYBALT	(drawing) What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee, Benvolio. Look upon thy death.
BENVOLIO	I do but keep the peace. Put up thy sword, Or manage it to part these men with me.
TYBALT	What, drawn and talk of peace? I hate the word As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Have at thee, coward.
(didascalia)	They fight. Enter three or four Citizens of the watch, with clubs or partisans
(didascalia)	CITIZENS OF THE WATCH
TYBALT	Clubs, bills and partisans! Strike! Beat them down! Down with the Capulets. Down with the Montagues.
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet in his gown, and his Wife
CAPULET	What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!
CAPULET’S WIFE	A crutch, a crutch—why call you for a sword?
(didascalia)	Enter Montague With his sword drawn, and his Wife
CAPULET	My sword, I say. Old Montague is come, And flourishes his blade in spite of me.
MONTAGUE	Thou villain Capulet!
(didascalia)	His Wife holds him back
MONTAGUE	Hold me not, let me go.
MONTAGUE’S WIFE	Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.
(didascalia)	The Citizens of the watch attempt to part the factions.
(didascalia)	Enter Prince Escalus with his train
PRINCE	Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace, Profaners of this neighbour-stained steet— Will they not hear? What ho, you men, you beasts, That quench the fire of your pernicious rage With purple fountains issuing from your veins: On pain of torture, from those bloody hands Throw your mistempered weapons to the ground, And hear the sentence of your moved Prince.
(didascalia)	Montague, Capulet, and their followers throw down their weapons]
PRINCE	Three civil brawls bred of an airy word By thee, old Capulet, and Montague, Have thrice disturbed the quiet of our streets And made Verona’s ancient citizens Cast by their grave-beseeming ornaments To wield old partisans in hands as old, Cankered with peace, to part your cankered hate. If ever you disturb our streets again Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace. For this time all the rest depart away. You, Capulet, shall go along with me; And Montague, come you this afternoon To know our farther pleasure in this case To old Freetown, our common judgement-place. Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.
(didascalia)	Exeunt all but Montague, his Wife, and Benvolio
MONTAGUE	Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach? Speak, nephew: were you by when it began?
BENVOLIO	Here were the servants of your adversary And yours, close fighting ere I did approach. I drew to part them. In the instant came The fiery Tybalt with his sword prepared, Which, as he breathed defiance to my ears, He swung about his head and cut the winds Who, nothing hurt withal, hissed him in scorn. While we were interchanging thrusts and blows, Came more and more, and fought on part and part Till the Prince came, who parted either part.
MONTAGUE’S WIFE	O where is Romeo—saw you him today? Right glad I am he was not at this fray.
BENVOLIO	Madam, an hour before the worshipped sun Peered forth the golden window of the east, A troubled mind drive me to walk abroad, Where, underneath the grove of sycamore That westward rooteth from this city side, So early walking did I see your son. Towards him I made, but he was ware of me, And stole into the covert of the wood. I, measuring his affections by my own— Which then most sought where most might not be found, Being one too many by my weary self— Pursued my humour not pursuing his, And gladly shunned who gladly fled from me.
MONTAGUE	Many a morning hath he there been seen, With tears augmenting the fresh morning’s dew, Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs. But all so soon as the all-cheering sun Should in the farthest east begin to draw The shady curtains from Aurora’s bed, Away from light steals home my heavy son, And private in his chamber pens himself, Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out, And makes himself an artificial night. Black and portentous must this humour prove, Unless good counsel may the cause remove.
BENVOLIO	My noble uncle, do you know the cause?
MONTAGUE	I neither know it nor can learn of him.
BENVOLIO	Have you importuned him by any means?
MONTAGUE	Both by myself and many other friends, But he, his own affection’s counsellor, Is to himself—I will not say how true, But to himself so secret and so close, So far from sounding and discovery, As is the bud bit with an envious worm Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air Or dedicate his beauty to the sun. Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow We would as willingly give cure as know.
(didascalia)	Enter Romeo
BENVOLIO	See where he comes. So please you step aside, I’ll know his grievance or be much denied.
MONTAGUE	I would thou wert so happy by thy stay To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let’s away.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Montague and his Wife
BENVOLIO	Good morrow, cousin.
ROMEO	Is the day so young?
BENVOLIO	But new struck nine.
ROMEO	Ay me, sad hours seem long. Was that my father that went hence so fast?
BENVOLIO	It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo’s hours?
ROMEO	Not having that which, having, makes them short.
BENVOLIO	In love.
ROMEO	Out.
BENVOLIO	Of love?
ROMEO	Out of her favour where I am in love.
BENVOLIO	Alas that love, so gentle in his view, Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.
ROMEO	Alas that love, whose view is muffled still, Should without eyes see pathways to his will.
(didascalia)	Where shall we dine? Seeing blood O me! What fray
ROMEO	was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love. Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O anything of nothing first create; O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is I This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Dost thou not laugh?
BENVOLIO	No, coz, I rather weep.
ROMEO	Good heart, at what?
BENVOLIO	At thy good heart’s oppression.
ROMEO	Why, such is love’s transgression. Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast, Which thou wilt propagate to have it pressed With more of thine. This love that thou hast shown Doth add more grief to too much of mine own. Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs, Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes, Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet. Farewell, my coz.
BENVOLIO	Soft, I will go along; An if you leave me’so, you do me wrong.
ROMEO	Tut, I have lost myself. I am not here. This is not Romeo; he’s some other where.
BENVOLIO	Tell me in sadness, who is that you love?
ROMEO	What, shall I groan and tell thee?
BENVOLIO	Groan? Why no; but sadly tell me who.
ROMEO	Bid a sick man in sadness make his will, A word ill urged to one that is so ill. In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.
BENVOLIO	I aimed so near when I supposed you loved.
ROMEO	A right good markman; and she’s fair I love.
BENVOLIO	A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
ROMEO	Well, in that hit you miss. She’ll not be hit With Cupid’s arrow; she hath Dian’s wit, And, in strong proof of chastity well armed, From love’s weak childish bow she lives unharmed. She will not stay the siege of loving terms, Nor bide th’encounter of assailing eyes, Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold. O, she is rich in beauty, only poor That when she dies, with beauty dies her store.
BENVOLIO	Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?
ROMEO	She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste; For beauty starved with her severity Cuts beauty off from all posterity. She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair, To merit bliss by making me despair. She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow Do I live dead, that live to tell it now.
BENVOLIO	Be ruled by me; forget to think of her.
ROMEO	O, teach me how I should forget to think!
BENVOLIO	By giving liberty unto thine eyes. Examine other beauties.
ROMEO	’Tis the way To call hers, exquisite, in question more. These happy masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows, Being black, puts us in mind they hide the fair. He that is strucken blind cannot forget The precious treasure of his eyesight lost. Show me a mistress that is passing fair, What doth her beauty serve but as a note Where I may read who passed that passing fair? Farewell, thou canst not teach me to forget.
BENVOLIO	I’ll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt. Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet, Paris, and Peter, a servingman
CAPULET	But Montague is bound as well as I, In penalty alike, and ’tis not hard, I think, For men so old as we to keep the peace.
PARIS	Of honourable reckoning are you both, And pity ’tis you lived at odds so long. But now, my lord: what say you to my suit?
CAPULET	But saying o’er what I have said before. My child is yet a stranger in the world; She hath not seen the change of fourteen years. Let two more summers wither in their pride Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
PARIS	Younger than she are happy mothers made.
CAPULET	And too soon marred are those so early made. But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart; My will to her consent is but a part, And, she agreed, within her scope of choice Lies my consent and fair-according voice. This night I hold an old-accustomed feast Whereto I have invited many a guest Such as I love, and you among the store, One more most welcome, makes my number more. At my poor house look to behold this night Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light. Such comfort as do lusty young men feel When well-apparelled April on the heel Of limping winter treads—even such delight Among fresh female buds shall you this night Inherit at my house; hear all, all see, And like her most whose merit most shall be, Which on more view of many, mine, being one, May stand in number, though in reck’ning none.
(didascalia)	Come, go with me. (Giving Peter a paper) Go, sirrah,
CAPULET	trudge about; Through fair Verona find those persons out Whose names are written there, and to them say My house and welcome on their pleasure stay.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Capulet and Paris
(didascalia)	PETER Find them out whose names are written here? It
CAPULET	is written that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his pencil and the painter with his nets; but I am sent to find those persons whose names are here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. I must to the learned.
(didascalia)	Enter Benvolio and Romeo
CAPULET	In good time.
BENVOLIO	(to Romeo) Tut, man, one fire burns out another’s burning, One pain is lessened by another’s anguish. Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning. One desperate grief cures with another’s languish. Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.
ROMEO	Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.
BENVOLIO	For what, I pray thee?
ROMEO	For your broken shin.
BENVOLIO	Why, Romeo, art thou mad?
ROMEO	Not mad, but bound more than a madman is; Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
(didascalia)	Whipped and tormented and—(to Peter Good e’en,
ROMEO	good fellow.
(didascalia)	PETER
ROMEO	God gi‘good e’en. I pray, sir, can you read?
ROMEO	Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.
(didascalia)	PETER erhaps you have learned it without book. But I pray, can you read anything you see?
ROMEO	Ay, if I know the letters and the language.
(didascalia)	PETER Ye say honestly. Rest you merry.
ROMEO	Stay, fellow, I can read. He reads the letter ‘Signor Martino and his wife and daughters, County Anselme and his beauteous sisters, The lady widow of Vitruvio, Signor Placentio and his lovely nieces, Mercutio and his brother Valentine, Mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters, My fair niece Rosaline and Livia, Signor Valentio and his cousin Tybalt, Lucio and the lively Helena.’ A fair assembly. Whither should they come?
(didascalia)	PETER Up.
ROMEO	Whither?
(didascalia)	PETER To supper to our house.
ROMEO	Whose house?
(didascalia)	PETER My master’s.
ROMEO	Indeed, I should have asked thee that before.
(didascalia)	PETER Now I’ll tell you without asking. My master is
ROMEO	the great rich Capulet, and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come and crush a cup of wine. Rest you merry. Exit
BENVOLIO	At this same ancient feast of Capulet’s Sups the fair Rosaline, whom thou so loves, With all the admirèd beauties of Verona. Go thither, and with unattainted eye Compare her face with some that I shall show, And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.
ROMEO	When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires; And these who, often drowned, could never die, Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars. One fairer than my love !—the all-seeing sun Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.
BENVOLIO	Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by, Herself poised with herself in either eye; But in that crystal scales let there be weighed Your lady’s love against some other maid That I will show you shining at this feast, And she shall scant show well that now seems best.
ROMEO	I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown, But to rejoice in splendour of mine own. Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet’s Wife and the Nurse
CAPULET’S WIFE	Nurse, where’s my daughter? Call her forth to me.
NURSE	Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old, I bade her come. What, lamb, what, ladybird— God forbid—where is this girl? What, Juliet!
(didascalia)	Enter Juliet
JULIET	How now, who calls?
NURSE	Your mother.
JULIET	Madam, I am here. What is your will?
CAPULET’S WIFE	This is the matter.—Nurse, give leave a while. We must talk in secret.—Nurse, come back again. I have remembered me, thou s’ hear our counsel. Thou knowest my daughter’s of a pretty age.
NURSE	Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
CAPULET’S WIFE	She’s not fourteen.
NURSE	I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth—and yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four—she’s not fourteen. How long is it now to Lammastide?
CAPULET’S WIFE	A fortnight and odd days.
NURSE	Even or odd, of all days in the year Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen. Susan and she—God rest all Christian souls!— Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me. But, as I said, On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen, That shall she, marry, I remember it well. ‘Tis since the earthquake now eleven years, And she was weaned—I never shall forget it– Of all the days of the year upon that day, For I had then laid wormwood to my dug, Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall. My lord and you were then at Mantua. Nay, I do bear a brain! But, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy and fall out wi’th’ dug! ‘Shake’, quoth the dove-housed‘Twas no need, I trow, To bid me trudge; And since that time it is eleven years, For then she could stand high-lone. Nay, by th’ rood, She could have run and waddled all about, For even the day before, she broke her brow, And then my husband—God be with his soul, A was a merry man!—took up the child. ‘Yea,’ quoth he, ‘dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit, Wilt thou not, Jule?’ And, by my halidom, The pretty wretch left crying and said ‘Ay’. To see now how a jest shall come about! I warrant an I should live a thousand years I never should forget it. ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ quoth he, And, pretty fool, it stinted and said ‘Ay’.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Enough of this. I pray thee hold thy peace.
NURSE	Yes, madam. Yet I cannot choose but laugh To think it should leave crying and say ‘Ay’. And yet, I warrant, it had upon it brow A bump as big as a young cock‘rel’s stone. A perilous knock, and it cried bitterly. ‘Yea,’ quoth my husband, ‘fall’st upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou com’st to age, Wilt thou not, Jule?’ It stinted and said ‘Ay’.
JULIET	And stint thou too, I pray thee, Nurse, say I.
NURSE	Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace, Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nursed. An I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Marry, that ’marry’ is the very theme I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet, How stands your dispositions to be married?
JULIET	It is an honour that I dream not of.
NURSE	‘An honour’! Were not I thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst sucked wisdom from thy teat.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, Are made already mothers. By my count I was your mother much upon these years That you are now a maid. Thus then, in brief: The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.
NURSE	A man, young lady, lady, such a man As all the world—why, he’s a man of wax.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Verona’s summer hath not such a flower.
NURSE	Nay, he’s a flower, in faith, a very flower.
CAPULET’S WIFE	(to Juliet) What say you ? Can you love the gentleman ? This night you shall behold him at our feast. Read o‘er the volume of young Paris’ face, And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen. Examine every married lineament, And see how one another lends content; And what obscured in this fair volume lies Find written in the margin of his eyes. This precious book of love, this unbound lover, To beautify him only lacks a cover. The fish lives in the sea, and ’tis much pride For fair without the fair within to hide. That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory That in gold clasps locks in the golden story. So shall you share all that he doth possess By having him, making yourself no less.
NURSE	No less, nay, bigger. Women grow by men. CAPULET’s WIFE (to Juliet) Speak briefly: can you like of Paris’ love?
JULIET	I’ll look to like, if looking liking move; But no more deep will I endart mine eye Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
(didascalia)	Enter Peter
(didascalia)	PETER Madam, the guests are come, supper served up,
JULIET	you called, my young lady asked for, the Nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in extremity. I must hence to wait. I beseech you follow straight.
(didascalia)	We follow thee. Exit Peter
CAPULET’S WIFE	Juliet, the County stays.
NURSE	Go, girl; seek happy nights to happy days. Exeunt

Atto 1, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio, as masquers, with five or six other masquers, bearing a drum and torches
ROMEO	What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse, Or shall we on without apology?
BENVOLIO	The date is out of such prolixity. We’ll have no Cupid hoodwinked with a scarf, Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath, Scaring the ladies like a crowkeeper, Nor no without-book Prologue faintly spoke After the prompter for our entrance. But let them measure us by what they will, We’ll measure them a measure, and be gone.
ROMEO	Give me a torch. I am not for this ambling; Being but heavy, I will bear the light.
MERCUTIO	Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.
ROMEO	Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes With nimble soles; I have a soul of lead So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
MERCUTIO	You are a lover; borrow Cupid’s wings, And soar with them above a common bound.
ROMEO	I am too sore empiercèd with his shaft To soar with his light feathers, and so bound I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe; Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.
MERCUTIO	And to sink in it should you burden love— Too great oppression for a tender thing.
ROMEO	Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boist’rous, and it pricks like thorn.
MERCUTIO	If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. Give me a case to put my visage in, A visor for a visor. What care I What curious eye doth quote deformity? Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.
(didascalia)	They put on visors
BENVOLIO	Come, knock and enter, and no sooner in But every man betake him to his legs.
ROMEO	A torch for me. Let wantons light of heart Tickle the sense-less rushes with their heels, For I am proverbed with a grandsire phrase. I’ll be a candle-holder and look on. The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done.
(didascalia)	He takes a torch
MERCUTIO	Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word. If thou art dun we’ll draw thee from the mire Of—save your reverence—love, wherein thou stickest Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!
ROMEO	Nay, that’s not so.
MERCUTIO	I mean, sir, in delay We waste our lights in vain, like lights by day. Take our good meaning, for our judgement sits Five times in that ere once in our five wits.
ROMEO	And we mean well in going to this masque, But ’tis no wit to go.
MERCUTIO	Why, may one ask?
ROMEO	I dreamt a dream tonight.
MERCUTIO	And so did I.
ROMEO	Well, what was yours?
MERCUTIO	That dreamers often lie.
ROMEO	In bed asleep while they do dream things true.
MERCUTIO	O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
BENVOLIO	Queen Mab, what’s she?
MERCUTIO	She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomi Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep. Her wagon spokes made of long spinners’ legs; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; Her traces, of the moonshine’s wat‘ry beams; Her collars, of the smallest spider web; Her whip, of cricket’s bone, the lash of film; Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat Not half so big as a round little worm Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid. Her chariot is an empty hazelnut Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight; O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream, Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometime she gallops o’er a lawyer’s lip, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail Tickling a parson’s nose as a lies asleep; Then dreams he of another benefice. Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades, Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
(didascalia)	Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
MERCUTIO	And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, And sleeps again. This is that very Mab That plaits the manes of horses in the night, And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which once untangled much misfortune bodes. This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage. This is she—
ROMEO	Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace! Thou talk’st of nothing.
MERCUTIO	True. I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being angered, puffs away from thence, Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
BENVOLIO	This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves. Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
ROMEO	I fear too early, for my mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night’s revels, and expire the term Of a despised life, closed in my breast, By some vile forfeit of untimely death. But he that hath the steerage of my course Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.
BENVOLIO	Strike, drum.
(didascalia)	They march about the stage and exeunt
(didascalia)	1.5 Peter and other Servingmen come forth with napkins
(didascalia)	PETER Where’s Potpan, that he helps not to take away?
BENVOLIO	He shift a trencher, he scrape a trencher!
FIRST SERVINGMAN	When good manners shall lie all in one or two men’s hands, and they unwashed too, ’tis a foul thing.
(didascalia)	PETER Away with the joint-stools, remove the court–
FIRST SERVINGMAN	cupboard, look to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marzipan, and, as thou loves me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell. Anthony and Potpan I
SECOND SERVINGMAN	Ay, boy, ready.
(didascalia)	PETER You are looked for and called for, asked for and
SECOND SERVINGMAN	sought for, in the great chamber.
(didascalia)	FIRST SERVINGMAN We cannot be here and there too.
SECOND SERVINGMAN	Cheerly, boys! Be brisk a while, and the longest liver take all.
(didascalia)	They come and go, setting forth tables and chairs. Enter Musicians, then at one door Capulet, his Wife, his Cousin, Juliet., the Nurse, Tybalt, his page, Petruccio, and all the guests and gentlewomen; at another door, the masquers: Romeo, Benvolio and Mercutio
CAPULET	(to the masquers) Welcome, gentlemen. Ladies that have their toes Unplagued with corns will walk a bout with you. Aha, my mistresses, which of you all Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty, She, I’ll swear, hath corns. Am I come near ye now? Welcome, gentlemen. I have seen the day That I have worn a visor, and could tell A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear Such as would please. ’Tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone. You are welcome, gentlemen. Come, musicians, play.
(didascalia)	Music plays, and the masquers, guests, and gentlewomen dance. Romeo stands apart
CAPULET	A hall, a hall! Give room, and foot it, girls. (To Servingmen) More light, you knaves, and turn the tables up, And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot. (To his Cousin) Ah sirrah, this unlooked-for sport comes well. Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet, For you and I are past our dancing days.
(didascalia)	Capulet and his Cousin sit
CAPULET	How long is’t now since last yourself and I Were in a masque?
CAPULET’S COUSIN	By’r Lady, thirty years.
CAPULET	What, man, ’tis not so much, ’tis not so much. ’Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio, Come Pentecost as quickly as it will, Some five-and-twenty years; and then we masqued.
CAPULET’S COUSIN	’Tis more, ’tis more. His son is elder, sir. His son is thirty.
CAPULET	Will you tell me that? His son was but a ward two years ago.
ROMEO	(to a Servingman) What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand Of yonder knight?
SERVINGMAN	I know not, sir.
ROMEO	O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night As a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear— Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear. So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows. The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand, And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand. Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.
TYBALT	This, by his voice, should be a Montague.
(didascalia)	Fetch me my rapier, boy. Exit page
TYBALT	What, dares the slave Come hither, covered with an antic face, To fleer and scorn at our solemnity? Now, by the stock and honour of my kin, To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.
(didascalia)	CAPULET standing
TYBALT	Why, how now, kinsman? Wherefore storm you so?
TYBALT	Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe, A villain that is hither come in spite To scorn at our solemnity this night.
CAPULET	Young Romeo, is it?
TYBALT	’Tis he, that villain Romeo.
CAPULET	Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone. A bears him like a portly gentleman, And, to say truth, Verona brags of him To be a virtuous and well-governed youth. I would not for the wealth of all this town Here in my house do him disparagement. Therefore be patient, take no note of him. It is my will, the which if thou respect, Show a fair presence and put off these frowns, An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.
TYBALT	It fits when such a villain is a guest. I’ll not endure him.
CAPULET	He shall be endured. What, goodman boy, I say he shall. Go to, Am I the master here or you ? Go to— You’ll not endure him! God shall mend my soul. You’ll make a mutiny among my guests, You will set cock-a-hoop! You’ll be the man!
TYBALT	Why, uncle, ’tis a shame.
CAPULET	Go to, go to, You are a saucy boy. Is’t so, indeed? This trick may chance to scathe you. I know what, You must contrary me. Marry, ’tis time—
(didascalia)	A dance ends. Juliet retires to her place of stand, where Romeo awaits her
CAPULET	(To the guests) Well said, my hearts! (To Tybalt) You are a princox, go. Be quiet, or—(to Servingmen) more light, more light!— (to Tybalt) for shame, I’ll make you quiet. (To the guests) What, cheerly, my hearts!
(didascalia)	The music plays again, and the guests dance
TYBALT	Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall, Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt’rest gall. Exit
ROMEO	(to Juliet, touching her hand) If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentler sin is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET	Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this. For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
ROMEO	Have not saints lips, and holy palmers, too?
JULIET	Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO	O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do: They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET	Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEO	Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take. He kisses her Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purged.
JULIET	Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO	Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again. He kisses her
JULIET	You kiss by th’ book.
NURSE	Madam, your mother craves a word with you.
(didascalia)	Juliet departs to her mother
ROMEO	What is her mother?
NURSE	Marry, bachelor, Her mother is the lady of the house, And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous. I nursed her daughter that you talked withal. I tell you, he that can lay hold of her Shall have the chinks.
ROMEO	(aside) Is she a Capulet? O dear account! My life is my foe’s debt.
BENVOLIO	Away, be gone, the sport is at the best.
ROMEO	Ay, so I fear, the more is my unrest.
CAPULET	Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone. We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.
(didascalia)	They whisper in his ear
CAPULET	Is it e’en so? Why then, I thank you all. I thank you, honest gentlemen. Good night. More torches here ! Come on then, let’s to bed. (To his Cousin) Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late. I’ll to my rest.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Capulet, his Wife, and his Cousin. The guests, gentlewomen, masquers, musicians, and servingmen begin to leave
JULIET	Come hither, Nurse. What is yon gentleman?
NURSE	The son and heir of old Tiberio.
JULIET	What’s he that now is going out of door?
NURSE	Marry, that, I think, be young Petruccio.
JULIET	What’s he that follows here, that would not dance?
NURSE	I know not.
JULIET	Go ask his name. The Nurse goes If he be married, My grave is like to be my wedding bed.
NURSE	(returning) His name is Romeo, and a Montague, The only son of your great enemy.
(didascalia)	JULIET aside
NURSE	My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me That I must love a loathed enemy.
NURSE	What’s tis? what’s tis?
JULIET	A rhyme I learnt even now Of one I danced withal. One calls within ‘Juliet!’
NURSE	Anon, anon. Come, let’s away. The strangers all are gone. Exeunt

Atto 2, Scena 0

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Chorus
CHORUS	Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie, And young affection gapes to be his heir. That fair for which love groaned for and would die, With tender Juliet matched, is now not fair. Now Romeo is beloved and loves again, Alike bewitched by the charm of looks; But to his foe supposed he must complain, And she steal love’s sweet bait from fearful hooks. Being held a foe, he may not have access To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear, And she as much in love, her means much less To meet her new belovèd anywhere. But passion lends them power, time means, to meet, Temp’ring extremities with extreme sweet. Exit

Atto 2, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Romeo
ROMEO	Can I go forward when my heart is here? Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.
(didascalia)	He turns back and withdraws.
(didascalia)	Enter Benvolio with Mercutio
BENVOLIO	(calling) Romeo, my cousin Romeo, Romeo!
MERCUTIO	He is wise, and, on my life, hath stol’n him home to bed.
BENVOLIO	He ran this way, and leapt this orchard wall. Call, good Mercutio.
(didascalia)	MERCUTIO Nay, I’ll conjure too.
BENVOLIO	Romeo! Humours! adman! Passion! Lover! Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh. Speak but one rhyme and I am satisfied. Cry but ‘Ay me!’ Pronounce but ‘love’ and ‘dove’. Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, One nickname for her purblind son and heir, Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim When King Cophetua loved the beggar maid.— He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not. The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.— I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes, By her high forehead and her scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, And the demesnes that there adjacent lie, That in thy likeness thou appear to us.
BENVOLIO	An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.
MERCUTIO	This cannot anger him. ’Twould anger him To raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle Of some strange nature, letting it there stand Till she had laid it and conjured it down. That were some spite. My invocation Is fair and honest. In his mistress’ name, I conjure only but to raise up him.
BENVOLIO	Come, he hath hid himself among these trees To be consorted with the humorous night. Blind is his love, and best befits the dark.
MERCUTIO	If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will he sit under a medlar tree And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit As maids call medlars when they laugh alone. O Romeo, that she were, O that she were An open-arse, and thou a popp’rin’ pear. Romeo, good night. I’ll to my truckle-bed. This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep. Come, shall we go?
BENVOLIO	Go then, for ’tis in vain To seek him here that means not to be found.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Benvolio and Mercutio
(didascalia)	ROMEO coming forward
BENVOLIO	He jests at scars that never felt a wound. But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she. Be not her maid, since she is envious. Her vestal livery is but sick and green, And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
(didascalia)	Enter Juliet aloft
BENVOLIO	It is my lady, O, it is my love. O that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses; I will answer it. I am too bold. ’Tis not to me she speaks. Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head?— The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars As daylight doth a lamp; her eye in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek!
JULIET	Ay me.
ROMEO	(aside) She speaks. O, speak again, bright angel; for thou art As glorious to this night, being o‘er my head, As is a winged messenger of heaven Unto the white upturned wond’ring eyes Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him When he bestrides the lazy-passing clouds And sails upon the bosom of the air.
JULIET	(not knowing Romeo hears her) O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
ROMEO	(aside) Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
JULIET	’Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name I What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for thy name—which is no part of thee— Take all myself.
ROMEO	(to Juliet) I take thee at thy word. Call me but love and I’ll be new baptized. Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
JULIET	What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night, So stumblest on my counsel?
ROMEO	By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am. My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself Because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written, I would tear the word.
JULIET	My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words Of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound. Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?
ROMEO	Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.
JULIET	How cam’st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore? The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here.
ROMEO	With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls, For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do, that dares love attempt. Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.
JULIET	If they do see thee, they will murder thee.
ROMEO	Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.
JULIET	I would not for the world they saw thee here.
ROMEO	I have night’s cloak to hide me from their eyes, And but thou love me, let them find me here. My life were better ended by their hate Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.
JULIET	By whose direction found’st thou out this place?
ROMEO	By love, that first did prompt me to enquire. He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes. I am no pilot, yet wert thou as far As that vast shore washed with the farthest sea, I should adventure for such merchandise.
JULIET	Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face, Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight. Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny What I have spoke; but farewell, compliment. Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay’, And I will take thy word. Yet if thou swear‘st Thou mayst prove false. At lovers’ perjuries, They say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo, If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully; Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won, I’ll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay, So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world. In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, And therefore thou mayst think my ‘haviour light. But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true Than those that have more cunning to be strange. I should have been more strange, I must confess, But that thou overheard’st, ere I was ware, My true-love passion. Therefore pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love, Which the dark night hath so discoverèd.
ROMEO	Lady, by yonder blessèd moon I vow, That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—
JULIET	O swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
ROMEO	What shall I swear by?
JULIET	Do not swear at all, Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, Which is the god of my idolatry, And I’ll believe thee.
ROMEO	If my heart’s dear love—
JULIET	Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract tonight. It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, Too like the lightning which doth cease to be Ere one can say it lightens. Sweet, good night. This bud of love by summer’s ripening breath May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. Good night, good night. As sweet repose and rest Come to thy heart as that within my breast.
ROMEO	O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
JULIET	What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?
ROMEO	Th’exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine.
JULIET	I gave thee mine before thou didst request it, And yet I would it were to give again.
ROMEO	Wouldst thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?
JULIET	But to be frank and give it thee again. And yet I wish but for the thing I have. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep. The more I give to thee The more I have, for both are infinite. Nurse calls within I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu.— Anon, good Nurse!—Sweet Montague, be true. Stay but a little; I will come again. Exit
ROMEO	O blessed, blessèd night! I am afeard, Being in night, all this is but a dream, Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.
(didascalia)	Enter Juliet aloft
JULIET	Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed. If that thy bent of love be honourable, Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow, By one that I’ll procure to come to thee, Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite, And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay, And follow thee, my lord, throughout the world.
(didascalia)	NURSE (within)
JULIET	Madam!
JULIET	I come, anon. (To Romeo) But if thou mean’st not well, I do beseech thee—
(didascalia)	NURSE (within) Madam!
JULIET	By and by I come.— To cease thy strife and leave me to my grief. Tomorrow will I send.
ROMEO	So thrive my soul—
JULIET	A thousand times good night. Exit
ROMEO	A thousand times the worse to want thy light. Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books, But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.
(didascalia)	He is going. Enter Juliet aloft again
JULIET	Hist, Romeo! Hist! O for a falconer’s voice To lure this tassel-gentle back again. Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud, Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies, And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine With repetition of my Romeo’s name. Romeo!
ROMEO	It is my soul that calls upon my name. How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears!
JULIET	Romeo!
ROMEO	My nyas?
JULIET	What o’clock tomorrow Shall I send to thee?
ROMEO	By the hour of nine.
JULIET	I will not fail; ’tis twenty year till then. I have forgot why I did call thee back.
ROMEO	Let me stand here till thou remember it.
JULIET	I shall forget, to have thee still stand there, Rememb’ring how I love thy company.
ROMEO	And I’ll still stay, to have thee still forget, Forgetting any other home but this.
JULIET	’Tis almost morning. I would have thee gone— And yet no farther than a wanton’s bird, That lets it hop a little from his hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, And with a silk thread plucks it back again, So loving-jealous of his liberty.
ROMEO	I would I were thy bird.
JULIET	Sweet, so would I. Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
(didascalia)	ROMEO
JULIET	Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast.
(didascalia)	Exit Juliet
JULIET	Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest. Hence will I to my ghostly sire’s close cell, His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell.
(didascalia)	Exit

Atto 2, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Friar Laurence, with a basket
FRIAR LAURENCE	The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, Chequ’ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light, And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels. Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye The day to cheer and night’s dank dew to dry, I must up-fill this osier cage of ours With baleful weeds and precious-juicèd 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 plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities, For naught 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. Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied, And vice sometime’s by action dignified.
(didascalia)	Enter Romeo
(didascalia)	Within the infant rind of this weak flower
FRIAR LAURENCE	Poison hath residence, and medicine power, For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. Two such opposed kings 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.
ROMEO	Good morrow, father.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Benedicite. 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 unbruisèd youth with unstuffed brain Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign. Therefore thy earliness doth me assure Thou art uproused with some distemp’rature; Or if not so, then here I hit it right: Our Romeo hath not been in bed tonight.
ROMEO	That last is true; the sweeter rest was mine.
FRIAR LAURENCE	God pardon sin!—Wast thou with Rosaline?
ROMEO	With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No, I have forgot that name and that name’s woe.
FRIAR LAURENCE	That’s my good son; but where hast thou been then?
ROMEO	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
(didascalia)	Within thy help and holy physic lies.
ROMEO	I bear no hatred, blessed man, for lo, My intercession likewise steads my foe.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift. Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.
ROMEO	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 today.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here! Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear, So soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. 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 yet ring in mine 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.
ROMEO	Thou chidd’st me oft for loving Rosaline.
FRIAR LAURENCE	For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.
ROMEO	And bad’st me bury love.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Not in a grave To lay one in, another out to have.
ROMEO	I pray thee, chide me not. Her I love now Doth grace for grace and love for love allow. The other did not so.
FRIAR LAURENCE	O, she knew well Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell. 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’ rancour to pure love.
ROMEO	O, let us hence! I stand on sudden haste.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast. Exeunt

Atto 2, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Benvolio and Mercutio
MERCUTIO	Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home tonight?
BENVOLIO	Not to his father’s. I spoke with his man.
MERCUTIO	Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, Torments him so that he will sure run mad.
BENVOLIO	Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, Hath sent a letter to his father’s house.
MERCUTIO	A challenge, on my life.
BENVOLIO	Romeo will answer it.
MERCUTIO	Any man that can write may answer a letter.
BENVOLIO	Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how he dares, being dared. is
MERCUTIO	Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead—stabbed with a white wench’s black eye, run through 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?
(didascalia)	BENVOLIO Why, what is Tybalt?
MERCUTIO	More than Prince of Cats. O, he’s the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing pricksong: keeps time, distance, and proportion. He rests his minim rests: one, two, and the third in your bosom; the very butcher of a silk button. A duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal passado, the puntoreverso, the hai.
BENVOLIO	The what?
MERCUTIO	The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting phantasims, these new tuners of accent! ‘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 ‘pardon-me’s’, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? O, their bones, their bones! Enter Romeo
BENVOLIO	Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo!
MERCUTIO	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 a kitchen wench—marry, she had a better love to berhyme her—Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy, Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, Thisbe a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signor Romeo, bonjour. There’s a French salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.
ROMEO	Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you? 45
MERCUTIO	The slip, sir, the slip. Can you not conceive ?
ROMEO	Pardon, good Mercutio. My business was great, and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy.
MERCUTIO	That’s as much as to say such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams.
ROMEO	Meaning to curtsy.
MERCUTIO	Thou hast most kindly hit it.
ROMEO	A most courteous exposition.
MERCUTIO	Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.
ROMEO	Pink for flower.
MERCUTIO	Right.
ROMEO	Why, then is my pump well flowered.
MERCUTIO	Sure wit, follow me this jest now till thou hast worn out thy pump, that when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain, after the wearing, solely singular.
ROMEO	O single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness!
MERCUTIO	Come between us, good Benvolio. My wits faints.
ROMEO	Switch and spurs, switch and spurs, or I’ll cry a match.
MERCUTIO	Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done, for thou hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than I am sure I have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the goose?
ROMEO	Thou wast never with me for anything when thou wast not there for the goose.
MERCUTIO	I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.
ROMEO	Nay, good goose, bite not.
MERCUTIO	Thy wit is very bitter sweeting, it is a most sharp sauce.
ROMEO	And is it not then well served in to a sweet goose?
MERCUTIO	O, here’s a wit of cheverel, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad.
ROMEO	I stretch it out for that word ‘broad’, which, added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.
MERCUTIO	Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo, now art thou what thou art by art as well as by nature, for this drivelling love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.
BENVOLIO	Stop there, stop there.
MERCUTIO	Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.
BENVOLIO	Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large. MERCUTIO O, thou art deceived, I would have made it short, for I was come to the whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy the argument no longer. Enter the Nurse, and Peter, her man
ROMEO	Here’s goodly gear.
(didascalia)	BENVOLIO A sail, a sail!
MERCUTIO	Two, two—a shirt and a smock.
NURSE	Peter.
PETER	Anon.
NURSE	My fan, Peter.
MERCUTIO	Good Peter, to hide her face, for her fan’s the fairer face.
NURSE	God ye good morrow, gentlemen.
MERCUTIO	God ye good e’en, fair gentlewoman.
NURSE	Is it good e’en?
MERCUTIO	’Tis no less, I tell ye: for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.
NURSE	Out upon you, what a man are you!
ROMEO	One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for himself to mar.
NURSE	By my troth, it is well said. ‘For himself to mar’, quoth a? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I may find the young Romeo?
ROMEO	I can tell you, but young Romeo will be older when you have found him than he was when you sought him. I am the youngest of that name, for fault of a worse.
NURSE	You say well.
MERCUTIO	Yea, is the worst well? Very well took, i’faith, wisely, wisely.
NURSE	(to Romeo) If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with you.
BENVOLIO	She will endite him to some supper.
MERCUTIO	A bawd, a bawd, a bawd. So ho!
ROMEO	What hast thou found?
MERCUTIO	No hare, sir, unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent.
(didascalia)	He walks by them and sings
MERCUTIO	An old hare hoar And an old hare hoar Is very good meat in Lent. But a hare that is hoar Is too much for a score When it hoars ere it be spent. Romeo, will you come to your father’s ? We’ll to dinner thither.
ROMEO	I will follow you.
(didascalia)	MERCUTIO Farewell, ancient lady. Farewell, sings ‘lady, lady, lady’. Exeunt Mercutio and Benvolio
NURSE	I pray you, sir, what saucy merchant was this that was so full of his ropery?
ROMEO	A gentleman, Nurse, that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.
NURSE	An a speak anything against me, I’ll take him down an a were lustier than he is, and twenty such jacks; an if I cannot, I’ll find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-jills, I am none of his skeans-mates. (To Peter) And thou must stand by, too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure.
PETER	I saw no man use you at his pleasure. If I had, my weapon should quickly have been out; I warrant you, I dare draw as soon as another man if I see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law on my side.
NURSE	Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every part about me quivers. Scurvy knave! (To Romeo) Pray you, sir, a word; and, as I told you, my young lady bid me enquire you out. What she bid me say I will keep to myself, but first let me tell ye if ye should lead her in a fool’s paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of behaviour, as they say, for the gentlewoman is young; and therefore if you should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.
ROMEO	Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I protest unto thee—
NURSE	Good heart, and i’faith I will tell her as much. Lord, Lord, she will be a joyful woman.
ROMEO	What wilt thou tell her, Nurse? Thou dost not mark me.
NURSE	I will tell her, sir, that you do protest; which as I take it is a gentlemanlike offer.
ROMEO	Bid her devise Some means to come to shrift this afternoon, And there she shall at Friar Laurence’ cell Be shrived and married. (Offering money) Here is for thy pains.
NURSE	No, truly, sir, not a penny.
ROMEO	Go to, I say, you shall.
(didascalia)	NURSE taking the money
ROMEO	This afternoon, sir. Well, she shall be there.
ROMEO	And stay, good Nurse, behind the abbey wall.
(didascalia)	Within this hour my man shall be with thee
ROMEO	And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair, Which to the high topgallant of my joy Must be my convoy in the secret night. Farewell. Be trusty, and I’ll quit thy pains. Farewell. Commend me to thy mistress.
NURSE	Now God in heaven bless thee! Hark you, sir.
ROMEO	What sayst thou, my dear Nurse?
NURSE	Is your man secret? Did you ne‘er hear say ‘Two may keep counsel, putting one away’ ?
ROMEO	I warrant thee my man’s as true as steel.
NURSE	Well, sir, my mistress is the sweetest lady. Lord, Lord, when ’twas a little prating thing— O, there is a nobleman in town, one Paris, That would fain lay knife aboard; but she, good soul, Had as lief see a toad, a very toad, As see him. I anger her sometimes, And tell her that Paris is the properer man; But I’ll warrant you, when I say so she looks As pale as any clout in the versal world. Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin Both with a letter?
ROMEO	Ay, Nurse, what of that? Both with an ‘R’.
NURSE	Ah, mocker—that’s the dog’s name. ’R’ is for the—no, I know it begins with some other letter, and she hath the prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good to hear it.
ROMEO	Commend me to thy lady.
NURSE	Ay, a thousand times. Peter!
PETER	Anon.
(didascalia)	NURSE giving Peter her fan Before, and apace.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Peter and Nurse at one door, Romeo at another door

Atto 2, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Juliet
JULIET	The clock struck nine when I did send the Nurse. In half an hour she promised to return. Perchance she cannot meet him. That’s not so. O, she is lame! Love’s heralds should be thoughts, Which ten times faster glides than the sun’s beams Driving back shadows over louring hills. Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw Love, And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings. Now is the sun upon the highmost hill Of this day’s journey, and from nine till twelve Is three long hours, yet she is not come. Had she affections and warm youthful blood She would be as swift in motion as a ball. My words would bandy her to my sweet love, And his to me. But old folks, many feign as they were dead— Unwieldy, slow, heavy, and pale as lead.
(didascalia)	Enter the Nurse and Peter
JULIET	O God, she comes! O honey Nurse, what news? Hast thou met with him ? Send thy man away.
NURSE	Peter, stay at the gate. Exit Peter
JULIET	Now, good sweet Nurse—O Lord, why look‘st thou sad ? Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily; If good, thou sham’st the music of sweet news By playing it to me with so sour a face.
NURSE	I am a-weary. Give me leave a while. Fie, how my bones ache. What a jaunce have I!
JULIET	I would thou hadst my bones and I thy news. Nay, come, I pray thee speak, good, good Nurse, speak.
NURSE	Jesu, what haste! Can you not stay a while? Do you not see that I am out of breath?
JULIET	How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath To say to me that thou art out of breath? The excuse that thou dost make in this delay Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse. Is thy news good or bad? Answer to that. Say either, and I’ll stay the circumstance. Let me be satisfied: is’t good or bad?
NURSE	Well, you have made a simple choice. You know not how to choose a man. Romeo? No, not he; though his face be better than any man‘s, yet his leg excels all men’s, and for a hand and a foot and a body, though they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare. He is not the flower of courtesy, but, I’ll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench. Serve God. What, have you dined at home?
JULIET	No, no. But all this did I know before. What says he of our marriage—what of that?
NURSE	Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I! It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. My back—
(didascalia)	Juliet rubs her back
NURSE	a’ t’other side—ah, my back, my back! Beshrew your heart for sending me about To catch my death with jauncing up and down.
JULIET	I’faith, I am sorry that thou art not well. Sweet, sweet, sweet Nurse, tell me, what says my love?
NURSE	Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, and, I warrant, a virtuous—where is your mother?
JULIET	Where is my mother? Why, she is within. Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest! ‘Your love says like an honest gentleman “Where is your mother?” ’
NURSE	O, God’s Lady dear! Are you so hot? Marry come up, I trow. Is this the poultice for my aching bones? Henceforward do your messages yourself.
JULIET	Here’s such a coil ! Come, what says Romeo?
NURSE	Have you got leave to go to shrift today?
JULIET	I have.
NURSE	Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence’ cell. There stays a husband to make you a wife. Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks. They’ll be in scarlet straight at any news. Hie you to church. I must another way, To fetch a ladder by the which your love Must climb a bird’s nest soon, when it is dark. I am the drudge, and toil in your delight, But you shall bear the burden soon at night. Go, I’ll to dinner. Hie you to the cell.
JULIET	Hie to high fortune! Honest Nurse, farewell.
(didascalia)	Exeunt severally

Atto 2, Scena 5

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Friar Laurence and Romeo
FRIAR LAURENCE	So smile the heavens upon this holy act That after-hours with sorrow chide us not!
ROMEO	Amen, amen. But come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight. Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare— It is enough I may but call her mine.
FRIAR LAURENCE	These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness, And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
(didascalia)	Enter Juliet Somewhat fast, and embraceth Romeo
FRIAR LAURENCE	Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot Will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint. A lover may bestride the gossamers That idles in the wanton summer air, And yet not fall, so light is vanity.
JULIET	Good even to my ghostly confessor.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.
JULIET	As much to him, else is his thanks too much.
ROMEO	Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy Be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour air, and let rich music’s tongue Unfold the imagined happiness that both Receive in either by this dear encounter.
JULIET	Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, Brags of his substance, not of ornament. They are but beggars that can count their worth, But my true love is grown to such excess I cannot sum up some of half my wealth.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Come, come with me, and we will make short work, For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone Till Holy Church incorporate two in one. Exeunt

Atto 3, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Mercutio with his page, Benvolio, and men
BENVOLIO	I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire. The day is hot, the Capels are abroad, And if we meet we shall not scape a brawl, For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
MERCUTIO	Thou art like one of these fellows that, when he enters the confines of a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table and says ‘God send me no need of thee’, and by the operation of the second cup, draws him on the drawer when indeed there is no need.
BENVOLIO	Am I like such a fellow?
MERCUTIO	Come, come, thou art as hot a jack in thy mood as any in Italy, and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved.
BENVOLIO	And what to?
MERCUTIO	Nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly, for one would kill the other. Thou—why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. What eye but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling. Thou hast quarrelled with a man for coughing in the street because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter; with another for tying his new shoes with old ribbon? And yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling!
BENVOLIO	An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy the fee-simple of my life for an hour and a quarter.
MERCUTIO	The fee simple? O, simple!
(didascalia)	Enter Tybalt, Petruccio, and others
BENVOLIO	By my head, here comes the Capulets.
MERCUTIO	By my heel, I care not.
TYBALT	(to Petruccio and the others) Follow me close, for I will speak to them. (To the Montagues) Gentlemen, good e’en. A word with one of you.
MERCUTIO	And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something: make it a word and a blow.
TYBALT	You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, an you will give me occasion.
MERCUTIO	Could you not take some occasion without giving ?
TYBALT	Mercutio, thou consort’st with Romeo.
(didascalia)	MERCUTIO ‘Consort’ ? What, dost thou make us minstrels? An thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords. touching his rapier Here’s my fiddlestick; here’s that shall make you dance. Zounds—‘Consort’!
BENVOLIO	We talk here in the public haunt of men. Either withdraw unto some private place, Or reason coldly of your grievances, Or else depart. Here all eyes gaze on us.
MERCUTIO	Men’s eyes were made to look, and let them gaze. I will not budge for no man’s pleasure, I.
(didascalia)	Enter Romeo
TYBALT	Well, peace be with you, sir. Here comes my man.
MERCUTIO	But I’ll be hanged, sir, if he wear your livery. Marry, go before to field, he’ll be your follower. Your worship in that sense may call him ‘man’.
TYBALT	Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford No better term than this: thou art a villain.
ROMEO	Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee Doth much excuse the appertaining rage To such a greeting. Villain am I none. Therefore, farewell. I see thou knowest me not.
TYBALT	Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries That thou hast done me. Therefore turn and draw.
ROMEO	I do protest I never injured thee, But love thee better than thou canst devise Till thou shalt know the reason of my love. And so, good Capulet—which name I tender As dearly as mine own—be satisfied.
(didascalia)	MERCUTIO drawing
ROMEO	O calm, dishonourable, vile submission! 1 Alla stoccado carries it away. Tybalt, you ratcatcher, come, will you walk?
TYBALT	What wouldst thou have with me?
MERCUTIO	Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives. That I mean to make bold withal, and, as you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest of the eight. Will you pluck your sword out of his pilcher by the ears? Make haste, lest mine be about your ears ere it be out.
TYBALT	(drawing) I am for you.
ROMEO	Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.
MERCUTIO	(to Tybalt) Come, sir, your passado. They fight
(didascalia)	ROMEO drawing
MERCUTIO	Draw, Benvolio. Beat down their weapons. Gentlemen, for shame forbear this outrage. Tybalt, Mercutio, the Prince expressly hath Forbid this bandying in Verona streets. Hold, Tybalt, good Mercutio.
(didascalia)	Romeo beats down their points and rushes between them. Tybalt under Romeo’s arm thrusts Mercutio in
(didascalia)	PETRUCCIO Away, Tybalt!
(didascalia)	Exeunt Tybalt, Petruccio, and their followers
MERCUTIO	I am hurt. A plague o’ both your houses. I am sped. Is he gone, and hath nothing?
BENVOLIO	What, art thou hurt?
MERCUTIO	Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, ’tis enough. Where is my page? Go, villain. Fetch a surgeon.
(didascalia)	Exit page
ROMEO	Courage, man. The hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO	No, ‘tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ’tis enough. ’Twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o’ both your houses! Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! A braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic! Why the devil came you between us ? I was hurt under your arm.
ROMEO	I thought all for the best.
MERCUTIO	Help me into some house, Benvolio, Or I shall faint. A plague o’ both your houses. They have made worms’ meat of me. I have it, and soundly, too. Your houses!
(didascalia)	Exeunt all but Romeo
ROMEO	This gentleman, the Prince’s near ally, My very friend, hath got this mortal hurt In my behalf, my reputation stained With Tybalt’s slander—Tybalt, that an hour Hath been my cousin! O sweet Juliet, Thy beauty hath made me effeminate, And in my temper softened valour’s steel.
(didascalia)	Enter Benvolio
BENVOLIO	O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio is dead! That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds, Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.
ROMEO	This day’s black fate on more days doth depend. This but begins the woe others must end.
(didascalia)	Enter Tybalt
BENVOLIO	Here comes the furious Tybalt back again.
ROMEO	He gad in triumph, and Mercutio slain ? Away to heaven, respective lenity, And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now. Now, Tybalt, take the ‘villain’ back again That late thou gav’st me, for Mercutio’s soul Is but a little way above our heads, Staying for thine to keep him company. Either thou, or I, or both must go with him.
TYBALT	Thou, wretched boy, that didst consort him here, Shalt with him hence.
ROMEO	This shall determine that. They fight. Tybalt is wounded. He falls and dies
BENVOLIO	Romeo, away, be gone. The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain. Stand not amazed. The Prince will doom thee death If thou art taken. Hence, be gone, away.
ROMEO	O, I am fortune’s fool!
BENVOLIO	Why dost thou stay?
(didascalia)	Exit Romeo
(didascalia)	Enter Citizens of the watchi
(didascalia)	CITIZEN 0F THE WATCH
BENVOLIO	Which way ran he that killed Mercutio? Tybalt, that murderer, which way ran he?
BENVOLIO	There lies that Tybalt.
(didascalia)	CITIZEN OF THE WATCH (to Tybalt) Up, sir, go with me.
BENVOLIO	I charge thee in the Prince’s name, obey.
(didascalia)	Enter the Prince, old Montague, Capulet, their Wives, and all
PRINCE	Where are the vile beginners of this fray?
BENVOLIO	O noble Prince, I can discover all The unlucky manage of this fatal brawl. There lies the man, slain by young Romeo, That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Tybalt, my cousin, O, my brother’s child! O Prince, O cousin, husband! O, the blood is spilled Of my dear kinsman ! Prince, as thou art true, For blood of ours shed blood of Montague! O cousin, cousin!
PRINCE	Benvolio, who began this fray?
BENVOLIO	Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo’s hand did slay. Romeo, that spoke him fair, bid him bethink How nice the quarrel was, and urged withal Your high displeasure. All this-utterèd With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bowed— Could not take truce with the unruly spleen Of Tybalt deaf to peace, but that he tilts With piercing steel at bold Mercutio’s breast, Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point, And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats Cold death aside, and with the other sends It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity Retorts it. Romeo, he cries aloud, ‘Hold, friends, friends, part!’ and swifter than his tongue His agent arm beats down their fatal points, And ’twixt them rushes, underneath whose arm An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled, But by and by comes back to Romeo, Who had but newly entertained revenge, And to’t they go like lightning; for ere I Could draw to part them was stout Tybalt slain, And as he fell did Romeo turn and fly. This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.
CAPULET’S WIFE	He is a kinsman to the Montague. Affection makes him false; he speaks not true. Some twenty of them fought in this black strife, And all those twenty could but kill one life. I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give. Romeo slew Tybalt; Romeo must not live.
PRINCE	Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio. Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?
(didascalia)	MONTAGUE
PRINCE	Not Romeo, Prince. He was Mercutio’s friend. His fault concludes but what the law should end, The life of Tybalt.
PRINCE	And for that offence Immediately we do exile him hence. I have an interest in your hate’s proceeding; My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding. But I’ll amerce you with so strong a fine That you shall all repent the loss of mine. I will be deaf to pleading and excuses. Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses. Therefore use none. Let Romeo hence in haste, Else, when he is found, that hour is his last. Bear hence this body, and attend our will. Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.
(didascalia)	Exeunt with the body

Atto 3, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Juliet
JULIET	Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus’ lodging. Such a waggoner As Phaeton would whip you to the west And bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaways’ eyes may wink, and Romeo Leap to these arms untalked of and unseen. Lovers can see to do their amorous rites By their own beauties; or, if love be blind, It best agrees with night. Come, civil night, Thou sober-suited matron all in black, And learn me how to lose a winning match Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods. Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle till strange love grown bold Think true love acted simple modesty. Come night, come Romeo; come, thou day in night, For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back. Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night, Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. O, I have bought the mansion of a love But not possessed it, and though I am sold, Not yet enjoyed. So tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them.
(didascalia)	Enter the Nurse, wringing her hands, with the ladder of cords in her lap
JULIET	O, here comes my Nurse, And she brings news, and every tongue that speaks But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence. Now, Nurse, what news ? What, hast thou there The cords that Romeo bid thee fetch?
(didascalia)	NURSE putting down the cords Ay, ay, the cords.
JULIET	Ay me, what news? Why dost thou wring thy hands?
NURSE	Ah, welladay! He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead! We are undone, lady, we are undone. Alack the day, he’s gone, he’s killed, he’s dead!
JULIET	Can heaven be so envious?
NURSE	Romeo can, Though heaven cannot. O Romeo, Romeo, Who ever would have thought it Romeo?
JULIET	What devil art thou that dost torment me thus? This torture should be roared in dismal hell. Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but ‘Ay’, And that bare vowel ‘I’ shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I if there be such an ‘Ay’, Or those eyes shut that makes thee answer ‘Ay’. If he be slain, say ‘Ay’; or if not, ‘No’. Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.
NURSE	I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, God save the mark, here on his manly breast— A piteous corpse, a bloody, piteous corpse— Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaubed in blood, All in gore blood; I swooned at the sight.
JULIET	O, break, my heart, poor bankrupt, break at once! To prison, eyes; ne’er look on liberty. Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here, And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!
NURSE	O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had! O courteous Tybalt, honest gentleman, That ever I should live to see thee dead!
JULIET	What storm is this that blows so contrary? Is Romeo slaughtered, and is Tybalt dead? My dearest cousin and my dearer lord? Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom, For who is living if those two are gone?
NURSE	Tybalt is gone and Romeo banished. Romeo that killed him—he is banished.
JULIET	O God, did Romeo’s hand shed Tybalt’s blood?
(didascalia)	NURSE
JULIET	It did, it did, alas the day, it did.
(didascalia)	JULIET
JULIET	O serpent heart hid with a flow‘ring face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical! Dove-feathered raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despisèd substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem’st— A damnèd saint, an honourable villain. O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace!
NURSE	There’s no trust, no faith, no honesty in men; All perjured, all forsworn, all naught, dissemblers all. Ah, where’s my man? Give me some aqua vitae. These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old. Shame come to Romeo!
JULIET	Blistered be thy tongue For such a wish! He was not born to shame. Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit, For ’tis a throne where honour may be crowned Sole monarch of the universal earth. O, what a beast was I to chide at him!
NURSE	Will you speak well of him that killed your cousin?
JULIET	Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it? But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin? That villain cousin would have killed my husband. Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring! Your tributary drops belong to woe, Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy. My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain; And Tybalt’s dead, that would have slain my husband. All this is comfort. Wherefore weep I then? Some word there was, worser than Tybalt’s death, That murdered me. I would forget it fain, But O, it presses to my memory Like damned guilty deeds to sinners’ minds! ‘Tybalt is dead, and Romeo banished.’ That ‘banishèd’, that one word ‘banishèd’ Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt’s death 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 modern lamentation might have moved? But with a rearward following Tybalt’s death, ‘Romeo is banishèd‘-to speak that word Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, All slain, all dead. ‘Romeo is banishèd’— 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 corpse. Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.
JULIET	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	(taking up the cords) 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.
JULIET	(giving her a ring) O, find him! Give this ring to my true knight, And bid him come to take his last farewell.
(didascalia)	Exeunt severally

Atto 3, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Friar Laurence
FRIAR LAURENCE	Romeo, come forth, come forth, thou fear-full man. Affliction is enamoured of thy parts, And thou art wedded to calamity.
(didascalia)	Enter Romeo
ROMEO	Father, what news? What is the Prince’s doom? What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand That I yet know not?
FRIAR LAURENCE	Too familiar Is my dear son with such sour company. I bring thee tidings of the Prince’s doom.
ROMEO	What less than doomsday is the Prince’s doom?
FRIAR LAURENCE	A gentler judgement vanished from his lips: Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.
ROMEO	Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say ‘death’, For exile hath more terror in his look, Much more than death. Do not say ‘banishment’.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Hence from Verona art thou banished. Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.
ROMEO	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 ‘banishèd’ Is death mistermed. Calling death ‘banishèd’ Thou cutt‘st my head off with a golden axe, And smil’st upon the stroke that murders me.
FRIAR LAURENCE	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.
ROMEO	‘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, but I from this must fly. They are free men, but I am banished. And sayst 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 ‘banishèd’ to kill me—‘banishèd’? O friar, the damned use that word in hell. Howling attends 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 ‘banishèd’?
FRIAR LAURENCE	Thou fond mad man, hear me a little speak.
ROMEO	O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.
FRIAR LAURENCE	I’ll give thee armour to keep off that word— Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy, To comfort thee though thou art banished.
ROMEO	Yet ‘banishèd’? 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.
FRIAR LAURENCE	O, then I see that madmen have no ears.
ROMEO	How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?
FRIAR LAURENCE	Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.
ROMEO	Thou canst not speak of that 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 mightst thou tear thy hair, And fall upon the ground, as I do now, He falls upon the ground Taking the measure of an unmade grave. Knock within
FRIAR LAURENCE	Arise, one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.
ROMEO	Not I, unless the breath of heartsick groans Mist-like enfold me from the search of eyes.
(didascalia)	Knocking within
FRIAR LAURENCE	Hark, how they knock!—Who’s there?—Romeo, arise. Thou wilt be taken.—Stay a white.—Stand up. Still knock within Run to my study.—By and by!—God’s will, What simpleness is this? Knock within I come, I come. Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? What’s your will?
NURSE	(within) Let me come in, and you shall know my errand. I come from Lady Juliet.
(didascalia)	FRIAR LAURENCE opening the door Welcome then.
(didascalia)	Enter the Nurse
NURSE	O holy friar, O tell me, holy friar, Where is my lady’s lord? Where’s Romeo?
FRIAR LAURENCE	There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.
NURSE	O, he is even in my mistress’ case, Just in her case! O woeful sympathy, Piteous predicament! Even so lies she, Blubb’ring and weeping, weeping and blubb’ring. (To Romeo) 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?
ROMEO	(rising) Nurse.
NURSE	Ah sir, ah sir, death’s the end of all.
ROMEO	Spak’st thou of Juliet? How is it with her? Doth not she 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.
ROMEO	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.
(didascalia)	He offers to stab himself, and the Nurse snatches the dagger away
FRIAR LAURENCE	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, And 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 that in thy life lives 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 a 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, Digressing from the valour of a man; Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury, Killing that love which thou hast vowed to cherish; Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, Misshapen in the conduct of them both, Like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask Is set afire by thine own ignorance, And thou dismembered with thine own defence. What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive, For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead: There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee, But thou slewest Tybalt: there art thou happy. The law that threatened death becomes thy friend, And turns it to exile: there art thou happy. A pack of blessings light upon thy back, Happiness courts thee in her best array, But, like a mishavèd and sullen wench, Thou pout’st upon thy fortune and thy love. Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable. Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed. Ascend her chamber; hence and comfort her. But look thou stay not till the watch be set, For then thou canst not pass to Mantua, Where thou shalt live till we can find a time To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back With twenty hundred thousand times more joy Than thou went’st forth in lamentation. Go before, Nurse. Commend me to thy lady, And bid her hasten all the house to bed, Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto. Romeo is coming.
NURSE	O Lord, I could have stayed here all the night To hear good counsel! O, what learning is! My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come.
ROMEO	Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.
(didascalia)	Nurse offers to go in, and turns again
NURSE	(giving the ring) Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir. Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.
ROMEO	How well my comfort is revived by this. Exit Nurse
FRIAR LAURENCE	Go hence, good night, and here stands all your state. Either be gone before the watch be set, Or by the break of day disguised from hence. Sojourn in Mantua. I’ll find out your man, And he shall signify from time to time Every good hap to you that chances here. Give me thy hand. ’Tis late. Farewell. Good night.
ROMEO	But that a joy past joy calls out on me, It were a grief so brief to part with thee.
(didascalia)	Farewell. Exeunt severally

Atto 3, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet, his Wife, and Paris
CAPULET	Things have fall’n out, sir, so unluckily That we have had no time to move our daughter. Look you, she loved her kinsman Tybalt dearly, And so did I. Well, we were born to die. ’Tis very late. She’ll not come down tonight. I promise you, but for your company I would have been abed an hour ago.
PARIS	These times of woe afford no times to woo. Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter.
CAPULET’S WIFE	I will, and know her mind early tomorrow. Tonight she’s mewed up to her heaviness.
(didascalia)	Paris offers to go in, and Capulet calls him again
CAPULET	Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender Of my child’s love. I think she will be ruled In all respects by me. Nay, more, I doubt it not. Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed. Acquaint her here of my son Paris’ love, And bid her-mark you me?—on Wednesday next— But soft—what day is this?
PARIS	Monday, my lord.
CAPULET	Monday. Ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon. O’ Thursday let it be. 0’ Thursday, tell her, She shall be married to this noble earl. Will you be ready? Do you like this haste? We’ll keep no great ado—a friend or two. For hark you, Tybalt being slain so late, It may be thought we held him carelessly, Being our kinsman, if we revel much. Therefore we’ll have some half a dozen friends, And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?
PARIS	My lord, I would that Thursday were tomorrow.
CAPULET	Well, get you gone. O’ Thursday be it, then. (To his Wife) Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed. Prepare her, wife, against this wedding day.— Farewell, my lord.—Light to my chamber, ho!— Afore me, it is so very late that we May call it early by and by. Good night.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Capulet and his wife at one door, Paris at another door

Atto 3, Scena 5

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Romeo and Juliet aloft with the ladder of cords
JULIET	Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fear-full hollow of thine ear. Nightly she sings on yon pom’granate tree. Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
ROMEO	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.
JULIET	Yon light is not daylight; I know it, I. It is some meteor that the sun exhaled To be to thee this night a torchbearer And light thee on thy way to Mantua. Therefore stay yet. Thou need’st not to be gone.
ROMEO	Let me be ta‘en, let me be put to death. I am content, so thou wilt have it so. I’ll say yon grey is not the morning’s eye, ’Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow; Nor that is not the lark whose notes do beat The vaulty heaven so high above our heads. I have more care 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.
JULIET	It is, it is. Hie hence, be gone, away. It is the lark that sings so out of tune, Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps. Some say the lark makes sweet division; This doth not so, for she divideth us. Some say the lark and loathed toad changed eyes. O, now I would they had changed voices, too, Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray, Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day. O, now be gone! More light and light it grows.
ROMEO	More light and light, more dark and dark our woes.
(didascalia)	Enter the Nurse hastily
NURSE	Madam.
JULIET	Nurse.
NURSE	Your lady mother is coming to your chamber. The day is broke; be wary, look about. Exit
JULIET	Then, window, let day in, and let life out.
ROMEO	Farewell, farewell! One kiss, and I’ll descend.
(didascalia)	He lets down the ladder of cords and goes down
JULIET	Art thou gone so, love, lord, my husband, friend? I must hear from thee every day in the hour, For in a minute there are many days. O, by this count I shall be much in years Ere I again behold my Romeo.
ROMEO	Farewell. I will omit no opportunity That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
JULIET	O, think’st thou we shall ever meet again?
ROMEO	I doubt it not, and all these woes shall serve For sweet discourses in our times to come.
(didascalia)	JULIET
ROMEO	O God, I have an ill-divining soul! Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.
ROMEO	And trust me, love, in my eye so do you. Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu. Exit
(didascalia)	JULIET pulling up the ladder and weeping
ROMEO	O fortune, fortune, all men call thee fickle. If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him That is renowned for faith? Be fickle, fortune, For then I hope thou wilt not keep him long, But send him back.
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet’s Wife below
CAPULET’S WIFE	Ho, daughter, are you up?
JULIET	Who is’t that calls? It is my lady mother. Is she not down so late, or up so early? What unaccustomed cause procures her hither?
(didascalia)	She goes down and enters below
CAPULET’S WIFE	Why, how now, Juliet?
JULIET	Madam, I am not well.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death? What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears? An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live, Therefore have done. Some grief shows much of love, But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
JULIET	Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
CAPULET’S WIFE	So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend Which you so weep for.
JULIET	Feeling so the loss, I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Well, girl, thou weep’st not so much for his death As that the villain lives which slaughtered him.
JULIET	What villain, madam?
CAPULET’S WIFE	That same villain Romeo.
JULIET	(aside) Villain and he be many miles asunder. (To her mother) God pardon him—I do, with all my heart, And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.
CAPULET’S WIFE	That is because the traitor murderer lives.
JULIET	Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands. Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death.
CAPULET’S WIFE	We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not. Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua, Where that same banished runagate doth live, Shall give him such an unaccustomed dram That he shall soon keep Tybalt company; And then I hope thou wilt be satisfied.
JULIET	Indeed, I never shall be satisfied With Romeo till I behold him, dead, Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vexed. Madam, if you could find out but a man To bear a poison, I would temper it That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof, Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors To hear him named and cannot come to him To wreak the love I bore my cousin Upon his body that hath slaughtered him!
CAPULET’S WIFE	Find thou the means, and I’ll find such a man. But now I’ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.
JULIET	And joy comes well in such a needy time. What are they, I beseech your ladyship?
CAPULET’S WIFE	Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child; One who, to put thee from thy heaviness, Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy That thou expect’st not, nor I looked not for.
JULIET	Madam, in happy time. What day is that?
CAPULET’S WIFE	Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn The gallant, young, and noble gentleman The County Paris at Saint Peter’s Church Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.
JULIET	Now, by Saint Peter’s Church, and Peter too, He shall not make me there a joyful bride. I wonder at this haste, that I must wed Ere he that should be husband comes to woo. I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam, I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear It shall be Romeo—whom you know I hate— Rather than Paris. These are news indeed.
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet and the Nurse
CAPULET’S WIFE	Here comes your father. Tell him so yourself, And see how he will take it at your hands.
CAPULET	When the sun sets, the earth doth drizzle dew, But for the sunset of my brother’s son It rains downright. How now, a conduit, girl? What, still in tears? Evermore show‘ring? In one little body Thou counterfeit’st a barque, a sea, a wind, For still thy eyes—which I may call the sea— Do ebb and flow with tears. The barque thy body is, Sailing in this salt flood; the winds thy sighs, Who, raging with thy tears and they with them, Without a sudden calm will overset Thy tempest-tossed body.—How now, wife? Have you delivered to her our decree?
CAPULET’S WIFE	Ay, sir, but she will none, she gives you thanks. I would the fool were married to her grave.
CAPULET	Soft, take me with you, take me with you, wife. How, will she none? Doth she not give us thanks? Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blest, Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought So worthy a gentleman to be her bride?
JULIET	Not proud you have, but thankful that you have. Proud can I never be of what I hate, But thankful even for hate that is meant love.
CAPULET	How, how, how, how—chopped logic? What is this? ‘Proud’, and ‘I thank you’, and ’I thank you not’, And yet ‘not proud’ ? Mistress minion, you, Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds, But fettle your fine joints ’gainst Thursday next To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church, Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither. Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage, You tallow-face!
CAPULET’S WIFE	Fie, fie, what, are you mad?
JULIET	(kneeling) Good father, I beseech you on my knees, Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
CAPULET	Hang thee, young baggage, disobedient wretch! I tell thee what: get thee to church o’ Thursday, Or never after look me in the face. Speak not, reply not, do not answer me.
(didascalia)	Juliet rises
CAPULET	My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest That God had lent us but this only child, But now I see this one is one too much, And that we have a curse in having her. Out on her, hilding!
NURSE	God in heaven bless her! You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.
CAPULET	And why, my lady Wisdom? Hold your tongue, Good Prudence. Smatter with your gossips, go!
NURSE	I speak no treason.
(didascalia)	CAPULET O, God-i’-good-e’en!
(didascalia)	NURSE
NURSE	May not one speak?
CAPULET	Peace, you mumbling fool, Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl, For here we need it not.
CAPULET’S WIFE	You are too hot.
CAPULET	God’s bread, it makes me mad. Day, night; work, play; Alone, in company, still my care hath been To have her matched; and having now provided A gentleman of noble parentage, Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly lined, Stuffed, as they say, with honourable parts, Proportioned as one’s thought would wish a man— And then to have a wretched puling fool, A whining maumet, in her fortune’s tender, To answer ‘I’ll not wed, I cannot love; I am too young, I pray you pardon me’! But an you will not wed, I’ll pardon you! Graze where you will, you shall not house with me. Look to‘t, think on’t. I do not use to jest. Thursday is near. Lay hand on heart. Advise. An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend. An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, For, by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee, Nor what is mine shall never do thee good. Trust to’t. Bethink you. I’ll not be forsworn. Exit
JULIET	Is there no pity sitting in the clouds That sees into the bottom of my grief’ O sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for a month, a week; Or if you do not, make the bridal bed In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word. Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee. Exit
JULIET	O, God—ONurse, how shall this be prevented? My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven. How shall that faith return again to earth Unless that husband send it me from heaven By leaving earth? Comfort me, counsel me. Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems Upon so soft a subject as myself! What sayst thou? Hast thou not a word of joy? Some comfort, Nurse.
NURSE	Faith, here it is: Romeo Is banished, and all the world to nothing That he dares ne‘er come back to challenge you, Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth. Then, since the case so stands as now it doth, I think it best you married with the County. O, he’s a lovely gentleman! Romeo’s a dishclout to him. An eagle, madam, Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart, I think you are happy in this second match, For it excels your first; or if it did not, Your first is dead, or ’twere as good he were As living hence and you no use of him.
JULIET	Speak’st thou from thy heart?
NURSE	And from my soul, too, else beshrew them both.
JULIET	Amen.
NURSE	What?
JULIET	Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much. Go in; and tell my lady I am gone, Having displeased my father, to Laurence’ cell To make confession and to be absolved.
(didascalia)	Marry, I will; and this is wisely done. Exit
JULIET	(watching her go) Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend! Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn, Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue Which she hath praised him with above compare So many thousand times? Go, counsellor! Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. I’ll to the friar, to know his remedy. If all else fail, myself have power to die. Exit

Atto 4, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Friar Laurence and Paris
FRIAR LAURENCE	On Thursday, sir? The time is very short.
PARIS	My father Capulet will have it so, And I am nothing slow to slack his haste.
FRIAR LAURENCE	You say you do not know the lady’s mind? Uneven is the course. I like it not.
PARIS	Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt’s death, And therefore have I little talked of love, For Venus smiles not in a house of tears. Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous That she do give her sorrow so much sway, And in his wisdom hastes our marriage To stop the inundation of her tears, Which, too much minded by herself alone, May be put from her by society. Now do you know the reason of this haste.
FRIAR LAURENCE	(aside) I would I knew not why it should be slowed.—
(didascalia)	Enter Juliet
FRIAR LAURENCE	Look, sir, here comes the lady toward my cell.
PARIS	Happily met, my lady and my wife.
JULIET	That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.
PARIS	That ’may be’ must be, love, on Thursday next.
JULIET	What must be shall be.
FRIAR LAURENCE	That’s a certain text.
PARIS	Come you to make confession to this father?
JULIET	To answer that, I should confess to you.
PARIS	Do not deny to him that you love me.
JULIET	I will confess to you that I love him.
PARIS	So will ye, I am sure, that you love me.
JULIET	If I do so, it will be of more price, Being spoke behind your back, than to your face.
PARIS	Poor soul, thy face is much abused with tears.
JULIET	The tears have got small victory by that, For it was bad enough before their spite.
PARIS	Thou wrong’st it more than tears with that report.
JULIET	That is no slander, sir, which is a truth, And what I spake, I spake it to my face.
PARIS	Thy face is mine, and thou hast slandered it.
JULIET	It may be so, for it is not mine own.— Are you at leisure, holy father, now, Or shall I come to you at evening mass?
FRIAR LAURENCE	My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now. My lord, we must entreat the time alone.
PARIS	God shield I should disturb devotion!— Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye. (Kissing her) Till then, adieu, and keep this holy kiss.
(didascalia)	Exit
JULIET	O, shut the door, and when thou hast done so, Come weep with me, past hope, past cure, past help!
FRIAR LAURENCE	O Juliet, I already know thy grief. It strains me past the compass of my wits. I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it, On Thursday next be married to this County.
JULIET	Tell me not, friar, that thou hear’st of this, Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it. If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help, Do thou but call my resolution wise, She draws a knife And with this knife I’ll help it presently. God joined my heart and Romeo‘s, thou our hands, And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo’s sealed, Shall be the label to another deed, Or my true heart with treacherous revolt Turn to another, this shall slay them both. Therefore, out of thy long-experienced time, Give me some present counsel; or, behold, ’Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that Which the commission of thy years and art Could to no issue of true honour bring. Be not so long to speak. I long to die If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Hold, daughter, I do spy a kind of hope Which craves as desperate an execution As that is desperate which we would prevent. If, rather than to marry County Paris, Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself, Then is it likely thou wilt undertake A thing like death to chide away this shame, That cop‘st with death himself to scape from it; And, if thou dar’st, I’ll give thee remedy.
JULIET	O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of any tower, Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk Where serpents are. Chain me with roaring bears, Or hide me nightly in a charnel house, O’ercovered 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 tomb— Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble— And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstained wife to my sweet love.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Hold, then; go home, be merry, give consent To marry Paris. Wednesday is tomorrow. Tomorrow night look that thou lie alone. Let not the Nurse lie with thee in thy chamber. Take thou this vial, being then in bed, And this distilling liquor drink thou off, When presently through all thy veins shall run A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse Shall keep his native progress, but surcease. No warmth, no breath shall testify thou livest. The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade To wanny ashes, thy eyes’ windows fall Like death when he shuts up the day of life. Each part, deprived of supple government, Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death; And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death Thou shalt continue two-and-forty hours, And then awake as from a pleasant sleep. Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead. Then, as the manner of our country is, In thy best robes, uncovered on the bier Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault 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 shame, If no inconstant toy nor womanish fear Abate thy valour in the acting it.
JULIET	Give me, give me O, tell not me of fear!
FRIAR LAURENCE	(giving her the vial) Hold, get you gone. Be strong and prosperous In this resolve. I’ll send a friar with speed To Mantua with my letters to thy lord.
JULIET	Love give me strength, and strength shall help afford. Farewell, dear father. Exeunt [severally]

Atto 4, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet, his Wife, the Nurse, and two Servingmen
CAPULET	(giving a Servingman a paper) So many guests invite as here are writ.
(didascalia)	Exit Servingman
CAPULET	(To the other Servingman) Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.
SERVINGMAN	You shall have none ill, sir, for I’ll try if they can lick their fingers.
CAPULET	How canst thou try them so?
SERVINGMAN	Marry, sir, ’tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers, therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me.
(didascalia)	CAPULET Go, be gone. Exit Servingman
SERVINGMAN	We shall be much unfurnished for this time. (To the Nurse) What, is my daughter gone to Friar Laurence?
NURSE	Ay, forsooth.
CAPULET	Well, he may chance to do some good on her. A peevish, self-willed harlotry it is.
(didascalia)	Enter Juliet
NURSE	See where she comes from shrift with merry look.
CAPULET	(to Juliet) How now, my headstrong, where have you been gadding ?
JULIET	Where I have learned me to repent the sin Of disobedient opposition To you and your behests, and am enjoined By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here To beg your pardon. (Kneeling) Pardon, I beseech you. Henceforward I am ever ruled by you.
(didascalia)	CAPULET to the Nurse
JULIET	Send for the County; go tell him of this. I’ll have this knot knit up tomorrow morning.
JULIET	I met the youthful lord at Laurence’ cell, And gave him what becoming love I might, Not stepping o’er the bounds of modesty.
CAPULET	Why, I am glad on’t. This is well. Stand up. Juliet rises This is as’t should be. Let me see the County.
(didascalia)	To Nurse Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.
CAPULET	Now, afore God, this reverend holy friar, All our whole city is much bound to him.
JULIET	Nurse, will you go with me into my closet To help me sort such needful ornaments As you think fit to furnish me tomorrow?
CAPULET’S WIFE	No, not till Thursday. There is time enough.
CAPULET	Go, Nurse, go with her. We’ll to church tomorrow.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Juliet and Nurse
CAPULET’S WIFE	We shall be short in our provision. ’Tis now near night.
CAPULET	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 tonight. 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 up him Against tomorrow. My heart is wondrous light, Since this same wayward girl is so reclaimed.
(didascalia)	Exeunt severally

Atto 4, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Juliet and the Nurse with garments
JULIET	Ay, those attires are best. But, gentle Nurse, I pray thee leave me to myself tonight, For I have need of many orisons To move the heavens to smile upon my state, Which—well thou knowest—is cross and full of sin.
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet’s Wife
CAPULET’S WIFE	What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help?
JULIET	No, madam, we have culled such necessaries As are behoveful for our state tomorrow. 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.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Good night. Get thee to bed, and rest, for thou hast need.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Capulet’s Wife and Nurse
JULIET	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?
(didascalia)	She opens curtains, behind which is seen her bed
JULIET	My dismal scene I needs must act alone. Come, vial. What if this mixture do not work at all? Shall I be married then tomorrow morning? No, no, this shall forbid it. Lie thou there. She lays down a knife What if it be a poison which the friar Subtly hath ministered to have me dead, Lest in this marriage he should be dishonoured 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. 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 horrible conceit of death and night, Together with the terror of the place— As in a vault, an ancient receptacle Where for this many hundred years the bones Of all my buried ancestors are packed; 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, Environèd 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 desp’rate 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, Romeo, Romeo! Here’s drink. I drink to thee.
(didascalia)	She drinks from the vial and falls upon the bed, pulling closed the curtains

Atto 4, Scena 4

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet’s Wife, and the Nurse With herbs
CAPULET’S WIFE	Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, Nurse.
NURSE	They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet
CAPULET	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.
NURSE	Go, you cot-quean, go. Get you to bed. Faith, you’ll be sick tomorrow For this night’s watching.
CAPULET	No, not a whit. What, I have watched ere now All night for lesser cause, and ne’er been sick.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time, But I will watch you from such watching now.
(didascalia)	Exeunt Capulet’s Wife and Nurse
CAPULET	A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!
(didascalia)	Enter three or four Servingmen, with spits and logs and baskets
CAPULET	Now, fellow, what is there?
FIRST SERVINGMAN	Things for the cook, sir, but I know not what.
CAPULET	Make haste, make haste.
(didascalia)	Exit First Servingman and one or two others
CAPULET	Sirrah, fetch drier logs. Call Peter. He will show thee where they are.
SECOND SERVINGMAN	I have a head, sir, that will find out logs And never trouble Peter for the matter.
CAPULET	Mass, and well said! A merry whoreson, ha! Thou shalt be loggerhead. Exit Second Servingman Good faith, ’tis day. The County will be here with music straight, For so he said he would.
(didascalia)	Music plays within
CAPULET	I hear him near. Nurse! Wife! What ho, what, Nurse, I say!
(didascalia)	Enter the Nurse
CAPULET	Go waken Juliet. Go and trim her up. I’ll go and chat with Paris. Hie, make haste, Make haste, the bridegroom he is come already. Make haste, I say. Exit
NURSE	Mistress, what, mistress! Juliet! Fast, I warrant her, she. Why, lamb, why, lady! Fie, you slug-abed! Why, love, I say, madam, sweetheart, why, bride! What, not a word? You take your pennyworths now. Sleep for a week, for the next night, I warrant, The County Paris hath set up his rest That you shall rest but little. God forgive me! Marry, and amen. How sound is she asleep! I needs must wake her. Madam, madam, madam! Ay, let the County take you in your bed. He’ll fright you up, i’faith. Will it not be?
(didascalia)	She draws back the curtains
NURSE	What, dressed and in your clothes, and down again? I must needs wake you. Lady, lady, lady! Alas, alas! Help, help! My lady’s dead. O welladay, that ever I was born! Some aqua-vitae, ho! My lord, my lady!
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet’s Wife
CAPULET’S WIFE	What noise is here?
NURSE	O lamentable day!
CAPULET’S WIFE	What is the matter?
NURSE	Look, look. O heavy day!
CAPULET’S WIFE	O me, O me, my child, my only life! Revive, look up, or I will die with thee. Help, help, call help!
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet
CAPULET	For shame, bring Juliet forth. Her lord is come.
NURSE	She’s dead, deceased. She’s dead, alack the day!
CAPULET’S WIFE	Alack the day, she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead!
CAPULET	Ha, let me see her! Out, alas, she’s cold. 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.
NURSE	O lamentable day!
CAPULET’S WIFE	O woeful time!
CAPULET	Death, that hath ta’en her hence to make me wail, Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak.
(didascalia)	Enter Friar Laurence and Paris, with Musicians
FRIAR LAURENCE	Come, is the bride ready to go to church?
CAPULET	Ready to go, but never to return. (To Paris) O son, the night before thy wedding day Hath death lain with thy wife. See, there she lies, Flower as she was, deflowered by him. Death is my son-in-law, death is my heir. My daughter he hath wedded. I will die, And leave him all. Life, living, all is death’s.
(didascalia)	Paris, Capulet and his Wife, and the Nurse all at once wring their hands and cry out together:
PARIS	Have I thought long to see this morning’s face, And doth it give me such a sight as this? Beguiled, divorced, wronged, spited, slain! Most detestable death, by thee beguiled, By cruel, cruel thee quite overthrown. O love, O life: not life, but love in death.
CAPULET’S WIFE	Accursed, unhappy, wretched, hateful day! Most miserable hour that e’er time saw In lasting labour of his pilgrimage! But one, poor one, one poor and loving child, But one thing to rejoice and solace in, And cruel death hath catched it from my sight!
NURSE	O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day! Most lamentable day! Most woeful day That ever, ever, I did yet behold! O day, O day, O day, O hateful day, Never was seen so black a day as this I O woeful day, O woeful day! 85
CAPULET	Despised, distressed, hated, martyred, killed! Uncomfortable time, why cam’st thou now To murder, murder our solemnity? O child, O child, my soul and not my child! Dead art thou, alack, my child is dead, And with my child my joys are buried.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Peace, ho, for shame! Confusion’s cure lives not In these confusions. Heaven and yourself Had part in this fair maid. Now heaven hath all, And all the better is it for the maid. Your part in her you could not keep from death, But heaven keeps his part in eternal life. The most you sought was her promotion, For ’twas your heaven she should be advanced, And weep ye now, seeing she is advanced Above the clouds as high as heaven itself? O, in this love you love your child so ill That you run mad, seeing that she is well. She’s not well married that lives married long, But she’s best married that dies married young. Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary On this fair corpse, and, as the custom is, All in her best array bear her to church; For though fond nature bids us all lament, Yet nature’s tears are reason’s merriment.
CAPULET	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 corpse, And all things change them to the contrary.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Sir, go you in; and madam, go with him, And go, Sir Paris. Everyone prepare To follow this fair corpse unto her grave. The heavens do lour upon you for some ill. Move them no more by crossing their high will.
(didascalia)	They cast rosemary on Juliet, and shut the curtains. Exeunt all but the Nurse and Musicians
(didascalia)	FIRST MUSICIAN Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone.
NURSE	Honest good fellows, ah, put up, put up, For well you know this is a pitiful case.
(didascalia)	FIRST MUSICIAN
NURSE	Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.
(didascalia)	Exit Nurse Enter Peter
PETER	Musicians, O, musicians! ‘Heart’s ease’, ‘Heart’s ease’; O,an you will have me live, play ‘Heart’s ease’.
(didascalia)	FIRST MUSICIAN Why ‘Heart’s ease’?
PETER	O, musicians, because my heart itself plays ‘My heart is full of woe’. O, play me some merry dump to comfort me.
(didascalia)	FIRST MUSICIAN Not a dump, we. ’Tis no time to play now.
PETER	You will not then?
FIRST MUSICIAN	No.
PETER	I will then give it you soundly.
FIRST MUSICIAN	What will you give us?
PETER	No money, on my faith, but the gleek. I will give you the minstrel.
FIRST MUSICIAN	Then will I give you the serving-creature.
PETER	(drawing his dagger) Then will I lay the serving-creature’s dagger on your pate. I will carry no crochets. I’ll re you, I’ll fa you. Do you note me?
FIRST MUSICIAN	An you re us and fa us, you note us.
SECOND MUSICIAN	Pray you, put up your dagger and put out your wit.
(didascalia)	PETER Then have at you with my wit. I will dry-beat you with an iron wit, and put up my iron dagger. Answer me like men.
(didascalia)	Sings
SECOND MUSICIAN	When griping grief the heart doth wound, And doleful dumps the mind oppress, Then music with her silver sound— Why ‘silver sound’, why ‘music with her silver sound’? What say you, Matthew Minikin?
FIRST MUSICIAN	Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound.
PETER	Prates! What say you, Hugh Rebec?
SECOND MUSICIAN	I say ’silver sound’ because musicians sound for silver.
PETER	Prates too! What say you, Simon Soundpost?
THIRD MUSICIAN	Faith, I know not what to say.
PETER	O, I cry you mercy, you are the singer. I will say for you. It is ’music with her silver sound’ because musicians have no gold for sounding.
(didascalia)	Sings
PETER	Then music with her silver sound With speedy help doth lend redress. Exit
FIRST MUSICIAN	What a pestilent knave is this same!
SECOND MUSICIAN	Hang him, jack! Come, we’ll in here, tarry for the mourners, and stay dinner. Exeunt

Atto 5, Scena 1

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Romeo
ROMEO	If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand. My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne, And all this day an unaccustomed 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 breathed such life with kisses in my lips That I revived and was an emperor. Ah me, how sweet is love itself possessed When but love’s shadows are so rich in joy!
(didascalia)	Enter Balthasar, Romeo’s man, booted
ROMEO	News from Verona! How now, Balthasar? Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar? How doth my lady? Is my father well? How fares my Juliet? That I ask again, For nothing can be ill if she be well.
BALTHASAR	Then she is well, and nothing can be ill. Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument, And her immortal part with angels lives. I saw her laid low in her kindred’s vault, And presently took post to tell it you. O, pardon me for bringing these ill news, Since you did leave it for my office, sir.
ROMEO	Is it e’en so? Then I defy you, stars. Thou knowest my lodging. Get me ink and paper, And hire posthorses. I will hence tonight.
BALTHASAR	I do beseech you, sir, have patience. Your looks are pale and wild, and do import Some misadventure.
ROMEO	Tush, thou art deceived. Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do. Hast thou no letters to me from the friar?
BALTHASAR	No, my good lord.
ROMEO	No matter. Get thee gone, And hire those horses. I’ll be with thee straight.
(didascalia)	Exit Balthasar
ROMEO	Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight. Let’s see for means. O mischief, thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men! I do remember an apothecary, And hereabouts a dwells, which late I noted, In tattered weeds, with overwhelming brows, 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 stuffed, 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 scattered to make up a show. Noting this penury, to myself I said ‘An 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 forerun 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!
(didascalia)	Enter Apothecary
APOTHECARY	Who calls so loud?
ROMEO	Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor. He offers money Hold, there is forty ducats. Let me have A dram of poison—such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins, That the life-weary taker may fall dead, And that the trunk may be discharged of breath As violently as hasty powder fired 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, Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back. 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 but not my will consents.
ROMEO	I pay thy poverty and not thy will.
APOTHECARY	(handing Romeo poison) Put this in any liquid thing you will And drink it off, and if you had the strength Of twenty men it would dispatch you straight.
ROMEO	(giving money) There is thy gold—worse poison to men’s souls, 80 Doing more murder 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.
(didascalia)	Exit Apothecary
ROMEO	Come, cordial and not poison, go with me 85 To Juliet’s grave, for there must I use thee. Exit

Atto 5, Scena 2

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Friar John at one door
FRIAR JOHN	Holy Franciscan friar, brother, ho!
(didascalia)	Enter Friar Laurence at another door
FRIAR LAURENCE	This same should be the voice of Friar John. Welcome from Mantua! What says Romeo? Or if his mind be writ, give me his letter.
FRIAR JOHN	Going to find a barefoot brother out—5 One of our order—to associate me Here in this city visiting the sick, And finding him, the searchers of the town, Suspecting that we both were in a house Where the infectious pestilence did reign, 10 Sealed up the doors, and would not let us forth, So that my speed to Mantua there was stayed.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Who bare my letter then to Romeo?
FRIAR JOHN	I could not send it—here it is again— Nor get a messenger to bring it thee, So fearful were they of infection.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Unhappy fortuneǃ By my brotherhood, The letter was not nice, but full of charge, Of dear import, and the neglecting it May do much danger. Friar John, go hence. Get me an iron crow, and bring it straight Unto my cell.
FRIAR JOHN	Brother, I’ll go and bring it thee. Exit
FRIAR LAURENCE	Now must I to the monument alone.
(didascalia)	Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake.
FRIAR LAURENCE	She will beshrew me much that Romeo Hath had no notice of these accidents. But I will write again to Mantua, And keep her at my cell till Romeo come. Poor living corpse, closed in a dead man’s tomb! Exit

Atto 5, Scena 3

Chi parla	Battuta
(didascalia)	Enter Paris and his Page, with flowers, sweet water, and a torch
PARIS	Give me thy torch, boy. Hence, and stand aloof. Yet put it out, for I would not be seen.
(didascalia)	His Page puts out the torch
PARIS	Under yon yew trees lay thee all along, Holding thy ear close to the hollow ground. So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread, 5 Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves, But thou shalt hear it. Whistle then to me As signal that thou hear’st something approach. Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee. Go.
(didascalia)	PAGE aside
PARIS	I am almost afraid to stand alone 10 Here in the churchyard, yet I will adventure. He hides himself at a distance from Paris
PARIS	(strewing flowers) Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew. He sprinkles water O woe! Thy canopy is dust and stones, Which with sweet water nightly I will dew, Or, wanting that, with tears distilled by moans. The obsequies that I for thee will keep Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep. The Page whistles The boy gives warning. Something doth approach. What cursed foot wanders this way tonight To cross my obsequies and true love’s rite? 20
(didascalia)	Enter Romeo and Balthasar his man, with a torch, a mattock, and a crow of iron
PARIS	What, with a torch? Muffle me, night, a while. He stands aside
ROMEO	Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron. Hold, take this letter. Early in the morning See thou deliver it to my lord and father. Give me the light. Upon thy life I charge thee, 25 Whate’er thou hear’st or seest, stand all aloof, And do not interrupt me in my course. Why I descend into this bed of death Is partly to behold my lady’s face, But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger A precious ring, a ring that I must use In dear employment. Therefore hence, be gone. But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry In what I farther shall intend to do, By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint, And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs. The time and my intents are savage-wild, More fierce and more inexorable far Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.
(didascalia)	BALTHASAR
ROMEO	I will be gone, sir, and not trouble ye. 40
ROMEO	So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that. He gives money Live and be prosperous, and farewell, good fellow.
(didascalia)	BALTHASAR (aside)
ROMEO	For all this same, I’ll hide me hereabout. His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.
(didascalia)	He hides himself at a distance from Romeo. Romeo begins to jorce open the tombs
ROMEO	Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death, Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth, Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open, And in despite I’ll cram thee with more food.
PARIS	(aside) This is that banished haughty Montague That murdered my love’s cousin, with which grief It is supposed the fair creature died; And here is come to do some villainous shame To the dead bodies. I will apprehend him.
(didascalia)	Drawing Stop thy unhallowed toil, vile Montague!
PARIS	Can vengeance be pursued further than death? 55 Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee. Obey and go with me, for thou must die.
ROMEO	I must indeed, and therefore came I hither. Good gentle youth, tempt not a desp’rate man. Fly hence, and leave me. Think upon these gone. 60 Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth, Put not another sin upon my head By urging me to fury. O, be gone. By heaven, I love thee better than myself, For I come hither armed against myself. 65 Stay not, be gone. Live, and hereafter say A madman’s mercy bid thee run away.
PARIS	I do defy thy conjuration, And apprehend thee for a felon here.
ROMEO	(drawing) Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy. 70 They fight
(didascalia)	PAGE
ROMEO	O Lord, they fight! I I will go call the watch. Exit
PARIS	O, I am slainǃ If thou be merciful, Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet.
ROMEO	In faith, I will. Paris dies Let me peruse this face. Mercutio’s kinsman, noble County Paris! 75 What said my man when my betossèd soul Did not attend him as we rode? I think He told me Paris should have married Juliet. Said he not so? Or did I dream it so? Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet, 80 To think it was so? O, give me thy hand, One writ with me in sour misfortune’s book. I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave.
(didascalia)	Heopens the tomb, revealing Juliet
ROMEO	A grave—O no, a lantern, slaughtered youth, For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light.
(didascalia)	He bears the body of Paris to the tombs
ROMEO	Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interred. How oft, when men are at the point of death, Have they been merry, which their keepers call A lightning before death! O, how may I 90 Call this a lightning? O my love, my wife! Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty. Thou art not conquered. Beauty’s ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death’s pale flag is not advanced there. Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet? O, what more favour can I do to thee Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain To sunder his that was thine enemy? Forgive me, cousin. Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe That unsubstantial death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? 105 For fear of that I still will stay with thee, And never from this pallet of dim night Depart again. Here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chambermaids. O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, 110 And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last. Arms, take your last embrace, and lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death.
(didascalia)	He kisses Juliet, then pours poison into the cup
ROMEO	Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide, Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy seasick weary barque! Here’s to my love. He drinks the poison O true apothecary, Thy drugs are quick! Thus with a kiss I die. He kisses Juliet, falls, and dies.
(didascalia)	Enter Friar Laurence with lantern, crow, and spade
FRIAR LAURENCE	Saint Francis be my speed! How oft tonight Have my old feet stumbled at graves? Who’s there?
BALTHASAR	Here’s one, a friend, and one that knows you well.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Bliss be upon you. Tell me, good my friend, What torch is yon that vainly lends his light 125 To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern, It burneth in the Capels’ monument.
BALTHASAR	It doth so, holy sir, and there’s my master, One that you love.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Who is it?
BALTHASAR	Romeo.
FRIAR LAURENCE	How long hath he been there?
BALTHASAR	Full half an hour.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Go with me to the vault.
BALTHASAR	I dare not, sir. My master knows not but I am gone hence, And fearfully did menace me with death If I did stay to look on his intents.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Stay then, I’ll go alone. Fear comes upon me. 135 O, much I fear some ill unthrifty thing.
BALTHASAR	As I did sleep under this yew tree here I dreamt my master and another fought, And that my master slew him.
FRIAR LAURENCE	Romeo!
(didascalia)	He stoops and looks on the blood and weapons
FRIAR LAURENCE	Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains 140 The stony entrance of this sepulchre? What mean these masterless and gory swords To lie discoloured by this place of peace? Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris, too, And steeped in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour Is guilty of this lamentable chance I
(didascalia)	Juliet awakes and rises
FRIAR LAURENCE	The lady stirs.
JULIET	O comfortable friar, where is my lord? I do remember well where I should be, And there I am. Where is my Romeo? 150
FRIAR LAURENCE	I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep. A greater power than we can contradict Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away. Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead, 155 And Paris, too. Come, I’ll dispose of thee Among a sisterhood of holy nuns. Stay not to question, for the watch is coming. Come, go, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay. Exit
JULIET	Go, get thee hence, for I will not away. 160 What’s here? A cup closed in my true love’s hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end. O churt!—drunk all, and left no friendly drop To help me after? I will kiss thy lips. Haply some poison yet doth hang on them, To make me die with a restorative. She kisses Romeo’s lips Thy lips are warm.
(didascalia)	CHIEF WATCHMAN within Lead, boy. Which way?
JULIET	Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. She takes Romeo’s dagger O happy dagger, This is thy sheath! There rust, and let me die. She stabs herself, falls, and dies.
(didascalia)	Enter the Page and Watchmen
(didascalia)	PAGE
JULIET	This is the place, there where the torch doth burn. 170
CHIEF WATCHMAN	The ground is bloody. Search about the churchyard. Go, some of you. Whoe’er you find, attach.
(didascalia)	Exeunt some Watchmen
CHIEF WATCHMAN	Pitiful sight! Here lies the County slain, And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead, Who here hath lain this two days buried. Go tell the Prince. Run to the Capulets, Raise up the Montagues. Some others search.
(didascalia)	Exeunt other Watchmen severally
CHIEF WATCHMAN	We see the ground whereon these woes do lie, But the true ground of all these piteous woes We cannot without circumstance descry.
(didascalia)	Enter Watchmen with Balthasar
(didascalia)	SECOND WATCHMAN
CHIEF WATCHMAN	Here’s Romeo’s man. We found him in the churchyard.
CHIEF WATCHMAN	Hold him in safety till the Prince come hither.
(didascalia)	Enter another Watchman with Friar Laurence
THIRD WATCHMAN	Here is a friar that trembles, sighs, and weeps. We took this mattock and this spade from him As he was coming from this churchyard’s side.
CHIEF WATCHMAN	A great suspicion. Stay the friar, too.
(didascalia)	Enter the Prince with others
PRINCE	What misadventure is so early up, That calls our person from our morning rest?
(didascalia)	Enter Capulet and his Wife
CAPULET	What should it be that is so shrieked abroad?
CAPULET’S WIFE	O, the people in the street cry ‘Romeo’, Some ‘Juliet’, and some ‘Paris’, and all run With open outcry toward our monument.
PRINCE	What fear is this which startles in our ears?
CHIEF WATCHMAN	Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain, And Romeo dead, and Juliet, dead before, Warm, and new killed.
PRINCE	Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.
CHIEF WATCHMAN	Here is a friar, and slaughtered Romeo’s man, With instruments upon them fit to open These dead men’s tombs.
CAPULET	O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds! This dagger hath mista’en, for lo, his house Is empty on the back of Montague, And it mis-sheathèd in my daughter’s bosom.
CAPULET’S WIFE	O me, this sight of death is as a bell 205 That warns my old age to a sepulchre.
(didascalia)	Enter Montague
PRINCE	Come, Montague, for thou art early up To see thy son and heir more early down.
MONTAGUE	Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight. Grief of my son’s exile hath stopped her breath. 210 What further woe conspires against mine age?
PRINCE	Look, and thou shalt see.
MONTAGUE	(seeing Romeo’s body) O thou untaught! What manners is in this, To press before thy father to a grave?
PRINCE	Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, 215 Till we can clear these ambiguities And know their spring, their head, their true descent; And then will I be general of your woes, And lead you even to death. Meantime, forbear, And let mischance be slave to patience. 220 Bring forth the parties of suspicion.
FRIAR LAURENCE	I am the greatest, able to do least, Yet most suspected, as the time and place Doth make against me, of this direful murder; And here I stand, both to impeach and purge Myself condemned and myself excused.
PRINCE	Then say at once what thou dost know in this.
FRIAR LAURENCE	I will be brief, for my short date of breath Is not so long as is a tedious tale. Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet, And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife. I married them, and their stol’n marriage day Was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death Banished the new-made bridegroom from this city, For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined. You, to remove that siege of grief from her, Betrothed and would have married her perforce To County Paris. Then comes she to me, And with wild looks bid me devise some mean To rid her from this second marriage, Or in my cell there would she kill herself. Then gave I her—so tutored by my art— A sleeping potion, which so took effect As I intended, for it wrought on her The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo That he should hither come as this dire night To help to take her from her borrowed grave, Being the time the potion’s force should cease. But he which bore my letter, Friar John, Was stayed by accident, and yesternight 250 Returned my letter back. Then all alone, At the prefixèd hour of her waking, Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault, Meaning to keep her closely at my cell Till I conveniently could send to Romeo. But when I came, some minute ere the time Of her awakening, here untimely lay The noble Paris and true Romeo dead. She wakes, and I entreated her come forth And bear this work of heaven with patience. 260 But then a noise did scare me from the tomb, And she, too desperate, would not go with me, But, as it seems, did violence on herself. All this I know, and to the marriage Her nurse is privy; and if aught in this Miscarried by my fault, let my old life Be sacrificed, some hour before his time, Unto the rigour of severest law.
PRINCE	We still have known thee for a holy man. Where’s Romeo’s man? What can he say to this? 270
BALTHASAR	I brought my master news of Juliet’s death, And then in post he came from Mantua To this same place, to this same monument. This letter he early bid me give his father, And threatened me with death, going in the vault, If I departed not and left him there.
PRINCE	Give me the letter. I will look on it. He takes the letter Where is the County’s page that raised the watch? Sirrah, what made your master in this place?
PAGE	He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave, And bid me stand aloof, and so I did. Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb, And by and by my master drew on him, And then I ran away to call the watch.
PRINCE	This letter doth make good the friar’s words, Their course of love, the tidings of her death; And here he writes that he did buy a poison Of a poor ’pothecary, and therewithal Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet. Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague, 290 See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love. And I, for winking at your discords, too Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished.
CAPULET	O brother Montague, give me thy hand. 295 This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more Can I demand.
MONTAGUE	But I can give thee more, For I will raise her statue in pure gold, That whiles Verona by that name is known There shall no figure at such rate be set 300 As that of true and faithful Juliet.
CAPULET	As rich shall Romeo’s by his lady’s lie, Poor sacrifices of our enmity.
PRINCE	A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun for sorrow will not show his head. 305 Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd; For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
(didascalia)	The tomb is closed. Exeunt
PRINCE	A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
FRANCIS MERES	mentions A Midsummer Night’s Dream in his Palladis Tamia, of 1598, and it was first printed in 1600. The Folio (1623) version offers significant variations apparently deriving from performance, and is followed in the present edition. It has often been thought that Shakespeare wrote the play for an aristocratic wedding, but there is no evidence to support this speculation, and the 1600 title-page states that it had been ’sundry times publicly acted’ by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. In stylistic variation it resembles Love’s Labour’s Lost: both plays employ a wide variety of verse measures and rhyme schemes, along with prose that is sometimes (as in Bottom’s account of his dream, 4.1.202―15) rhetorically patterned. Probably it was written in 1594 or 1595, either just before or just after Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare built his own plot from diverse elements of literature, drama, legend, and folklore, supplemented by his imagination and observation. There are four main strands. One, which forms the basis of the action, shows the preparations for the marriage of Theseus, Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and (in the last act) its celebration. This is indebted to Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, as is the play’s second strand, the love story of Lysander and Hermia (who elope to escape her father’s opposition) and of Demetrius. In Chaucer, two young men fall in love with the same girl and quarrel over her; Shakespeare adds the comic complication of another girl (Helena) jilted by, but still loving, one of the young men. A third strand shows the efforts of a group of Athenian workmen—the ‘mechanicals’—led by Bottom the Weaver to prepare a play, Pyramus and Thisbe (based mainly on Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses) for performance at the Duke’s wedding. The mechanicals themselves belong rather to Elizabethan England than to ancient Greece. Bottom’s partial transformation into an ass has many literary precedents. Fourthly, Shakespeare depicts a quarrel between Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the Fairies. Oberon’s attendant, Robin Goodfellow, a puck (or pixie), interferes mischievously in the workmen’s rehearsals and the affairs of the lovers. The fairy part of the play owes something to both folklore and literature; Robin Goodfellow was a well-known figure about whom Shakespeare could have read in Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft (1586). A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers a glorious celebration of the powers of the human imagination while also making comic capital out of its limitations. It is one of Shakespeare’s most polished achievements, a poetic drama of exquisite grace, wit, and humanity. In performance, its imaginative unity has sometimes been violated, but it has become one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, with a special appeal for the young.
THE PERSONS OF THE	PLAY THESEUS, Duke of Athens HIPPOLYTA, Queen of the Amazons, betrothed to Theseus PHILOSTRATE, Master of the Revels to Theseus EGEUS, father of Hermia HERMIA, daughter of Egeus, in love with Lysander LYSANDER, loved by Hermia DEMETRIUS, suitor to Hermia HELENA, in love with Demetrius OBERON, King of Fairies TITANIA, Queen of Fairies
ROBIN	GOODFELLOW, a puck Peter QUINCE, a carpenter Nick BOTTOM, a weaver Francis FLUTE, a bellows-mender Tom SNOUT, a tinker SNUG, a joiner Robin STARVELING, a tailor Attendant lords and fairies