Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare [top rated books of all time txt] 📗

I do defy thy conjurations, And apprehend thee for a felon here.

 

ROMEO: Wilt thou provoke me? then have at thee, boy!

 

[They fight.]

 

PAGE: O Lord, they fight! I will go call the watch. [Exit.]

PARIS: O, I am slain!

Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. [Dies.]

ROMEO: In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face. Mercutio’s kinsman, noble County Paris!

What said my man, when my betossed 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, 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;

A grave? O no! a lantern, slaughter’d youth, For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes This vault a feasting presence full of light. Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr’d.

[Laying PARIS in the tomb.] 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

Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife! Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:

Thou art not conquer’d; 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 favor 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?

For fear of that, I still will stay with thee; And never from this palace of dim night Depart again: here, here will I remain

With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here

Will I set up my everlasting rest,

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! Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on

The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! Here’s to my love!

[Drinks.] O true apothecary!

Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

 

[Dies.]

 

[Enter, at the other end of the churchyard, FRIAR LAURENCE, with a lantern, crow, and spade.]

 

FRIAR LAURENCE: Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night

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 yond, that vainly lends his light

To grubs and eyeless skulls? as I discern, It burneth in the Capel’s monument.

 

BALTHASAR: It doth so, holy sir; and there’s my mas ter,

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:

O, much I fear some ill unlucky 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! [Advances.]

Alack, alack, what blood is this, which stains

The stony entrance of this sepulchre?

What mean these masterless and gory swords

To lie discolor’d by this place of peace? [Enters the tomb.]

Romeo! O, pale! Who else? what, Paris too?

And steep’d in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour

Is guilty of this lamentable chance! The lady stirs.

 

[JULIET wakes.]

JULIET: O comfortable friar! where is my lord?

I do remember well where I should be, And there I am. Where is my Romeo?

 

[Noise within.]

 

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;

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,

 

[Noise again] I dare no longer stay.

JULIET: Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.

 

[Exit FRIAR LAURENCE.]

What’s here? a cup, closed in my true love’s hand?

Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:

O churl! 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 die with a restorative.

 

[Kisses him.] Thy lips are warm.

First Watchman: [Within] Lead, boy: which way? JULIET: Yea, noise? then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger!

[Snatching ROMEO’s dagger.] This is thy sheath;

[Stabs herself.]

 

there rust, and let me die.

 

[Falls on ROMEO’s body, and dies.]

[Enter Watch, with the Page of PARIS.]

 

PAGE: This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn.

 

First Watchman: The ground is bloody; search about the churchyard:

Go, some of you, whoe’er you find attach. Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain,

And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead, Who here hath lain these two days buried. Go, tell the prince: run to the Capulets:

Raise up the Montagues: some others search: We see the ground whereon these woes do lie; But the true ground of all these piteous woes We cannot without circumstance descry.

[Re-enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR.] Second Watchman: Here’s Romeo’s man; we found him

in the churchyard.

 

First Watchman: Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither.

[Re-enter others of the Watch, 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 side.

 

First Watchman: A great suspicion: stay the friar too. [Enter the PRINCE and Attendants.]

PRINCE: What misadventure is so early up, That calls our person from our morning’s rest?

[Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, and others.] CAPULET: What should it be, that they so shriek abroad? LADY CAPULET: 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?

First Watchman: Sovereign, here lies the County Paris

slain;

And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before, Warm and new kill’d.

 

PRINCE: Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.

 

First Watchman: Here is a friar, and slaughter’d 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-sheathed in my daughter’s bosom!

 

LADY CAPULET: O me! this sight of death is as a bell, That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

 

[Enter MONTAGUE and others.]

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 to-night; Grief of my son’s exile hath stopp’d her breath:

What further woe conspires against mine age? PRINCE: Look, and thou shalt see.

MONTAGUE: 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, 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.

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 dooms-day, whose untimely death

Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from the city, For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.

You, to remove that siege of grief from her, Betroth’d 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 tutor’d 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 borrow’d grave, Being the time the potion’s force should cease. But he which bore my letter, Friar John,

Was stay’d by accident, and yesternight Return’d my letter back. Then all alone At the prefixed 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 awaking, 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: 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 rigor of severest law.

PRINCE: We still have known thee for a holy man.

Where’s Romeo’s man? what can he say in this?

 

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, I departed not and left him there.

 

PRINCE: Give me the letter; I will look on it. 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! 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 punish’d.

 

CAPULET: O brother Montague, give me thy hand: 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 while Verona by that name is known, There shall no figure at such rate be set

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:

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

 

[Exeunt.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finish