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

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. [Enter ROMEO.]

ROMEO: Good morrow, father.

 

FRIAR LAURENCE: Benedicite! What early tongue so sweet saluteth me? Young son, it argues a distemper’d 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 unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign: Therefore thy earliness doth me assure

Thou art up-roused by some distemperature; Or if not so, then here I hit it right,

Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.

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 Within thy help and holy physic lies:

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 woo’d and made exchange of vow, I’ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,

That thou consent to marry us to-day.

 

FRIAR LAURENCE: Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!

Is Rosaline, whom 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 wash’d 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 ring yet in my ancient ears; Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit

Of an old tear that is not wash’d 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 chid’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 not; she whom 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 and 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’ rancor to pure love. ROMEO: O, let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.

FRIAR LAURENCE: Wisely and slow; they stumble that

run fast.

[Exeunt.]

 

 

SCENE IV: A street.

[Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO.] MERCUTIO: Where the devil should this Romeo be?

Came he not home to-night?

BENVOLIO: Not to his father’s; I spoke with his man. MERCUTIO: Ah, that same pale hard-hearted wench,

that Rosaline. Torments him so, that he will sure run mad.

 

BENVOLIO: Tybalt, the kinsman of 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 let-

ter.

 

BENVOLIO: Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how he dares, being dared.

 

MERCUTIO: Alas poor Romeo! he is already dead; stabbed with a white wench’s black eye; shot 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?

 

BENVOLIO: Why, what is Tybalt?

 

MERCUTIO: More than prince of cats, I can tell you. O, he is the courageous captain of compliments. He fights asyou sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and pro- portion; rests me his minim rest, 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 punto reverso! the hai!

 

BENVOLIO: The what?

MERCUTIO: The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting

fantasticoes; these new tuners of accents! ‘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, theseperdona-mi’s, who stand so much on the new form, that they cannot 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: flesh,

flesh, how art thou fishified! Now is he for the num- bers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura to his lady was but a kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love to be- rhyme her; Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gipsy; Helen and Hero hildings and harlots; Thisbe a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bon jour! 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?

 

MERCUTIO: The ship, sir, the slip; can you not con- ceive?

 

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 court’sy.

 

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: Well said: 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 sole singular.

 

ROMEO: O single-soled jest, solely singular for the single- ness.

 

MERCUTIO: Come between us, good Benvolio; my wits faint.

 

ROMEO: Switch and spurs, switch and spurs; or I’ll cry a match.

 

MERCUTIO: Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I have 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 any thing 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 a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce.

ROMEO: And is it not well served in to a sweet goose? MERCUTIO: O here’s a wit of cheveril, 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.

 

ROMEO: Here’s goodly gear!

 

[Enter Nurse and PETER.] MERCUTIO: A sail, a sail!

BENVOLIO: 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 den, fair gentlewoman.

 

Nurse: Is it good den?

 

MERCUTIO: ’Tis no less, I tell you, 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: if you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with you.

 

BENVOLIO: She will indite 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. [Sings.]

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.

 

MERCUTIO: Farewell, ancient lady; farewell,

every knave to use me at his pleasure?

 

PETER: I saw no man use you a 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.

 

 

 

 

‘lady, lady, lady.’

[Singing.]

Nurse: Now, afore God, I am so vexed, that every part about me quivers. Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word: and as I told you, my young lady bade me inquire you

[Exeunt MERCUTIO and BENVOLIO.]

 

Nurse: Marry, farewell! 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 any thing against me, I’ll take him down, an a’ were lustier than he is, and twenty such Jacks; and if I cannot, I’ll find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates. And thou must stand by too, and suffer

out; what she bade me say, I will keep to myself: but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her into a fool’s paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of be- havior, as they say: for the gentle woman 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. Here is for thy pains. Nurse: No truly sir; not a penny.

ROMEO: Go to; I say you shall.

Nurse: This afternoon, sir? well, she shall be there. ROMEO: And stay, good nurse, behind the abbey wall:

Within this hour my man shall be with thee And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair; Which to the high top-gallant 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 say’st thou, my dear nurse?

 

Nurse: Is your man secret? Did you ne’er hear