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

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 honorable state, more courtship lives In carrion-flies than Romeo: they my 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 say’st thou yet that exile is not death?

Hadst thou no poison mix’d, no sharp-ground knife, No sudden mean of death, though ne’er so mean,

But ‘banished’ to kill me?—’banished’?

O friar, the damned use that word in hell; Howlings attend it: how hast thou the heart, Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,

A sin-absolver, and my friend profess’d, To mangle me with that word ‘banished’?

 

FRIAR LAURENCE: Thou fond mad man, hear me but speak a word.

ROMEO: O, thou wilt speak again of banishment. FRIAR LAURENCE: I’ll give thee armor to keep off that

word:

Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,

To comfort thee, though thou art banished.

 

ROMEO: Yet ‘banished’? Hang up philosophy! Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,

Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom,

It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more.

 

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 es- tate.

 

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, Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

 

[Knocking within.]

FRIAR LAURENCE: Arise; one knocks; good Romeo, hide

thyself.

 

ROMEO: Not I; unless the breath of heartsick groans, Mist-like, infold me from the search of eyes.

 

[Knocking.]

 

FRIAR LAURENCE: Hark, how they knock! Who’s there?

Romeo, arise;

Thou wilt be taken. Stay awhile! Stand up; [Knocking.]

Run to my study. By and by! God’s will, What simpleness is this! I come, I come!

 

[Knocking.]

 

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.

FRIAR LAURENCE: Welcome, then.

 

[Enter 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 woful sympathy! Piteous predicament! Even so lies she,

Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering. Stand up, stand up; stand, and you be a man:

For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand; Why should you fall into so deep an O?

 

ROMEO: Nurse!

Nurse: Ah sir! ah sir! Well, death’s the end of all. ROMEO: Spakest thou of Juliet? how is it with her?

Doth she not think me an old murderer, Now I have stain’d the childhood of our joy

With blood removed but little from her own?

Where is she? and how doth she? and what says

My conceal’d lady to our cancell’d 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 Murder’d 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.

 

[Drawing his sword.]

 

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!

Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!

Thou hast amazed me: by my holy order,

I thought thy disposition better temper’d.

Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself? And stay thy lady too that lives in thee,

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 shamest 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 valor of a man;

Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,

Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish; Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, Misshapen in the conduct of them both,

Like powder in a skitless soldier’s flask, Is set afire by thine own ignorance,

And thou dismember’d 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 slew’st Tybalt; there are thou happy too: The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend And turns it to exile; there art thou happy:

A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back; Happiness courts thee in her best array;

But, like a misbehaved 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 stay’d 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.

Farewell.

 

 

[Exeunt.]

 

Nurse: Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir: Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.

 

[Exit.]

 

ROMEO: How well my comfort is revived by this!

 

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:

SCENE IV: A room in Capulet’s house.

[Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, 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 to-night: I promise you, but for your company,

I would have been a-bed an hour ago.

 

PARIS: These times of woe afford no time to woo. Madam, good night: commend me to your daughter.

 

LADY CAPULET: I will, and know her mind early to- morrow;

To-night she is mew’d up to her heaviness.

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: o’ 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 to-mor- row.

CAPULET: Well get you gone: o’ Thursday be it, then.

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 very late,

That we may call it early by and by. Good night.

 

[Exeunt.] SCENE V: Capulet’s orchard.

 

[Enter ROMEO and JULIET above, at the window.] JULIET: Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:

It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-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 day-light, I know it, I: It is some meteor that the sun exhales,

To be to thee this night a torch-bearer, And light thee on thy way to Mantua:

Therefore stay yet; thou need’st not to be gone.

 

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 change 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!

 

[Enter Nurse, to the chamber.] 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.

[He goeth down.]

 

JULIET: Art thou gone so? love, lord, ay, 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 time to come.

 

JULIET: O God, I have an ill-divining soul! Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,

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.]

 

JULIET: O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle: If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him.

That is renown’d for faith? Be fickle, fortune; For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long, But send him back.

 

LADY CAPULET: [Within] Ho, daughter! are you up?

 

JULIET: Who is’t that calls? is it my lady mother? Is she not down so late, or up so early?

What unaccustom’d cause procures her hither? [Enter LADY CAPULET.]

LADY CAPULET: Why, how now, Juliet! JULIET: Madam, I am not well.

LADY CAPULET: 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