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.
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ROMEO Let me stand here till thou remember it.
JULIET I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,
Remembering how I love thy company.
ROMEO And I’ll still stay to have thee still forget,
Forgetting any other home but this.
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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 silken thread plucks it back again,
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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.
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Exit Juliet.
ROMEO
Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast.
Would I were sleep and peace so sweet to rest.
The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;
And darkness fleckled like a drunkard reels
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From forth day’s pathway, made by Titan’s wheels.
Hence will I to my ghostly Sire’s close cell,
His help to crave and my dear hap to tell. Exit.
2.3 Enter FRIAR LAURENCE alone with a basket.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye
The day to cheer, and night’s dank dew to dry,
I must upfill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb:
5
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.
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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, strain’d from that fair use,
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Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied,
And vice sometime’s by action dignified.
Enter ROMEO.
Within the infant rind of this weak flower
Poison hath residence, and medicine power:
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For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, stays 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
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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 distemper’d head
So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed.
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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
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Thou art uprous’d with some distemperature;
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?
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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,
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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.
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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,
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And all combin’d 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 today.
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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
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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 yet ring in mine ancient ears.
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Lo here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
Of an old tear that is not wash’d off yet.
If ere thou wast thyself, and these woes thine,
Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline.
And art thou chang’d? Pronounce this sentence then:
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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.
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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,
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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.
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2.4 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
5
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.
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MERCUTIO Any man that can write may answer a letter.
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, run through
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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. O, he’s the
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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,
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of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal
passado, the punto reverso, the hay!
BENVOLIO The what?
MERCUTIO The pox of such antic lisping affecting
phantasimes, these new tuners of accent. By Jesu, a
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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
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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,
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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
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slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.
ROMEO Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit
did I give you?
MERCUTIO The slip sir, the slip. Can you not conceive?
ROMEO Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great,
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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.
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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.
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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
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singleness.
MERCUTIO Come between us, good Benvolio, my wits
faints.
ROMEO Switch and spurs, switch and spurs, or I’ll cry a
match!
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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
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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.
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ROMEO And is it not then 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,
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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;
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 446
