For I have need of many orisons
To move the heavens to smile upon my state,
Which, well thou know’st, is cross and full of sin.
5
Enter LADY CAPULET.
LADY CAPULET
What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help?
JULIET No madam, we have cull’d 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,
10
For I am sure you have your hands full all
In this so sudden business.
LADY CAPULET Good night.
Get thee to bed and rest, for thou hast need.
Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.
JULIET
Farewell. God knows when we shall meet again.
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins
15
That almost freezes up the heat of life.
I’ll call them back again to comfort me.
– Nurse! – What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
Come, vial.
20
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 minister’d to have me dead,
25
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour’d,
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,
30
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?
35
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
40
Of all my buried ancestors are pack’d,
Where bloody Tybalt yet but green in earth
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort –
Alack, alack! Is it not like that I
45
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,
Environed with all these hideous fears,
50
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 desperate brains?
O look, methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
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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!
[She falls upon her bed within the curtains.]
4.4 Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse.
LADY CAPULET
Hold, take these keys and fetch more spices, Nurse.
NURSE They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.
Enter CAPULET.
CAPULET
Come, stir, stir, stir, the second cock hath crow’d!
The curfew bell hath rung, ’tis three o’clock.
Look to the bak’d meats, good Angelica:
5
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 watch’d ere now
All night for lesser cause, and ne’er been sick.
10
LADY CAPULET
Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time;
But I will watch you from such watching now.
Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.
CAPULET A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!
Enter three or four Servingmen with spits and logs and baskets.
Now fellow, what is there?
1 SERVINGMAN
Things for the cook, sir, but I know not what.
CAPULET Make haste, make haste!
Exit First Servingman.
– Sirrah, fetch drier logs!
15
Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.
2 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!
20
[Play music.]
The County will be here with music straight,
For so he said he would. I hear him near.
Nurse! Wife! What ho! What, Nurse I say!
Enter Nurse.
Go waken Juliet, go, and trim her up.
I’ll go and chat with Paris. Hie, make haste,
25
Make haste! The bridegroom he is come already.
Make haste I say. Exeunt Capulet and servingmen.
4.5
[Nurse goes to curtains.]
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,
5
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,
10
He’ll fright you up, i’faith. Will it not be?
What, dress’d, and in your clothes, and down again?
I must needs wake you. Lady! Lady! Lady!
Alas, alas! Help, help! My lady’s dead!
O weraday that ever I was born.
15
Some aqua vitae, ho! My lord! My lady!
Enter LADY CAPULET.
LADY CAPULET What noise is here?
NURSE O lamentable day!
LADY CAPULET What is the matter?
NURSE Look, look! O heavy day!
LADY CAPULET O me, O me! My child, my only life.
Revive, look up, or I will die with thee.
20
Help, help! Call help!
Enter CAPULET.
CAPULET
For shame, bring Juliet forth, her lord is come.
NURSE
She’s dead, deceas’d! She’s dead! Alack the day!
LADY CAPULET
Alack the day! She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead!
CAPULET Ha! Let me see her. Out alas. She’s cold,
25
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!
LADY CAPULET O woeful time!
30
CAPULET
Death, that hath ta’en her hence to ma
ke me wail
Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.
Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and PARIS and Musicians.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Come, is the bride ready to go to church?
CAPULET Ready to go, but never to return.
O son, the night before thy wedding day
35
Hath Death lain with thy wife. 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.
40
PARIS Have I thought long to see this morning’s face,
And doth it give me such a sight as this?
LADY CAPULET
Accurs’d, unhappy, wretched, hateful day.
Most miserable hour that e’er time saw
In lasting labour of his pilgrimage.
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But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,
But one thing to rejoice and solace in,
And cruel Death hath catch’d it from my sight.
NURSE O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day.
Most lamentable day. Most woeful day
50
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.
O woeful day, O woeful day.
PARIS Beguil’d, divorced, wronged, spited, slain.
55
Most detestable Death, by thee beguil’d,
By cruel, cruel thee quite overthrown.
O love! O life! Not life, but love in death!
CAPULET Despis’d, distressed, hated, martyr’d, kill’d.
Uncomfortable time, why cam’st thou now
60
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
65
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.
70
The most you sought was her promotion,
For ’twas your heaven she should be advanc’d,
And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc’d
Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
O, in this love you love your child so ill
75
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 corse, and, as the custom is,
80
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:
85
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 corse,
And all things change them to the contrary.
90
FRIAR LAURENCE
Sir, go you in, and madam, go with him,
And go, Sir Paris. Every one prepare
To follow this fair corse unto her grave.
The heavens do lour upon you for some ill;
Move them no more by crossing their high will.
95
Exeunt all but the Nurse and Musicians, casting
rosemary on Juliet and shutting the curtains.
1 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.
1 MUSICIAN Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.
Exit Nurse.
Enter PETER.
PETER Musicians, O musicians, ‘Heart’s ease’, ‘Heart’s
100
ease’! O, and you will have me live, play ‘Heart’s ease’.
1 MUSICIAN Why ‘Heart’s ease’?
PETER O musicians, because my heart itself plays ‘My
heart is full’. O play me some merry dump to comfort
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 453
