We would as willingly give cure as know.
Enter Romeo
BENVOLIO
See where he comes. So please you step aside,
I’ll know his grievance or be much denied.
MONTAGUE
I would thou wert so happy by thy stay
To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let’s away.
Exeunt Montague and his Wife
BENVOLIO
Good morrow, cousin.
ROMEO Is the day so young?
BENVOLIO
But new struck nine.
ROMEO Ay me, sad hours seem long.
Was that my father that went hence so fast?
BENVOLIO
It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo’s hours?
ROMEO
Not having that which, having, makes them short.
BENVOLIO In love.
ROMEO Out.
BENVOLIO Of love?
ROMEO
Out of her favour where I am in love.
BENVOLIO
Alas that love, so gentle in his view,
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.
ROMEO
Alas that love, whose view is muffled still,
Should without eyes see pathways to his will.
Where shall we dine? ⌈Seeing blood⌉ O me! What fray
was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O anything of nothing first create;
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is I
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?
BENVOLIO No, coz, I rather weep.
ROMEO
Good heart, at what?
BENVOLIO At thy good heart’s oppression.
ROMEO Why, such is love’s transgression.
Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,
Which thou wilt propagate to have it pressed
With more of thine. This love that thou hast shown
Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes,
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
Farewell, my coz.
BENVOLIO Soft, I will go along;
An if you leave me’so, you do me wrong.
ROMEO
Tut, I have lost myself. I am not here.
This is not Romeo; he’s some other where.
BENVOLIO
Tell me in sadness, who is that you love?
ROMEO What, shall I groan and tell thee?
BENVOLIO
Groan? Why no; but sadly tell me who.
ROMEO
Bid a sick man in sadness make his will,
A word ill urged to one that is so ill.
In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.
BENVOLIO
I aimed so near when I supposed you loved.
ROMEO
A right good markman; and she’s fair I love.
BENVOLIO
A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
ROMEO
Well, in that hit you miss. She’ll not be hit
With Cupid’s arrow; she hath Dian’s wit,
And, in strong proof of chastity well armed,
From love’s weak childish bow she lives unharmed.
She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide th’encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.
O, she is rich in beauty, only poor
That when she dies, with beauty dies her store.
BENVOLIO
Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?
ROMEO
She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste;
For beauty starved with her severity
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,
To merit bliss by making me despair.
She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
Do I live dead, that live to tell it now.
BENVOLIO
Be ruled by me; forget to think of her.
ROMEO
O, teach me how I should forget to think!
BENVOLIO
By giving liberty unto thine eyes.
Examine other beauties.
ROMEO ’Tis the way
To call hers, exquisite, in question more.
These happy masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows,
Being black, puts us in mind they hide the fair.
He that is strucken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.
Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
What doth her beauty serve but as a note
Where I may read who passed that passing fair?
Farewell, thou canst not teach me to forget.
BENVOLIO
I’ll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt. Exeunt
1.2 Enter Capulet, Paris, and ⌈Peter,⌉ a servingman
CAPULET
But Montague is bound as well as I,
In penalty alike, and ’tis not hard, I think,
For men so old as we to keep the peace.
PARIS
Of honourable reckoning are you both,
And pity ’tis you lived at odds so long.
But now, my lord: what say you to my suit?
CAPULET
But saying o’er what I have said before.
My child is yet a stranger in the world;
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years.
Let two more summers wither in their pride
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
PARIS
Younger than she are happy mothers made.
CAPULET
And too soon marred are those so early made.
But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart;
My will to her consent is but a part,
And, she agreed, within her scope of choice
Lies my consent and fair-according voice.
This night I hold an old-accustomed feast
Whereto I have invited many a guest
Such as I love, and you among the store,
One more most welcome, makes my number more.
At my poor house look to behold this night
Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light.
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel
When well-apparelled April on the heel
Of limping winter treads—even such delight
Among fresh female buds shall you this night
Inherit at my house; hear all, all see,
And like her most whose merit most shall be,
Which on more view of many, mine, being one,
May stand in number, though in reck’ning none.
Come, go with me. (Giving ⌈Peter⌉ a paper) Go, sirrah,
trudge about;
Through fair Verona find those persons out
Whose names are written there, and to them say
My house and welcome on their pleasure stay.
Exeunt Capulet and Paris
⌈PETER⌉ Find them out whose names are written here? It
is written that the shoemaker should meddle with his
yard and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his
pencil and the painter with his nets; but I am sent to
find those persons whose names are here writ, and can
never find what names the writing per
son hath here
writ. I must to the learned.Enter Benvolio and Romeo
In good time.
BENVOLIO (to Romeo)
Tut, man, one fire burns out another’s burning,
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish.
Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning.
One desperate grief cures with another’s languish.
Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.
ROMEO
Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.
BENVOLIO For what, I pray thee?
ROMEO For your broken shin.
BENVOLIO Why, Romeo, art thou mad?
ROMEO
Not mad, but bound more than a madman is;
Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
Whipped and tormented and—(to ⌈Peter⌉ Good e’en,
good fellow.
⌈PETER⌉
God gi‘good e’en. I pray, sir, can you read?
ROMEO
Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.
⌈PETER⌉ erhaps you have learned it without book. But I pray, can you read anything you see?
ROMEO
Ay, if I know the letters and the language.
⌈PETER⌉ Ye say honestly. Rest you merry.
ROMEO Stay, fellow, I can read.
He reads the letter
‘Signor Martino and his wife and daughters,
County Anselme and his beauteous sisters,
The lady widow of Vitruvio,
Signor Placentio and his lovely nieces,
Mercutio and his brother Valentine,
Mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters,
My fair niece Rosaline and Livia,
Signor Valentio and his cousin Tybalt,
Lucio and the lively Helena.’
A fair assembly. Whither should they come?
⌈PETER⌉ Up.
ROMEO Whither?
⌈PETER⌉ To supper to our house.
ROMEO Whose house?
⌈PETER⌉ My master’s.
ROMEO
Indeed, I should have asked thee that before.
⌈PETER⌉ Now I’ll tell you without asking. My master is
the great rich Capulet, and if you be not of the house
of Montagues, I pray come and crush a cup of wine.
Rest you merry. Exit
BENVOLIO
At this same ancient feast of Capulet’s
Sups the fair Rosaline, whom thou so loves,
With all the admirèd beauties of Verona.
Go thither, and with unattainted eye
Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.
ROMEO
When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;
And these who, often drowned, could never die,
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars.
One fairer than my love !—the all-seeing sun
Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.
BENVOLIO
Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by,
Herself poised with herself in either eye;
But in that crystal scales let there be weighed
Your lady’s love against some other maid
That I will show you shining at this feast,
And she shall scant show well that now seems best.
ROMEO
I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown,
But to rejoice in splendour of mine own. Exeunt
1.3 Enter Capulet’s Wife and the Nurse
CAPULET’S WIFE
Nurse, where’s my daughter? Call her forth to me.
NURSE
Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old,
I bade her come. What, lamb, what, ladybird—
God forbid—where is this girl? What, Juliet!
Enter Juliet
JULIET How now, who calls?
NURSE Your mother.
JULIET
Madam, I am here. What is your will?
CAPULET’S WIFE
This is the matter.—Nurse, give leave a while.
We must talk in secret.—Nurse, come back again.
I have remembered me, thou s’ hear our counsel.
Thou knowest my daughter’s of a pretty age.
NURSE
Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
CAPULET’S WIFE She’s not fourteen.
NURSE I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth—and yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four—she’s not fourteen. How long is it now to Lammastide?
CAPULET’S WIFE A fortnight and odd days.
NURSE
Even or odd, of all days in the year
Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she—God rest all Christian souls!—
Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me. But, as I said,
On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen,
That shall she, marry, I remember it well.
‘Tis since the earthquake now eleven years,
And she was weaned—I never shall forget it–
Of all the days of the year upon that day,
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.
My lord and you were then at Mantua.
Nay, I do bear a brain! But, as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
To see it tetchy and fall out wi’th’ dug!
‘Shake’, quoth the dove-housed‘Twas no need, I trow,
To bid me trudge;
And since that time it is eleven years,
For then she could stand high-lone. Nay, by th’ rood,
She could have run and waddled all about,
For even the day before, she broke her brow,
And then my husband—God be with his soul,
A was a merry man!—took up the child.
‘Yea,’ quoth he, ‘dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,
Wilt thou not, Jule?’ And, by my halidom,
The pretty wretch left crying and said ‘Ay’.
To see now how a jest shall come about!
I warrant an I should live a thousand years
I never should forget it. ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ quoth he,
And, pretty fool, it stinted and said ‘Ay’.
CAPULET’S WIFE
Enough of this. I pray thee hold thy peace.
NURSE
Yes, madam. Yet I cannot choose but laugh
To think it should leave crying and say ‘Ay’.
And yet, I warrant, it had upon it brow
A bump as big as a young cock‘rel’s stone.
A perilous knock, and it cried bitterly.
‘Yea,’ quoth my husband, ‘fall’st upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou com’st to age,
Wilt thou not, Jule?’ It stinted and said ‘Ay’.
JULIET
And stint thou too, I pray thee, Nurse, say I.
NURSE
Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace,
Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nursed.
An I might live to see thee married once,
I have my wish.
CAPULET’S WIFE
Marry, that ’marry’ is the very theme
I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,
How stands your dispositions to be married?
JULIET
It is an honour that I dream not of.
NURSE
‘An honour’! Were not I thine only nurse,
I would say thou hadst sucked wisdom from thy teat.
CAPULET’S WIFE
Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are made already mothers. By my count
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid. Thus then, in brief:
The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.
NURSE
A man, young lady, lady, such a man
As all the world—why, he’s a man of wax.
CAPULET’S WIFE
Verona’s summer hath not such a flower.
NURSE
Nay, he’s a flower, in faith, a very flower.
CAPULET’S WIFE (to Juliet)
What say you ? Can you love the gentleman ?
This night you shall behold him at our feast.
Read o‘er the volume of young Paris’ face,
And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen.
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content;
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margin of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and ’tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
So shall you share all that he doth possess
By having him, making yourself no less.
NURSE
No less, nay, bigger. Women grow by men.
CAPULET’s WIFE (to Juliet)
Speak briefly: can you like of Paris’ love?
JULIET
I’ll look to like, if looking liking move;
But no more deep will I endart mine eye
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
Enter ⌈Peter⌉
⌈PETER⌉ Madam, the guests are come, supper served up,
you called, my young lady asked for, the Nurse cursed
in the pantry, and everything in extremity. I must hence
to wait. I beseech you follow straight.
CAPULET’S WIFE
We follow thee. Exit ⌈Peter⌉
Juliet, the County stays.
NURSE
Go, girl; seek happy nights to happy days. Exeunt
1.4 Enter Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio, as masquers, with five or six other masquers, ⌈bearing a drum and torches⌉
ROMEO
What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse,
Or shall we on without apology?
BENVOLIO
The date is out of such prolixity.
We’ll have no Cupid hoodwinked with a scarf,
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 127
