Jul. Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
La. Cap. So shall you feel the loss, but not the
friend

Which you weep for.

Jul.

Feeling so the loss,

I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
La. Cap. Well, girl, thou weep'st not so much
for his death,

As that the villain lives which slaughter'd him.
Jul. What villain, madam?

La. Cap.
That same villain, Romeo.
Jul. Villain and he are many miles asunder.
God pardon him! I do with all my heart;
And yet no man, like he, doth grieve my heart.
La. Cap. That is, because the traitor murderer
lives.

Jul. Ay, madam, from the reach of these my1

hands.

'Would, none but I might venge my cousin's death! La. Cap. We will have vengeance for it, fear

thou not:

Then weep no more. I'll send to one in Mantua,-
Where that same banish'd runagate doth live,—
That shall bestow on him so sure a draught,2
That he shall soon keep Tybalt company:
And then, I hope, thou wilt be satisfied.
Jul. Indeed, I never shall be satisfied
With Romeo, till I behold him-dead-
Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vex'd:-
Madam, if you could find out but a man
To bear a poison, I would temper it;
That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof,
Soon sleep in quiet.-Ó, how my heart abhors
To hear him nam'd,-and cannot come to him,-
To wreak the love I bore my cousin Tybalt
Upon his body that hath slaughter'd him!

La. Cap. Find thou the means, and I'll find such

a man.

But now I'll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.
Jul. And joy comes well in such a needful time:
What are they, I beseech your ladyship?

La. Cap. Well, well, thou hast a careful father,
child;

One, who, to put thee from thy heaviness,
Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy,
That thou expect'st not, nor I look'd not for.

Jul. Madam, in happy time, what day is that?
La. Cap. Marry, my child, early next Thursday

morn,

The gallant, young, and noble gentleman,
The county Paris, at Saint Peter's church,
Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.

I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam,
I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear,
It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,
Rather than Paris:-These are news, indeed!

La. Cap. Here comes your father; tell him so
yourself,

And see how he will take it at your hands.

Enter CAPULET and Nurse.

Cap. When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew ;'
But for the sunset of my brother's son,
It rains downright.-

How now, a conduit, girl? what, still in tears?
Ever more showering? In one little body
Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind:
For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,
Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs,
Who,-raging with thy tears, and they with them,-
Without a sudden calm, will overset
Thy tempest-tossed body.-How now, wife?
Have you deliver'd to her our decree?

La. Cap. Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives
you thanks.

I would, the fool were married to her grave!
Cap. Soft, take me with you, take me with you,

wife.

Proud,—and, I thank you,-and, I thank you not;-
And yet not proud;-Mistress minion, you,
Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,
But settle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,
To go with Paris to Saint Peter's church,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage!
You tallow-face!

La. Cap.
Fie, fie! what, are you mad?
Jul. Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

Cap. Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient
wretch!

I tell thee what,-get thee to church o' Thursday,
Or never after look me in the face:

Jul. Now, by Saint Peter's church, and Peter too, Speak not, reply not, do not answer me:

He shall not make me there a joyful bride.

I wonder at this haste; that I must wed
Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo.

1 Juliet's equivocations are rather too artful for a
mind disturbed by the loss of a new lover.'-Johnson.
2 Thus the first quarto. The subsequent quartos and
the folio less intelligibly read :—-

'Shall give him such an unaccustom'd dram. 3 A la bonne heure. This phrase was interjected when the hearer was not so well pleased as the speaker. -Johnson. Bishop Lowth uses it in his Letter to War. burton, p. 101-And may I not hope then for the honour of your lordship's animadversions? In good time: when the candid 'examiner understands Latin a little better; and when your lordship has a competent knowledge of Hebrew."

My fingers itch.--Wife, we scarce thought us bless'd,
That God had sent us but this only child;
But now I see this one is one too much,

passage sufficiently explains how the earth, in the qu tation from The Rape of Lucrece, may be said to weep." That Shakspeare thought it was the air, and not the earth, that drizzled dew, is evident from many passages in his works. So in King John:

'Before the dew of evening fall,

6 The same image, which was in frequent use with Shakspeare's contemporaries, occurs in the poena of Romeus and Juliet more than once :

His sighs are stopt, and stopped is the candvat of his tears.'

7 Capulet, as Steevens observes, uses this as a nick4 County, or countie, was the usual term for an name. The hyphen is wanting in the old copy. C earl in Shakspeare's time. Paris is in this play first logyk is he that whan his mayster rebuketh his serstyled a young earle. So Baret, a countie or an earle, vaunt for his defawtes, he will give him xx wordes far comes un comte,' and 'a countie or carldome, comi-one, or elles he will bydde the devylles paternoster in tatus.' Fairfax very frequently uses the word. scylence.The rriiii Orders of Knares, blk. L.

5 Thus the quarto 1597 The quarto 1599, and the 8 Such was the indelicacy of the age of Shakspeare, folio, read the earth doth drizzle dew, which is phi-that authors were not contented only to employ these losophically true; and so perhaps the poet wrote, for in The Rape of Lucrece he says:

'But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set. Malone. Steevens adds:- When our author, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, says, "And when she [i. e. the moon] weeps, weeps every little flower," he only means that every little flower is moistened with dew, as if with sears; and not that the flower itself drizzles dew. This,

terms of abuse in their own original performances, b even felt no reluctance to introduce them in their ver sions of the most chaste and elegant of the Greek Roman poets. Stanyhurst, the translator of Virzd, i 1582, makes Dido call Eneas hedge-brat, cullion, and tar-breech, in the course of one speech. Nay, mì thư Interlude of The Repentance of Mary Magdalene, 1587, she says to one of her attendants:

Horeson, I beshrewe your heart, are you here."

La. Cap.

You are too hot.

Cap. God's bread! it makes me mad; Day, night,
late, early,

At home, abroad, alone, in company,
Waking, or sleeping, still my care hath been
To have her match'd: and having now provided
A gentleman of princely parentage,

Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd,
Stuff'd, (as they say,) with honourable parts,
Proportion'd as one's heart could wish a man,-
And then to have a wretched puling fool,
A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender,
To answer-I'll not wed,-I cannot love,2
I am too young-I pray you, pardon me ;—
But, an you will not wed, I'll pardon you:

[Exit.

Graze where you will, you shall not house with me ;
Look to't, think on't, I do not use to jest.
Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise ;
An you be mine, I'll give you to my friend;
An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die i' the streets,
For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee,
Nor what is mine shall never do thee good:
Trust to't, bethink you, I'll not be forsworn.
Jul. Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!
Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make my bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.
La. Cap. Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word;
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee. [Exit.
Jul. O, God!--O, nurse! how shall this be pre-
vented?

2 There is a passage in the old play of Wily Beguiled, pointed out by Malone, so nearly resembling this, that one poet must have copied from the other. Wily Beguiled was on the stage before 1596, being mentioned by Nashe in his Have with You to Saffron Walden, printed in that year.

I think you are happy in this second match,
For it excels your first: or if it did not,
Your first is dead: or 'twere as good he were,
As living here, and you no use of him.

Jul. Speakest thou from thy heart?
Nurse.

Or else beshrew them both.

Jul.

Nurse.

From my soul too;

Amen!

To what? Jul. Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.

Go in; and tell my lady I am gone,
Having displeas'd my father, to Laurence' cell,
To make confession, and to be absolv'd.

Nurse. Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.
[Exit.
Jul. Ancient damnation! O, most wicked fiend!
Is it more sin--to wish me thus forsworn,
Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue
Which she hath prais'd him with above compare
So many thousand times ?--Go, counsellor;
Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.-
I'll to the friar, to know his remedy;
If all else fail, myself have power to die.

ACT IV.

[Erit.

SCENE I. Friar Laurence's Cell. Enter FRIAR
LAURENCE and PARIS.

Fri. On Thursday, sir? the time is very short.
Par. My father Capulet will have it so;
And I am nothing slow, to slack his haste."

Fri. You say, you do not know the lady's mind;
Uneven is the course, I like it not.

And therefore have I little talk'd of love;

Par. Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt's death,

For Venus smiles not in a house of tears.
Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous,
That she doth give her sorrow so much sway;
And, in his wisdom, hastes our marriage,
To stop the inundation of her tears;
Which, too much minded by herself alone,
May be put from her by society:

Now do you know the reason of this haste.
Fri. I would, I knew not why it should be slow'd.
[Aside.
Look, sir, here comes the lady towards my cell.
Enter JULIET.

Par. Happily met, my lady, and my wife!
Jul. That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.
Par. That may be, must be, love, on Thursday

next.

Jul. What must be shall be.
Fri.
That's a certain text.
Par. Come you to make confession to this father?
Jul. To answer that, were to confess to you.
Par. Do not deny to him, that you love me.
Jul. I will confess to you, that I love him.
Par. So will you, I am sure, that you love me,
Jul. If I do, it will be of more price,

Being spoke behind your back, than to your face.

Por. Poor soul, thy face is much abus'à with tears.

i. e. of the hue of an unripe lemon or citron. Again, in The Two Noble Kinsmen, by Fletcher and Shakspeare:

oh vouchsafe

With that thy rare green eye,' &c.

5 The meaning of Paris is clear, he does not wish to 3 The character of the Nurse exhibits a just picture restrain Capulet, or to delay his own marriage; there is of those whose actions have no principles for their nothing of slowness in me, to induce me to slacken or foundation. She has been unfaithful to the trust reposed abate his haste: but the words the poet has given him in her by Capulet, and is ready to embrace any ex-import the reverse, and seem rather to mean I am not pedient that offers, to avert the consequences of her first buckward in restraining his haste. I endeavour to retard him as much as I can. The poet has hastily infidelity. The picture is not, however, an original, the fallen into similar inadvertencies elsewhere. In the first aurse in the poem exhibits the same readiness to accom-edition the line ran:modate herself to the present conjuncture. Sir John Vanbrugh, in The Relapse, has copied, in this respect,

the character of his nurse from Shakspeare.

'And I am nothing slack to slow his haste."

6 To slow and to foreslow were anciently in common

4 Perhaps Chaucer has given to Einetrius, in The use as verbs:

Knight's Tale, eyes of the same colour :

His nose was high, his eyin bright citryn.'

зн

will you o'erflow

The fields, thereby my march to slow'

Jul. The tears have got small victory by that; For it was bad enough before their spite.

Par. Thou wrong'st it, more than tears, with that report.

Jul. That is no slander, sir, that is a truth; And what I spake, I spake it to my face.

O'er cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,
With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless-skuils;
Or bid me go into a new made grave,
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;
Things that, to hear them told, have made me
tremble;

Par. Thy face is mine, and thou hast slander'd it. And I will do it without fear or doubt,

Jul. It may be so, for it is not mine own.-
Are you at leisure, holy father, now;
Or shall I come to you at evening mass?!

Fri. My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now:
My lord, we must entreat the time alone.
Par. God shield, I should disturb devotion:-
Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse you:
Till then, adieu! and keep this holy kiss.

[Exit PARIS. Jul. O, shut the door! and when thou hast done so,

Come weep with me; Past hope, past cure, past
help!

Fri. Ah, Juliet, I already know thy grief;
It strains me past the compass of my wits:
I hear thou must, and nothing must prorogue it,
On Thursday next be married to this county.
Jul. Tell me not, Friar, that thou hear'st of this,
Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it:
If in thy wisdom, thou canst give no help,
Do thou but call my resolution wise,
And with this knife I'll help it presently.

God join d my heart and Romeo's, thou our hands;
And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo seal'd,
Shall be the label to another deed,2
Or my true heart with treacherous revolt
Turn to another, this shall slay them both:
Therefore, out of thy long-experienc'd time,
Give me some present counsel; or, behold
'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
Shall play the umpire ;3 arbitrating that
Which the commission of thy years and art
Could to no issue of true honour bring.
Be not so long to speak; I long to die,
If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy.
Fri. Hold, daughter; I do spy a kind of hope,
Which craves as desperate an execution
As that is desperate which we would prevent.
If, rather than to marry county Paris,
Thou hadst the strength of will to slay thyself;
Then is it likely, thou wilt undertake

A thing like death to chide away this shame,
That cop'st with death himself to scape from it;
And, if thou dar'st, I'll give thee remedy.

Jul. O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
From off the battlements of yonder tower;
Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk
Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears;
Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,

1 Juliet means vespers, there is no such thing as evening mass. Masses, (as Fynes Moryson observes) are only sung in the morning, and when the priests are fasting.

2 The seals of deeds formerly were appended on distinct slips or labels affixed to the deed. Hence in King Richard II. the Duke of York discovers a covenant which his son the Duke of Aumerle had entered into by the depending seal.

3 i. e. shall decide the struggle between me and my distress.

4 Commission may be here used for authority: but it is more probable that commixtion is the word intended. 5 The quarto 1597 reads

'Or chain me to some steepy mountain's top, Where roaring bears and savage lions roam.' In the text the 4to, of 1599 is followed, except that it has 'or hide me nightly.'

6 Thus the 4to 1599 and the folio: the 4to. 1597 reads, I think, with more spirit:

To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love."

Fri. Hold, then; go home, be merry, give consent
To marry Paris: Wednesday is to-morrow;
To-morrow night look that thou lie alone,
Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber:
Take thon this phial, being then in bed,
And this distilled liquor drink thou off;
When presently, through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize
Each vital spirit; for no pulse shall keep
His natural progress, but surcease to beat:
No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou liv'st;
The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade
To paly ashes; thy eyes' windows fall,
Like death, when he shuts up the day of life;
Each part depriv'd of supple government,
Shall, stiff, and stark, and cold, appear like death:
And in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death
Thou shalt remain full two and forty hours,"
And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.
Now when the bridegroom in the morning comes
To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead:
Then (as the manner of our country is)
In thy best robes uncover'd on the bier.
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault,
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.
In the mean time, against thou shalt awake,
Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift;
And hither shall he come; and he and I
Will watch thy waking, and that very night
Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.
And this shall free thee from this present shame;
If no unconstant toy, nor womanish fear,
Abate thy vaiour in the acting it.

To keep myself a faithful unstain'd wife
To my dear lord, my dearest Romeo.' Boswell.
7 Instead of the remainder of this scene the 4to 1597
has only these four lines:--

And when thou art laid in thy kindred's vault,
I'll send in haste to Mantua to thy lord;
And he shall come and take thee from thy grave.
Jul. Friar, I go; be sure thou send for my dear
Romeo,

Jul. Give me, give me! O, tell me not of fear.
Fri. Hold; get you gone, be strong and prospe

rous

In this resolve: I'll send a friar with speed
To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.
Jul. Love, give me strength! and strength shall
help afford.
Farewell, dear father!
[Exeunt.

SCENE II. A Room in Capulet's House. En-
ter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, Nurse, and
Servant.

Cap. So many guests invite as here are writ.— [Exit Servant. Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks. 2 Serv. You shall have none ill, sir; for I'll try if they can lick their fingers.11

8 The Italian custom here alluded to, of carrying the dead body to the grave richly dressed, and with the face uncovered (which is not mentioned by Painter,) Shakspeare found particularly described in The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet:—

'Another use there is, that whosoever dies,

Borne to the church, with open face upon the bier he lies,

In wonted weed attir'd, not wrapt in winding sheet. Thus also Ophelia's Song, in Hamlet:

"They bore him bare-faced on the bier.

9 If no fickle freak. no light caprice, no change of fancy, hinder the performance. The expressions are from the poem.

10 Capulet has in a former scene said :-
We'll keep no great ado:--

we'll have some half a dozen friends.'
The poet has made him alter his mind strangely, or had
forgotten what he had made him say before. (See Act
iii. Sc. iv.) Malone observes that the former scene was
of the poet's own invention, and that he here recollected
poem :-
he myndes to make for him a costly feast."
11 This adage is found in Puttenham's Arte of English
Poesie, 1589-

the

'As the olde cocke crowes so doeth the chicke: A bad cooke that cannot his owne fingers lick.'

Enter JULIET.

Nurse. See, where she comes from shrift' with merry look.

Cap. How now, my headstrong? where have you been gadding?

Jul. Where I have learn'd me to repent the sin
Of disobedient opposition

To you, and your behests; and am enjoin'd
By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here,
And beg your pardon :-Pardon, I beseech you!
Henceforward I am ever rul'd by you.

Cap. Send for the county: go tell him of this;
I'll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning.
Jul. I met the youthful lord at Laurence' cell;
And gave him what becomed2 love I might,
Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty.

Cap. Why, I am glad on't; this is well,-stand
up:

This is as't should be.-Let me see the county;
Av, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.-
Now, afore God, this reverend holy friar,
All our whole city is much bound to him."
Jul. Nurse, will you go with me into my closet,
To help me sort such needful ornaments
As you think fit to furnish me to-morrow?
La. Cap. No, not till Thursday; there is time
enough.

to-morrow.

Cap. Go, nurse, go with her:-we'll to church
[Exeunt JULIET and Nurse.
La. Cap. We shall be short in our provision;
"Tis now near night.
Cap.
Tush! I will stir about,
And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife :
Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her;
I'll not to bed to-night ;-let me alone;
I'll play the housewife for this once.-What, ho!
They are all forth: Well, I will walk myself
To county Paris, to prepare him up
Against to-morrow: my heart is wondrous light,
Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim'd.
[Exeunt.
SCENE III. Juliet's Chamber. Enter JULIET

and Nurse.

Daggers, or, as they were more commonly called, knives. (says Mr. Gifford,) were worn at all times by every woman in England; whether they were so worn in Italy, Shakspeare, I believe, never inquired, and I cannot tell.Works of Ben Jonson, vol v. p. 221.

6 This idea was probably suggested to the poet by his native place. The charnel at Stratford-upon-Avon is a very large one, and perhaps contains a greater number]

As are behoveful for our state to-morrow;
So please you, let me now be left alone,
And let the nurse this night sit up with you;
For, I am sure, you have your hands full all,
In this so sudden business.

La. Cap.
Good night!
Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.
[Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse.
Jul. Farewell!4-God knows, when we shall
meet again.

That almost freezes up the heat of life:
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
Nurse!-What should she do here?
I'll call them back again to comfort me :-

My dismal scene I needs must act alone.—
Come, phial.-

What if this mixture do not work at all?
Must I of force be married to the county ?-
No, no;-this shall forbid it:-lie thou there.--
[Laying down a Dagger.

What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead;
Lest in this marriage he should he 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:
I will not entertain so bad a thought.-
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
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,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
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 these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies fest'ring in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;-
Alack, alack! is it not like, that I,

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?
And madly play with my forefathers' joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
O, look! methinks, I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point:-Stay, Tybalt, stay!-
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

[She throws herself on the Bed. SCENE IV. Capulet's Hall. Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse.

La. Cap. Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse.

of bones than are to be found in any other repository of the same kind in England.

7 To fester is to corrupt. So in King Edward III. 1599:-

'Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.' This line also occurs in the ninety-fourth Sonnet of Shakspeare. The play of Edward III. has been ascribed to him.

8 The mandrake, (says Thomas Newton in his Herbal) has been idly represented as a creature having life, and engendered under the earth of the seed of some dead person that hath beene convicted and put to death for some felonie or murther, and that they had the same in such dampish and funerall places where the saide convicted persons were buried,' &c. So in Webster's Duchess of Malfy, 1623

I have this night digg'd up a mandrake,
And am grown mad with it.'
9 i. e. distracted.

Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the | I must needs wake you: Lady! lady! lady! pastry.' [Exit Nurse. Alas! alas !---Help! help! my lady's dead!-O, well-a-day, that ever I was born!--Some aqua-vitæ, ho!---my lord! my lady! Enter LADY CAPULET.

Cap. 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:
Spare not for cost.

La. Cap.
Go, go, you cot-quean, go,
Get you to bed; 'faith, you'll be sick to-morrow
For this night's watching.2

Cap. No, not a whit; What! I have watch'd ere

Cap. Make haste, make haste. [Exit 1 Serv.]--
Sirrah, fetch drier logs;

Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.
2 Serv. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs,
And never trouble Peter for the matter. [Erit.
Cap. 'Mass, and well said; A merry whoreson!
ha,

Thou shalt be logger-head.-Good faith, 'tis day:
The county will be here with music straight.
[Music within.
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,
Make haste! the bridegroom he is come already:
Make haste, I say!