Key moments in Romeo and Juliet and some significant facts about the play and its characters.
Every director will choose their own key moments in Romeo and Juliet depending on how they are interpreting the play. Here we’ve listed some important moments in the order in which they appear in the play.
We refer to the RSC Shakespeare edition of the plays. Act and scene numbers vary with different editions.
The scene is set (Act 1 Scene 1)
Montague and Capulet servants clash in the street, the Prince threatens dire punishment if another such brawl should take place, and Romeo tells his friend, Benvolio, of his obsession with Rosaline.
The lovers meet for the first time (Act 1 Scene 4)
Romeo is persuaded to attend a masked party at the Capulet household. Not knowing who she is, he falls in love with Juliet the moment he sees her, and she, equally ignorant that he is a Montague, falls just as instantly for him (this is Act 1, Scene 5 in many editions).
Romeo risks death to meet Juliet again (Act 2 Scene 1)
When everyone has left the party, Romeo creeps into the Capulet garden and sees Juliet on her balcony. They reveal their mutual love and Romeo leaves, promising to arrange a secret marriage and let Juliet’s messenger, her old Nurse, have the details the following morning. This famous scene, known as the Balcony Scene, is numbered Act 2, Scene 2 in many editions.
The wedding is held in secret (Act 2 Scene 5)
Juliet tells her parents she is going to make her confession to Friar Laurence, meets Romeo there and, despite some personal misgivings, the friar marries them immediately.
Romeo angrily kills Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt (Act 3 Scene 1)
Romeo meets Tybalt in the street, and is challenged by him to a duel. Romeo refuses to fight and his friend Mercutio is so disgusted by this ‘cowardice’ that the takes up the challenge instead. As Romeo tries to break up the fight, Tybalt kills Mercutio and, enraged, Romeo then kills Tybalt. The Prince arrives and, on hearing the full story, banishes Romeo rather than have him executed.
The unhappy couple are parted (Act 3 Scene 5)
Arranged by the Friar and the Nurse, Romeo and Juliet have spent their wedding night together. They are immediately parted though, as Romeo must leave for banishment in Mantua or die if he is found in Verona. Believing her grief to be for the death of her cousin, Juliet’s father tries to cheer Juliet by arranging her immediate marriage to Paris. He threatens to disown her when she asks for the marriage to be at least postponed, and she runs to the Friar for advice and help.
The Friar suggests a dangerous solution (Act 4 Scene 1)
Juliet arrives at the Friar’s to be met by Paris, who is busy discussing their wedding plans. She is so desperate that she threatens suicide, and the Friar instead suggests that she takes a potion that will make her appear to be dead. He promises to send a message to Romeo, asking him to return secretly and be with Juliet when she wakes, once her ‘body’ has been taken to the family crypt.
Juliet is found ‘dead’ (Act 4 Scene 4)
The Nurse discovers Juliet ‘s ‘body’ dead’ when she goes to wake her for her marriage Paris. Friar Laurence is called, counsels the family to accept their grief, and arranges for Juliet to be ‘buried’ immediately.
Romeo learns of the tragedy and plans suicide (Act 5 Scene 1)
Romeo’s servant, Balthasar, reaches Mantua before the Friar’s messenger and tells Romeo that Juliet is dead. Romeo buys poison and leaves for Verona, planning to die alongside Juliet’s body.
The tragic conclusion (Act 5 Scene 3)
Trying to break into the Capulet crypt, Romeo is disturbed by Paris and they fight. Romeo kills Paris and reaches Juliet’s body. He drinks the poison, kisses his wife for the last time, and dies. Having learned that Romeo never received his message, the Friar comes to the crypt to be with Juliet when she wakes. He finds Paris’s body and reaches Juliet just as she revives. He cannot persuade her to leave her dead husband, and runs away in fear. Juliet realises what has happened, takes Romeo’s knife and stabs herself to death with it. The watchmen discover the gruesome sight and call the Prince, to whom the Friar confesses everything. Having heard the full story, the Montagues and Capulets are reconciled. Peace has been achieved, but the price has been the lives of two innocent young lovers.
Facts about Romeo and Juliet
- The first words of Romeo and Juliet are in the form of a sonnet. This prologue reveals the ending to the audience before the play has properly begun.
- The play can be considered as a companion piece to that staged by the Mechanicals at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Here the young lovers take their lives in earnest, but in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the story of Pyramus and Thisbe becomes comic entertainment for three sets of newly-weds.
- 90% of the play is in verse, with only 10% in prose. It contains some of Shakespeare’s most beautiful poetry, including the sonnet Romeo and Juliet share when they first meet.
- Although a story of passionate first love, the play is also full of puns. Even in death, Mercutio manages to joke: ‘ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man’.
- Juliet is only 13 at the time she meets and marries Romeo, but we never learn his exact age.
- Like King Lear, the play was adapted by Nahum Tate, changing the story to give it a happy ending.
- In 1748, the famous David Garrick staged a version which did not include any mention of Romeo’s love for Rosaline, because Garrick felt this made the tragic hero appear too fickle.
- In March 1662, Mary Saunderson became almost certainly the first woman to play Juliet on the professional stage. Until the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, women were not allowed to perform in public.
- Romeo and Juliet, alongside Hamlet, is probably Shakespeare’s most performed play and has also been adapted in many forms.
- The musical West Side Story is probably the most famous adaptation, while Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet brought Shakespeare’s play to the MTV generation.
Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benuolio, with fiue or sixe
other Maskers, Torch-bearers.
Rom.
What shall this speeh be spoke for our excuse?
Or shall we on without Apologie?
Ben.
The date is out of such prolixitie,
Weele haue no Cupid, hood winkt with a skarfe,
Bearing a Tartars painted Bow of lath,
Skaring the Ladies like a Crow-keeper.
But let them measure vs by what they will,
Weele measure them with a Measure, and be gone.
Rom.
Giue me a Torch, I am not for this ambling.
Being but heauy I will beare the light.
Mer.
Nay gentle Romeo, we must haue you dance.
Rom.
Not I beleeue me, you haue dancing shooes
With nimble soles, I haue a soale of Lead
So stakes me to the ground, I cannot moue.
Mer.
You are a Louer, borrow Cupids wings,
And soare with them aboue a common bound.
Rom.
I am too sore enpearced with his shaft,
To soare with his light feathers, and to bound:
I cannot bound a pitch aboue dull woe,
Vnder loues heauy burthen doe I sinke.
Hora.
And to sinke in it should you burthen loue,
Too great oppression for a tender thing.
Rom.
Is loue a tender thing? it is too rough,
Too rude, too boysterous, and it pricks like thorne.
Mer.
If loue be rough with you, be rough with loue,
Pricke loue for pricking, and you beat loue downe,
Giue me a Case to put my visage in,
A Visor for a Visor, what care I
What curious eye doth quote deformities:
Here are the Beetle-browes shall blush for me.
Ben.
Come knocke and enter, and no sooner in,
But euery man betake him to his legs.
Rom.
A Torch for me, let wantons light of heart
Tickle the sencelesse rushes with their heeles:
For I am prouerb’d with a Grandsier Phrase,
Ile be a Candle-holder and looke on,
The game was nere so faire, and I am done.
Mer.
Tut, duns the Mouse, the Constables owne word,
If thou art dun, weele draw thee from the mire.
Or saue your reuerence loue, wherein thou stickest
Vp to the eares, come we burne day-light ho.
Rom.
Nay that’s not so.
Mer.
I meane sir I delay,
We wast our lights in vaine, lights, lights, by day;
Take our good meaning, for our Iudgement sits
Fiue times in that, ere once in our fiue wits.
Rom.
And we meane well in going to this Maske,
But ’tis no wit to go.
Rom.
I dreampt a dreame to night.
Mer.
And so did I.
Mer.
That dreamers often lye.
Ro.
In bed a sleepe while they do dreame things true.
Mer.
O then I see Queene Mab hath beene with you:
She is the Fairies Midwife, & she comes in shape no big
ger then Agat-stone, on the fore-finger of an Alderman,
drawne with a teeme of little Atomies, ouer mens noses as
they lie asleepe: her Waggon Spokes made of long Spinners
legs: the Couer of the wings of Grashoppers, her
Traces of the smallest Spiders web, her coullers of the
Moonshines watry Beames, her Whip of Crickets bone,
the Lash of Philome, her Waggoner, a small gray-coated
Gnat, not halfe so bigge as a round little Worme, prickt
from the Lazie-finger of a man. Her Chariot is an emptie
Haselnut, made by the Ioyner Squirrel or old Grub, time
out a mind, the Faries Coach-makers: & in this state she
gallops night by night, through Louers braines: and then
they dreame of Loue. On Courtiers knees, that dreame on
Cursies strait: ore Lawyers fingers, who strait dreamt on
Fees, ore Ladies lips, who strait on kisses dreame, which
oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, because their
breath with Sweet meats tainted are. Sometime she gallops
ore a Courtiers nose, & then dreames he of smelling
out a sute: & somtime comes she with Tith pigs tale, tickling
a Parsons nose as a lies asleepe, then he dreames of
another Benefice. Sometime she driueth ore a Souldiers
necke, & then dreames he of cutting Forraine throats, of
Breaches, Ambuscados, Spanish Blades: Of Healths fiue
Fadome deepe, and then anon drums in his eares, at which
he startes and wakes; and being thus frighted, sweares a
prayer or two & sleepes againe: this is that very Mab that
plats the manes of Horses in the night: & bakes the Elklocks
in foule sluttish haires, which once vntangled, much
misfortune bodes,
This is the hag, when Maides lie on their backs,
That presses them, and learnes them first to beare,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she.
Rom.
Peace, peace, Mercutio peace,
Thou talk’st of nothing.
Mer.
True, I talke of dreames:
Which are the children of an idle braine,
Begot of nothing, but vaine phantasie,
Which is as thin of substance as the ayre,
And more inconstant then the wind, who wooes
Euen now the frozen bosome of the North:
And being anger’d, puffes away from thence,
Turning his side to the dew dropping South.
Ben.
This wind you talke of blowes vs from our selues,
Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
Rom.
I feare too early, for my mind misgiues,
Some consequence yet hanging in the starres,
Shall bitterly begin his fearefull date
With this nights reuels, and expire the tearme
Of a despised life clos’d in my brest:
By some vile forfeit of vntimely death.
But he that hath the stirrage of my course,
Direct my sute: on lustie Gentlemen.
Ben.
Strike Drum.
They march about the Stage, and Seruingmen come forth
with their napkins.
Enter Seruant.
Ser.
Where’s Potpan, that he helpes not to take away?
He shift a Trencher? he scrape a Trencher?
1.
When good manners, shall lie in one or two mens
hands, and they vnwasht too, ’tis a foule thing.
Ser.
Away with the Ioynstooles, remoue the Court-
cubbord, looke to the Plate: good thou, saue mee a piece
of Marchpane, and as thou louest me, let the Porter let in
Susan Grindstone, and Nell, Anthonie and Potpan.
2.
I Boy readie.
Ser.
You are lookt for, and cal’d for, askt for, & sought
for, in the great Chamber.
1
We cannot be here and there too, chearly Boyes,
Exeunt.Be brisk awhile, and the longer liuer take all.
Enter all the Guests and Gentlewomen to the
Maskers.
1. Capu.
Welcome Gentlemen,
Ladies that haue their toes
Vnplagu’d with Cornes, will walke about with you:
Ah my Mistresses, which of you all
Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty,
She Ile sweare hath Cornes: am I come neare ye now?
Welcome Gentlemen, I haue seene the day
That I haue worne a Visor, and could tell
A whispering tale in a faire Ladies eare:
Such as would please: ’tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone,
You are welcome Gentlemen, come Musitians play:
Musicke plaies: and the dance.
A Hall, Hall, giue roome, and foote it Girles,
More light you knaues, and turne the Tables vp:
And quench the fire, the Roome is growne too hot.
Ah sirrah, this vnlookt for sport comes well:
Nay sit, nay sit, good Cozin Capulet,
For you and I are past our dauncing daies:
How long ‘ist now since last your selfe and I
Were in a Maske?
2. Capu.
Berlady thirty yeares.
1. Capu.
What man: ’tis not so much, ’tis not so much,
‘Tis since the Nuptiall of Lucentio,
Come Pentycost as quickely as it will,
Some fiue and twenty yeares, and then we Maskt.
2. Cap.
‘Tis more, ’tis more, his Sonne is elder sir:
His Sonne is thirty.
3. Cap.
Will you tell me that?
His Sonne was but a Ward two yeares agoe.
Rom.
What Ladie is that which doth inrich the hand
Of yonder Knight?
Ser.
I know not sir.
Rom.
O she doth teach the Torches to burne bright:
It seemes she hangs vpon the cheeke of night,
As a rich Iewel in an Æthiops eare:
Beauty too rich for vse, for earth too deare:
So shewes a Snowy Doue trooping with Crowes,
As yonder Lady ore her fellowes showes;
The measure done, Ile watch her place of stand,
And touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart loue till now, forsweare it sight,
For I neuer saw true Beauty till this night.
Tib.
This by his voice, should be a Mountague.
Fetch me my Rapier Boy, what dares the slaue
Come hither couer’d with an antique face,
To fleere and scorne at our Solemnitie?
Now by the stocke and Honour of my kin,
To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.
Cap.
Why how now kinsman,
Wherefore storme you so?
Tib.
Vncle this is a Mountague, our foe:
A Villaine that is hither come in spight,
To scorne at our Solemnitie this night.
Cap.
Young Romeo is it?
Tib.
‘Tis he, that Villaine Romeo.
Cap.
Content thee gentle Coz, let him alone,
A beares him like a portly Gentleman:
And to say truth, Verona brags of him,
To be a vertuous and well gouern’d youth:
I would not for the wealth of all the towne,
Here in my house do him disparagement:
Therfore be patient, take no note of him,
It is my will, the which if thou respect,
Shew a faire presence, and put off these frownes,
An ill beseeming semblance for a Feast.
Tib.
It fits when such a Villaine is a guest,
Ile not endure him.
Cap.
He shall be endur’d.
What goodman boy, I say he shall, go too,
Am I the Maister here or you? go too,
Youle not endure him, God shall mend my soule,
Youle make a Mutinie among the Guests:
You will set cocke a hoope, youle be the man.
Tib.
Why Vncle, ’tis a shame.
Cap.
Go too, go too,
You are a sawcy Boy, ‘ist so indeed?
This tricke may chance to scath you, I know what,
You must contrary me, marry ’tis time.
Well said my hearts, you are a Princox, goe,
Be quiet, or more light, more light for shame,
Ile make you quiet. What, chearely my hearts.
Tib.
Patience perforce, with wilfull choler meeting,
Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting:
I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall
Exit.Now seeming sweet, conuert to bitter gall.
Rom.
If I prophane with my vnworthiest hand,
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
My lips to blushing Pilgrims did ready stand,
To smooth that rough touch, with a tender kisse.
Iul.
Good Pilgrime,
You do wrong your hand too much.
Which mannerly deuotion shewes in this,
For Saints haue hands, that Pilgrims hands do tuch,
And palme to palme, is holy Palmers kisse.
Rom.
Haue not Saints lips, and holy Palmers too?
Iul.
I Pilgrim, lips that they must vse in prayer.
Rom.
O then deare Saint, let lips do what hands do,
They pray (grant thou) least faith turne to dispaire.
Iul.
Saints do not moue,
Though grant for prayers sake.
Rom.
Then moue not while my prayers effect I take:
Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg’d.
Iul.
Then haue my lips the sin that they haue tooke.
Rom.
Sin from my lips? O trespasse sweetly vrg’d:
Giue me my sin againe.
Iul.
You kisse by’th’booke.
Nur.
Madam your Mother craues a word with you.
Rom.
What is her Mother?
Nurs.
Marrie Batcheler,
Her Mother is the Lady of the house,
And a good Lady, and a wise, and Vertuous,
I Nur’st her Daughter that you talkt withall:
I tell you, he that can lay hold of her,
Shall haue the chincks.
Rom.
Is she a Capulet?
O deare account! My life is my foes debt.
Ben.
Away, be gone, the sport is at the best.
Rom.
I so I feare, the more is my vnrest.
Cap.
Nay Gentlemen prepare not to be gone,
We haue a trifling foolish Banquet towards:
Is it e’ne so? why then I thanke you all.
I thanke you honest Gentlemen, good night:
More Torches here: come on, then let’s to bed.
Ah sirrah, by my faie it waxes late,
Ile to my rest.
Iuli.
Come hither Nurse,
What is yond Gentleman:
Nur.
The Sonne and Heire of old Tyberio.
Iuli.
What’s he that now is going out of doore?
Nur.
Marrie that I thinke be young Petruchio.
Iul.
What’s he that follows here that would not dance?
Nur.
I know not.
Iul.
Go aske his name: if he be married,
My graue is like to be my wedded bed.
Nur.
His name is Romeo, and a Mountague,
The onely Sonne of your great Enemie.
Iul.
My onely Loue sprung from my onely hate,
Too early seene, vnknowne, and knowne too late,
Prodigious birth of Loue it is to me,
That I must loue a loathed Enemie.
Nur.
What’s this? whats this?
Iul.
A rime, I learne euen now
Of one I dan’st withall.
One cals within, Iuliet.
Nur.
Anon, anon:
Exeunt.Come let’s away, the strangers all are gone.
Chorus.
Now old desire doth in his death bed lie,
And yong affection gapes to be his Hei […],
That faire, for which Loue gron’d for and would die,
With tender Iuliet matcht, is now not faire.
Now Romeo is beloued, and Loues againe,
A like bewitched by the charme of lookes:
But to his foe suppose’d he must complaine,
And she steale Loues sweet bait from fearefull hookes:
Being held a foe, he may not haue accesse
To breath such vowes as Louers vse to sweare,
And she as much in Loue, her meanes much lesse,
To meete her new Beloued any where:
But passion lends them Power, time, meanes to meete,
Temp’ring extremities with extreame sweete.
Enter Romeo alone.
Rom.
Can I goe forward when my heart is here?
Turne backe dull earth, and find thy Center out.
Enter Benuolio with Mercutio.
Ben.
Romeo, my Cozen Romeo, Romeo.
Merc.
He is wise,
And on my life hath stolne him home to bed.
Ben.
He ran this way and leapt this Orchard wall.
Call good Mercutio:
Nay, Ile coniure too.
Mer.
Romeo, Humours, Madman, Passion, Louer,
Appeare thou in the likenesse of a sigh,
Speake but one rime, and I am satisfied:
Cry me but ay me, Prouant, but Loue and day,
Speake to my goship Venus one faire word,
One Nickname for her purblind Sonne and her,
Young Abraham Cupid he that shot so true,
When King Cophetua lou’d the begger Maid,
He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moueth not,
The Ape is dead, I must coniure him,
I coniure thee by Rosalines bright eyes,
By her High forehead, and her Scarlet lip,
By her Fine foote, Straight leg, and Quiuering thigh,
And the Demeanes, that there Adiacent lie,
That in thy likenesse thou appeare to vs.
Ben.
And if he heare thee thou wilt anger him.
Mer.
This cannot anger him, t’would anger him
To raise a spirit in his Mistresse circle,
Of some strange nature, letting it stand
Till she had laid it, and coniured it downe,
That were some spight.
My inuocation is faire and honest, & in his Mistris name,
I coniure onely but to raise vp him.
Ben.
Come, he hath hid himselfe among these Trees
To be consorted with the Humerous night:
Blind is his Loue, and best befits the darke.
Mer.
If Loue be blind, Loue cannot hit the marke,
Now will he sit vnder a Medler tree,
And wish his Mistresse were that kind of Fruite,
As Maides call Medlers when they laugh alone,
O Romeo that she were, O that she were
An open, or thou a Poprin Peare,
Romeo goodnight, Ile to my Truckle bed,
This Field bed is to cold for me to sleepe,
Come shall we go?
Ben.
Go then, for ’tis in vaine to seeke him here
Exeunt.That meanes not to be found.
Rom.
He ieasts at Scarres that neuer felt a wound,
But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Iuliet is the Sunne,
Arise faire Sun and kill the enuious Moone,
Who is already sicke and pale with griefe,
That thou her Maid art far more faire then she:
Be not her Maid since she is enuious,
Her Vestal liuery is but sicke and greene,
And none but fooles do weare it, cast it off:
It is my Lady, O it is my Loue, O that she knew she were,
She speakes, yet she sayes nothing, what of that?
Her eye discourses, I will answere it:
I am too bold ’tis not to me she speakes:
Two of the fairest starres in all the Heauen,
Hauing some businesse do entreat her eyes,
To twinckle in their Spheres till they returne.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head,
The brightnesse of her cheeke would shame those starres,
As day-light doth a Lampe, her eye in heauen,
Would through the ayrie Region streame so bright,
That Birds would sing, and thinke it were not night:
See how she leanes her cheeke vpon her hand.
O that I were a Gloue vpon that hand,
That I might touch that cheeke.
Iul.
Ay me.
Rom.
She speakes.
Oh speake againe bright Angell, for thou art
As glorious to this night being ore my head,
As is a winged messenger of heauen
Vnto the white vpturned wondring eyes
Of mortalls that fall backe to gaze on him,
When he bestrides the lazie puffing Cloudes,
And sailes vpon the bosome of the ayre.
Iul.
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Denie thy Father and refuse thy name:
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworne my Loue,
And Ile no longer be a Capulet.
Rom.
Shall I heare more, or shall I speake at this?
Iu.
‘Tis but thy name that is my Enemy:
Thou art thy selfe, though not a Mountague,
What’s Mountague? it is nor hand nor foote,
Nor arme, nor face, O be some other name
Belonging to a man.
What? in a names that which we call a Rose,
By any other word would smell as sweete,
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo cal’d,
Retaine that deare perfection which he owes,
Without that title Romeo, doffe thy name,
And for thy name which is no part of thee,
Take all my selfe.
Rom.
I take thee at thy word:
Call me but Loue, and Ile be new baptiz’d,
Hence foorth I neuer will be Romeo.
Iuli.
What man art thou, that thus bescreen’d in night
So stumblest on my counsell?
Rom.
By a name,
I know not how to tell thee who I am:
My name deare Saint, is hatefull to my selfe,
Because it is an Enemy to thee,
Had I it written, I would teare the word.
Iuli.
My eares haue yet not drunke a hundred words
Of thy tongues vttering, yet I know the sound.
Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?
Rom.
Neither faire Maid, if either thee dislike.
Iul.
How cam’st thou hither.
Tell me, and wherefore?
The Orchard walls are high, and hard to climbe,
And the place death, considering who thou art,
If any of my kinsmen find thee here,
Rom.
With Loues light wings
Did I ore-perch these Walls,
For stony limits cannot hold Loue out,
And what Loue can do, that dares Loue attempt:
Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me.
Iul.
If they do see thee, they will murther thee.
Rom.
Alacke there lies more perill in thine eye,
Then twenty of their Swords, looke thou but sweete,
And I am proofe against their enmity.
Iul.
I would not for the world they saw thee here.
Rom.
I haue nights cloake to hide me from their eyes
And but thou loue me, let them finde me here,
My life were better ended by their hate,
Then death proroged wanting of thy Loue.
Iul.
By whose direction found’st thou out this place?
Rom.
By Loue that first did promp me to enquire,
He lent me counsell, and I lent him eyes,
I am no Pylot, yet wert thou as far
As that vast-shore-washet with the farthest Sea,
I should aduenture for such Marchandise.
Iul.
Thou knowest the maske of night is on my face,
Else would a Maiden blush bepaint my cheeke,
For that which thou hast heard me speake to night,
Faine would I dwell on forme, faine, faine, denie
What I haue spoke, but farewell Complement,
Doest thou Loue? I know thou wilt say I,
And I will take thy word, yet if thou swear’st,
Thou maiest proue false: at Louers periuries
They say Ioue laught, oh gentle Romeo,
If thou dost Loue, pronounce it faithfully:
Or if thou thinkest I am too quickly wonne,
Ile frowne and be peruerse, and say thee nay,
So thou wilt wooe: But else not for the world.
In truth faire Mountague I am too fond:
And therefore thou maiest thinke my behauiour light,
But trust me Gentleman, Ile proue more true,
Then those that haue coying to be strange,
I should haue beene more strange, I must confesse,
But that thou ouer heard’st ere I was ware
My true Loues passion, therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yeelding to light Loue,
Which the darke night hath so discouered.
Rom.
Lady, by yonder Moone I vow,
That tips with siluer all these Fruite tree tops.
Iul.
O sweare not by the Moone, th’inconstant Moone,
That monethly changes in her circled Orbe,
Least that thy Loue proue likewise variable.
Rom.
What shall I sweare by?
Iul.
Do not sweare at all:
Or if thou wilt sweare by thy gratious selfe,
Which is the God of my Idolatry,
And Ile beleeue thee.
Rom.
If my hearts deare loue.
Iuli.
Well do not sweare, although I ioy in thee:
I haue no ioy of this contract to night,
It is too rash, too vnaduis’d, too sudden,
Too like the lightning which doth cease to be
Ere, one can say, it lightens, Sweete good night:
This bud of Loue by Summers ripening breath,
May proue a beautious Flower when next we meete:
Goodnight, goodnight, as sweete repose and rest,
Come to thy heart, as that within my brest.
Rom.
O wilt thou leaue me so vnsatisfied?
Iuli.
What satisfaction can’st thou haue to night?
Ro.
Th’exchange of thy Loues faithfull vow for mine.
Iul.
I gaue thee mine before thou did’st request it:
And yet I would it were to giue againe.
Rom.
Would’st thou withdraw it,
For what purpose Loue?
Iul.
But to be franke and giue it thee againe,
And yet I wish but for the thing I haue,
My bounty is as boundlesse as the Sea,
My Loue as deepe, the more I giue to thee
The more I haue, for both are Infinite:
I heare some noyse within deare Loue adue:
Cals within.
Anon good Nurse, sweet Mountague be true:
Stay but a little, I will come againe.
Rom.
O blessed blessed night, I am afear’d
Being in night, all this is but a dreame,
Too flattering sweet to be substantiall.
Iul.
Three words deare Romeo,
And goodnight indeed,
If that thy bent of Loue be Honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word to morrow,
By one that Ile procure to come to thee,
Where and what time thou wilt performe the right,
And all my Fortunes at thy foote Ile lay,
And follow thee my Lord throughout the world.
Within: Madam.
I come, anon: but if thou meanest not well,
Within: Madam.I do beseech theee
(By and by I come)
To cease thy strife, and leaue me to my griefe,
To morrow will I send.
Rom.
So thriue my soule.
Iu.
Exit.A thousand times goodnight.
Rome.
A thousand times the worse to want thy light,
Loue goes toward Loue as school-boyes frō thier books
But Loue frō Loue, towards schoole with heauie lookes.
Enter Iuliet againe.
Iul.
Hist Romeo hist: O for a Falkners voice,
To lure this Tassell gentle backe againe,
Bondage is hoarse, and may not speake aloud,
Else would I teare the Caue where Eccho lies,
And make her ayrie tongue more hoarse, then
With repetition of my Romeo.
Rom.
It is my soule that calls vpon my name.
How siluer sweet, sound Louers tongues by night,
Like softest Musicke to attending eares.
Iul.
Romeo.
Rom.
My Neece.
Iul.
What a clock to morrow
Shall I send to thee?
Rom.
By the houre of nine.
Iul.
I will not faile, ’tis twenty yeares till then,
I haue forgot why I did call thee backe.
Rom.
Let me stand here till thou remember it.
Iul.
I shall forget, to haue thee still stand there,
Remembring how I Loue thy company.
Rom.
And Ile still stay, to haue thee still forget,
Forgetting any other home but this.
Iul.
‘Tis almost morning, I would haue thee gone,
And yet no further then a wantons Bird,
That let’s it hop a little from his hand,
Like a poore prisoner in his twisted Gyues,
And with a silken thred plucks it backe againe,
So louing Iealous of his liberty.
Rom.
I would I were thy Bird.
Iul.
Sweet so would I,
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing:
Good night, good night.
Rom.
Parting is such sweete sorrow,
That I shall say goodnight, till it be morrow.
Iul.
Sleepe dwell vpon thine eyes, peace in thy brest.
Rom.
Would I were sleepe and peace so sweet to rest,
The gray ey’d morne smiles on the frowning night,
Checkring the Easterne Clouds with streakes of light,
And darkenesse fleckel’d like a drunkard reeles,
From forth dayes pathway, made by Titans wheeles.
Hence will I to my ghostly Fries close Cell,
Exit.His helpe to craue, and my deare hap to tell.
Enter Frier alone with a basket.
Fri.
The gray ey’d morne smiles on the frowning night,
Checkring the Easterne Cloudes with streaks of light:
And fleckled darknesse like a drunkard reeles,
From forth daies path, and Titans burning wheeles:
Now ere the Sun aduance his burning eye,
The day to cheere, and nights danke dew to dry,
I must vpfill this Osier Cage of ours,
With balefull weedes, and precious Iuiced flowers,
The earth that’s Natures mother, is her Tombe,
What is her burying graue that is her wombe:
And from her wombe children of diuers kind
We sucking on her naturall bosome find:
Many for many vertues excellent:
None but for some, and yet all different.
O mickle is the powerfull grace that lies
In Plants, Hearbs, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile, that on earth doth liue,
But to the earth some speciall good doth giue.
Nor ought so good, but strain’d from that faire vse,
Reuolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
Vertue it selfe turnes vice being misapplied,
And vice sometime by action dignified.
Enter Romeo.
Within the infant rin’d of this weake flower,
Poyson hath residence, and medicine power:
For this being smelt, with that part cheares each part,
Being tasted slayes all sences with the heart.
Two such opposed Kings encampe them still,
In man as well as Hearbes, grace and rude will:
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soone the Canker death eates vp that Plant.
Rom.
Good morrow Father.
Fri.
Benedecite.
What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?
Young Sonne, it argues a distempered head,
So soone to bid goodmorrow to thy bed;
Care keepes his watch in euery old mans eye,
And where Care lodges, sleepe will neuer lye:
But where vnbrused youth with vnstuft braine
Doth couch his lims, there, golden sleepe doth raigne;
Therefore thy earlinesse doth me assure,
Thou art vprous’d with some distemprature;
Or if not so, then here I hit it right.
Our Romeo hath not beene in bed to night.
Rom.
That last is true, the sweeter rest was mine.
Fri.
God pardon sin: wast thou with Rosaline?
Rom.
With Rosaline, my ghostly Father? No,
I haue forgot that name, and that names woe.
Fri.
That’s my good Son, but wher hast thou bin then?
Rom.
Ile tell thee ere thou aske it me agen:
I haue beene feasting with mine enemie,
Where on a sudden one hath wounded me,
That’s by me wounded: both our remedies
Within thy helpe and holy phisicke lies:
I beare no hatred, blessed man: for loe
My intercession likewise steads my foe.
Fri.
Be plaine good Son, rest homely in thy drift,
Ridling confession, findes but ridling shrift.
Rom.
Then plainly know my hearts deare Loue is set,
On the faire daughter of rich Capulet:
As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;
And all combin’d, saue what thou must combine
By holy marriage: when and where, and how,
We met, we wooed, and made exchange of vow:
Ile tell thee as we passe, but this I pray,
That thou consent to marrie vs to day.
Fri.
Holy S. Francis, what a change is heere?
Is Rosaline that thou didst Loue so deare
So soone forsaken? young mens Loue then lies
Not truely in their hearts, but in their eyes.
Iesu Maria, what a deale of brine
Hath washt thy sallow cheekes for Rosaline?
How much salt water throwne away in wast,
To season Loue that of it doth not tast.
The Sun not yet thy sighes, from heauen cleares,
Thy old grones yet ringing in my auncient eares:
Lo here vpon thy cheeke the staine doth sit,
Of an old teare that is not washt off yet.
If ere thou wast thy selfe, and these woes thine,
Thou and these woes, were all for Rosaline.
And art thou chang’d? pronounce this sentence then,
Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.
Rom.
Thou chid’st me oft for louing Rosaline.
Fri.
For doting, not for louing pupill mine.
Rom.
And bad’st me bury Loue.
Fri.
Not in a graue,
To lay one in, another out to haue.
Rom.
I pray thee chide me not, her I Loue now
Doth grace for grace, and Loue for Loue allow:
The other did not so.
Fri.
O she knew well,
Thy Loue did read by rote, that could not spell:
But come young wauerer, come goe with me,
In one respect, Ile thy assistant be:
For this alliance may so happy proue,
To turne your houshould rancor to pure Loue.
Rom.
O let vs hence, I stand on sudden hast.
Fri.
Exeunt.Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast.
Enter Benuolio and Mercutio.
Mer.
Where the deu’le should this Romeo be? came he
not home to night?
Ben.
Not to his Fathers, I spoke with his man.
Mer.
Why that same pale hard-harted wench, that Ro
saline torments him so, that he will sure run mad.
Ben.
Tibalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, hath sent a
Letter to his Fathers house.
Mer.
A challenge on my life.
Ben.
Romeo will answere it.
Mer.
Any man that can write, may answere a Letter.
Ben.
Nay, he will answere the Letters Maister how he
dares, being dared.
Mer.
Alas poore Romeo, he is already dead stab’d with
a white wenches blacke eye, runne through the eare with
a Loue song, the very pinne of his heart, cleft with the
blind Bowe-boyes but-shaft, and is he a man to encounter
Tybalt?
Ben.
Why what is Tibalt?
Mer.
More then Prince of Cats. Oh hee’s the Couragious
Captaine of Complements: he fights as you sing
pricksong, keeps time, distance, and proportion, he rests
his minum, one, two, and the third in your bosom: the very
butcher of a silk button, a Dualist, a Dualist: a Gentleman
of the very first house of the first and second cause: ah the
immortall Passado, the Punto reuerso, the Hay.
Ben.
The what?
Mer.
The Pox of such antique lisping affecting phantacies,
these new tuners of accent: Iesu a 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-mee’s, who stand so much on the new form, that they
cannot sit at ease on the old bench. O their bones, their
bones.
Enter Romeo.
Ben.
Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo.
Mer.
Without his Roe, like a dryed Hering. O flesh,
flesh, how art thou fishified? Now is he for the numbers
that Petrarch flowed in: Laura to his Lady, was a kitchen
wench, marrie she had a better Loue to berime her: Dido
a dowdie, Cleopatra a Gipsie, Hellen and Hero, hildinsga
and Harlots: Thisbie a gray eie or so, but not to the purpose.
Signior Romeo, Bon iour, there’s a French salutation to your
French slop: you gaue vs the counterfait fairely last
night.
Romeo.
Good morrow to you both, what counterfeit
did I giue you?
Mer.
The slip sir, the slip, can you not conceiue?
Rom.
Pardon Mercutio, my businesse was great, and in
such a case as mine, a man may straine curtesie.
Mer.
That’s as much as to say, such a case as yours con
strains a man to bow in the hams.
Rom.
Meaning to cursie.
Mer.
Thou hast most kindly hit it.
Rom.
A most curteous exposition.
Mer.
Nay, I am the very pinck of curtesie.
Rom.
Pinke for flower.
Mer.
Right.
Rom.
Why then is my Pump well flowr’d.
Mer.
Sure wit, follow me this ieast, now till thou hast
worne out thy Pump, that when the single sole of it is
worne, the ieast may remaine after the wearing, sole-
singular.
Rom.
O single sol’d ieast,
Soly singular for the singlenesse.
Mer.
Come betweene vs good Benuolio, my wits faints.
Rom.
Swits and spurs,
Swits and spurs, or Ile crie a match.
Mer.
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, then I am sure I haue in my whole fiue. Was I
with you there for the Goose?
Rom.
Thou wast neuer with mee for any thing, when
thou wast not there for the Goose.
Mer.
I will bite thee by the eare for that iest.
Rom.
Nay, good Goose bite not.
Mer.
Thy wit is a very Bitter-sweeting,
It is a most sharpe sawce.
Rom.
And is it not well seru’d into a Sweet-Goose?
Mer.
Oh here’s a wit of Cheuerell, that stretches from
an ynch narrow, to an ell broad.
Rom.
I stretch it out for that word, broad, which added
to the Goose, proues thee farre and wide, abroad Goose.
Mer.
Why is not this better now, then groning for
Loue, now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo: now art
thou what thou art, by Art as well as by Nature, for this
driueling Loue is like a great Naturall, that runs lolling
vp and downe to hid his bable in a hole.
Ben.
Stop there, stop there.
Mer.
Thou desir’st me to stop in my tale against the haire.
Ben.
Thou would’st else haue made thy tale large.
Mer.
O thou art deceiu’d, I would haue made it short,
or I was come to the whole depth of my tale, and meant
indeed to occupie the argument no longer.
Enter Nurse and her man.
Rom.
Here’s a goodly geare.
A sayle, a sayle.
Mer.
Two, two: a Shirt and a Smocke.
Nur.
Peter?
Peter.
Anon.
Nur.
My Fan Peter?
Mer.
Good Peter to hide her face?
For her Fans the fairer face?
Nur.
God ye good morrow Gentlemen.
Mer.
God ye gooden faire Gentlewoman.
Nur.
Is it gooden?
Mer.
‘Tis no lesse I tell you: for the bawdy hand of the
Dyall is now vpon the pricke of Noone.
Nur.
Out vpon you: what a man are you?
Rom.
One Gentlewoman,
That God hath made, himselfe to mar.
Nur.
By my troth it is said, for himselfe to, mar quath
a Gentlemen, can any of you tel me where I may find
the young Romeo?
Romeo.
I can tell you: but young Romeo will be older
when you haue found him, then he was when you sought
him: I am the youngest of that name, for fault of a worse.
Nur.
You say well.
Mer.
Yea is the worst well,
Very well tooke: Ifaith, wisely, wisely.
Nur.
If you be he sir,
I desire some confidence with you?
Ben.
She will endite him to some Supper.
Mer.
A baud, a baud, a baud. So ho.
Rom.
What hast thou found?
Mer.
No Hare sir, vnlesse a Hare sir in a Lenten pie,
that is something stale and hoare ere it be spent.
An old Hare hoare, and an old Hare hoare is very good
meat in Lent.
But a Hare that is hoare is too much for a score, when it
hoares ere it be spent,
Romeo will you come to your Fathers? Weele to dinner
thither.
Rom.
I will follow you.
Mer.
Farewell auncient Lady:
Exit. Mercutio, Benuolio.Farewell Lady, Lady, Lady.
Nur.
I pray you sir, what sawcie Merchant was this
that was so full of his roperie?
Rom.
A Gentleman Nurse, that loues to heare himselfe
talke, and will speake more in a minute, then he will stand
to in a Moneth.
Nur.
And a speake any thing against me, Ile take him
downe, & a were lustier then he is, and twentie such Iacks:
and if I cannot, Ile finde those that shall: scuruie knaue, I
am none of his flurt-gils, I am none of his skaines mates,
and thou must stand by too and suffer euery knaue to vse
me at his pleasure.
Pet.
I saw no man vse you at his pleasure: if I had, my
weapon should quickly haue beene out, I warrant you, I
dare draw assoone as another man, if I see occasion in a
good quarrell, and the law on my side.
Nur
Now afore God, I am so vext, that euery part about
me quiuers, skuruy knaue: pray you sir a word: and as I
told you, my young Lady bid me enquire you out, what
she bid me say, I will keepe to my selfe: but first let me
tell ye, if ye should leade her in a fooles paradise, as they
say, it were a very grosse kind of behauiour, as they say:
for the Gentlewoman is yong: & therefore, if you should
deale double with her, truely it were an ill thing to be
offered to any Gentlewoman, and very weake dealing.
Nur.
Nurse commend me to thy Lady and Mistresse, I
protest vnto thee.
Nur.
Good heart, and yfaith I will tell her as much:
Lord, Lord she will be a ioyfull woman.
Rom.
What wilt thou tell her Nurse? thou doest not
marke me?
Nur.
I will tell her sir, that you do protest, which as I
take it, is a Gentleman-like offer.
Rom.
Bid her deuise some meanes to come to shrift this afternoone,
And there she shall at Frier Lawrence Cell
Be shriu’d and married: here is for thy paines.
Nur.
No truly sir not a penny.
Rom.
Go too, I say you shall.
Nur
This afternoone sir? well she shall be there.
Ro.
And stay thou good Nurse behind the Abbey wall,
Within this houre my man shall be with thee,
And bring thee Cords made like a tackled staire,
Which to the high top gallant of my ioy,
Must be my conuoy in the secret night.
Farewell, be trustie and Ile quite thy paines:
Farewell, commend me to thy Mistresse.
Nur.
Now God in heauen blesse thee: harke you sir,
Rom.
What saist thou my deare Nurse?
Nurse.
Is your man secret, did you nere heare say two
may keepe counsell putting one away.
Ro.
Warrant thee my man is true as steele.
Nur.
Well sir, my Mistresse is the sweetest Lady, Lord,
Lord, when ’twas a little prating thing. O there is a
Noble man in Towne one Paris, that would faine lay knife
aboard: but she good soule had as leeue a see Toade, a very
Toade as see him: I anger her sometimes, and tell her that
Paris is the properer man, but Ile warrant you, when I say
so, shee lookes as pale as any clout in the versall world.
Doth not Rosemarie and Romeo begin both with a letter?
Rom.
I Nurse, what of that? Both with an R
Nur.
A mocker that’s the dogs name. R. is for the no,
I know it begins with some other letter, and she hath the
prettiest sententious of it, of you and Rosemary, that it
would do you good to heare it.
Rom.
Commend me to thy Lady.
Nur.
I a thousand times. Peter?
Pet.
Anon.
Nur.
Exit Nurse and Peter.Before and apace.
Enter Iuliet.
Iul.
The clocke strook nine, when I did send the Nurse,
In halfe an houre she promised to returne,
Perchance she cannot meete him: that’s not so:
Oh she is lame, Loues Herauld should be thoughts,
Which ten times faster glides then the Sunnes beames,
Driuing backe shadowes ouer lowring hils.
Therefore do nimble Pinion’d Doues draw Loue,
And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings:
Now is the Sun vpon the highmost hill
Of this daies iourney, and from nine till twelue,
I three long houres, yet she is not come.
Had she affections and warme youthfull blood,
She would be as swift in motion as a ball,
My words would bandy her to my sweete Loue,
And his to me, but old folkes,
Many faine as they were dead,
Vnwieldie, slow, heauy, and pale as lead.
Enter Nurse.
O God she comes, O hony Nurse what newes?
Hast thou met with him? send thy man away.
Nur.
Peter stay at the gate.
Iul.
Now good sweet Nurse:
O Lord, why lookest thou sad?
Though newes, be sad, yet tell them merrily.
If good thou sham’st the musicke of sweet newes,
By playing it to me, with so sower a face.
Nur.
I am a weary, giue me leaue awhile,
Fie how my bones ake, what a iaunt haue I had?
Iul.
I would thou had’st my bones, and I thy newes:
Nay come I pray thee speake, good good Nurse speake.
Nur.
Iesu what hast? can you not stay a while?
Do you not see that I am out of breath?
Iul.
How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breth
To say to me, that thou art out of breath?
The excuse that thou dost make in this delay,
Is longer then the tale thou dost excuse.
Is thy newes good or bad? answere to that,
Say either, and Ile stay the circumstance:
Let me be satisfied, ist good or bad?
Nur.
Well, you haue made a simple choice, you know
not how to chuse a man: Romeo, no not he though his face
be better then any mans, yet his legs excels all mens, and
for a hand, and a foote, and a body, though they be not to
be talkt on, yet they are past compare: he is not the flower
of curtesie, but Ile warrant him as gentle a Lambe: go thy
waies wench, serue God. What haue you din’d at home?
Iul.
No no: but all this this did I know before
What saies he of our marriage? what of that?
Nur.
Lord how my head akes, what a head haue I?
It beates as it would fall in twenty peeces.
My backe a tother side: o my backe, my backe:
Beshrew your heart for sending me about
To catch my death with iaunting vp and downe.
Iul.
Ifaith: I am sorrie that thou art so well.
Sweet sweet, sweet Nurse, tell me what saies my Loue?
Nur.
Your Loue saies like an honest Gentleman,
And a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome,
And I warrant a vertuous: where is your Mother?
Iul.
Where is my Mother?
Why she is within, where should she be?
How odly thou repli’st:
Your Loue saies like an honest Gentleman:
Where is your Mother?
Nur.
O Gods Lady deare,
Are you so hot? marrie come vp I trow,
Is this the Poultis for my aking bones?
Henceforward do your messages your selfe.
Iul.
Heere’s such a coile, come what saies Romeo?
Nur.
Haue you got leaue to go to shrift to day?
Iul.
I haue.
Nur.
Then high you hence to Frier Lawrence Cell,
There staies a Husband to make you a wife:
Now comes the wanton bloud vp in your cheekes,
Thei’le be in Scarlet straight at any newes:
Hie you to Church, I must an other way,
To fetch a Ladder by the which your Loue
Must climde a birds nest Soone when it is darke:
I am the drudge, and toile in your delight:
But you shall beare the burthen soone at night.
Go Ile to dinner, hie you to the Cell.
Iul.
Exeunt.Hie to high Fortune, honest Nurse, farewell.
Enter Frier and Romeo.
Fri.
So smile the heauens vpon this holy act,
That after houres, with sorrow chide vs not.
Rom.
Amen, amen, but come what sorrow can,
It cannot counteruaile the exchange of ioy
That one short minute giues me in her sight:
Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
Then Loue-deuouring death do what he dare,
It is inough. I may but call her mine.
Fri.
These violent delights haue violent endes,
And in their triumph: die like fire and powder;
Which as they kisse consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his owne deliciousnesse,
And in the taste confoundes the appetite.
Therefore Loue moderately, long Loue doth so,
Too swift arriues as tardie as too slow.
Enter Iuliet.
Here comes the Lady. Oh so light a foot
Will nere weare out the euerlasting flint,
A Louer may bestride the Gossamours,
That ydles in the wanton Summer ayre,
And yet not fall, so light is vanitie.
Iul.
Good euen to my ghostly Confessor.
Fri.
Romeo shall thanke thee Daughter for vs both.
Iul.
As much to him, else in his thanks too much.
Fri.
Ah Iuliet, if the measure of thy ioy
Be heapt like mine, and that thy skill be more
To blason it, then sweeten with thy breath
This neighbour ayre, and let rich musickes tongue,
Vnfold the imagin’d happinesse that both
Receiue in either, by this deere encounter.
Iul.
Conceit more rich in matter then in words,
Brags of his substance, not of Ornament:
They are but beggers that can count their worth,
But my true Loue is growne to such such excesse,
I cannot sum vp some of halfe my wealth.
Fri.
Come, come with me, & we will make short worke,
For by your leaues, you shall not stay alone,
Till holy Church incorporate two in one.
Enter Mercutio, Benuolio, and men.
Ben.
I pray thee good Mercutio lets retire,
The day is hot, the Capulets abroad:
And if we meet, we shal not scape a brawle, for now these
hot dayes, is the mad blood stirring.
Mer.
Thou art like one of these fellowes, that when he
enters the confines of a Tauerne, claps me his Sword vpon
the Table, and sayes, God send me no need of thee: and by
the operation of the second cup, drawes him on the Drawer,
when indeed there is no need.
Ben.
Am I like such a Fellow?
Mer.
Come, come, thou art as hot a Iacke in thy mood,
as any in Italieand assoone moued to be moodie, and as
soone moodie to be mou’d.
Ben.
And what too?
Mer.
Nay, and there were two such, we should haue
none shortly, for one would kill the other: thou, why thou
wilt quarrell with a man that hath a haire more, or a haire
lesse in his beard, then thou hast: thou wilt quarrell with a
man for cracking Nuts, hauing no other reason, but because
thou hast hasell eyes: what eye, but such an eye,
would spie out such a quarrell? thy head is full of quarrels,
as an egge is full of meat, and yet thy head hath bin
beaten as addle as an egge for quarreling: thou hast quarrel’d
with a man for coffing in the street, because he hath
wakened thy Dog that hath laine asleepe in the Sun. Did’st
thou not fall out with a Tailor for wearing his new Doublet
before Easter? with another, for tying his new shooes
with old Riband, and yet thou wilt Tutor me from
quarrelling?
Ben.
And I were so apt to quarell as thou art, any man
should buy the Fee-simple of my life, for an houre and a
quarter.
Mer.
The Fee-simple? O simple.
Enter Tybalt, Petruchio, and others.
Ben.
By my head here comes the Capulets.
Mer.
By my heele I care not.
Tyb.
Follow me close, for I will speake to them.
Gentlemen, Good den, a word with one of you.
Mer.
And but one word with one of vs? couple it with
something, make it a word and a blow.
Tib.
You shall find me apt inough to that sir, and you
will giue me occasion.
Mercu.
Could you not take some occasion without giuing?
Tib.
Mercutio thou consort’st with Romeo.
Mer.
Consort? what dost thou make vs Minstrels? &
thou make Minstrels of vs, looke to heare nothing but dis
cords: heere’s my fiddlesticke, heere’s that shall make you
daunce. Come consort.
Ben.
We talke here in the publike haunt of men:
Either withdraw vnto some priuate place,
Or reason coldly of your greeuances:
Or else depart, here all eies gaze on vs.
Mer.
Mens eyes were made to looke, and let them gaze.
I will not budge for no mans pleasure I.
Enter Romeo.
Tib.
Well peace be with you sir, here comes my man.
Mer.
But Ile be hang’d sir if he weare your Liuery:
Marry go before to field, heele be your follower,
Your worship in that sense, may call him man.
Tib.
Romeo, the loue I beare thee, can affoord
No better terme then this: Thou art a Villaine.
Rom.
Tibalt, the reason that I haue to loue thee,
Doth much excuse the appertaining rage
To such a greeting: Villaine am I none;
Therefore farewell, I see thou know’st me not.
Tib.
Boy, this shall not excuse the iniuries
That thou hast done me, therefore turne and draw.
Rom.
I do protest I neuer iniur’d thee,
But lou’d thee better then thou can’st deuise:
Till thou shalt know the reason of my loue,
And so good Capulet, which name I tender
As dearely as my owne, be satisfied.
Mer.
O calme, dishonourable, vile submission:
Alla stucatho carries it away.
Tybalt, you Rat-catcher, will you walke?
Tib.
What wouldst thou haue with me?
Mer.
Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine
liues, that I meane to make bold withall, and as you shall
vse me hereafter dry beate the rest of the eight. Will you
pluck your Sword out of his Pilcher by the eares? Make
hast, least mine be about your eares ere it be out.
Tib.
I am for you.
Rom.
Gentle Mercutio, put thy Rapier vp.
Mer.
Come sir, your Passado.
Rom.
Draw Benuolio, beat downe their weapons:
Gentlemen, for shame forbeare this outrage,
Tibalt, Mercutio, the Prince expresly hath
Forbidden bandying in Verona streetes.
Exit Tybalt.Hold Tybalt, good Mercutio.
Mer.
I am hurt.
A plague a both the Houses, I am sped:
Is he gone and hath nothing?
Ben.
What art thou hurt?
Mer.
I, I, a scratch, a scratch, marry ’tis inough,
Where is my Page? go Villaine fetch a Surgeon.
Rom.
Courage man, the hurt cannot be much.
Mer.
No: ’tis not so deepe as a well, nor so wide as a
Church doore, but ’tis inough, ’twill serue: aske for me to
morrow, and you shall find me a graue man. I am pepper’d
I warrant, for this world: a plague a both your houses.
What, a Dog, a Rat, a Mouse, a Cat to scratch a man to
death: a Braggart, a Rogue, a Villaine, that fights by the
booke of Arithmeticke, why the deu’le came you betweene
vs? I was hurt vnder your arme.
Rom.
I thought all for the best.
Mer.
Helpe me into some house Benuolio,
Or I shall faint: a plague a both your houses.
They haue made wormes meat of me,
Exit.I haue it, and soundly to your Houses.
Rom.
This Gentleman the Princes neere Alie,
My very Friend hath got his mortall hurt
In my behalfe, my reputation stain’d
With Tibalts slaunder, Tybalt that an houre
Hath beene my Cozin: O Sweet Iuliet,
Thy Beauty hath made me Effeminate,
And in my temper softned Valours steele.
Enter Benuolio.
Ben.
O Romeo, Romeo, braue Mercutio’s is dead,
That Gallant spirit hath aspir’d the Cloudes,
Which too vntimely here did scorne the earth.
Rom.
This daies blacke Fate, on mo daies doth depend,
This but begins, the wo others must end.
Enter Tybalt.
Ben.
Here comes the Furious Tybalt backe againe.
Rom.
He gon in triumph, and Mercutio slaine?
Away to heauen respectiue Lenitie,
And fire and Fury, be my conduct now.
Now Tybalt take the Villaine backe againe
That late thou gau’st me, for Mercutios soule
Is but a little way aboue our heads,
Staying for thine to keepe him companie:
Either thou or I, or both, must goe with him.
Tib.
Thou wretched Boy that didst consort him here,
Shalt with him hence.
Rom.
This shall determine that.
They fight. Tybalt falles.
Ben.
Romeo, away be gone:
The Citizens are vp, and Tybalt slaine,
Stand not amaz’d, the Prince will Doome thee death
If thou art taken: hence, be gone, away.
Rom.
O! I am Fortunes foole.
Ben.
Exit Romeo.Why dost thou stay?
Enter Citizens.
Citi.
Which way ran he that kild Mercutio?
Tibalt that Murtherer, which way ran he?
Ben.
There lies that Tybalt.
Citi.
Vp sir go with me:
I charge thee in the Princes names obey.
Enter Prince, old Montague, Capulet, their
Wiues and all.
Prin.
Where are the vile beginners of this Fray?
Ben.
O Noble Prince, I can discouer all
The vnluckie Mannage of this fatall brall:
There lies the man slaine by young Romeo,
That slew thy kinsman braue Mercutio.
Cap. Wi.
Tybalt, my Cozin? O my Brothers Child,
O Prince, O Cozin, Husband, O the blood is spild
Of my deare kinsman. Prince as thou art true,
For bloud of ours, shed bloud of Mountague.
O Cozin, Cozin.
Prin.
Benuolio, who began this Fray?
Ben.
Tybalt here slaine, whom Romeo’s hand slay,
Romeo that spoke him faire, bid him bethinke
How nice the Quarrell was, and vrg’d withall
Your high displeasure: all this vttered,
With gentle breath, calme looke, knees humbly bow’d
Could not take truce with the vnruly spleene
Of Tybalts deafe to peace, but that he Tilts
With Peircing steele at bold Mercutio’s breast,
Who all as hot, turnes deadly point to point,
And with a Martiall scorne, with one hand beates
Cold death aside, and with the other sends
It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity
Retorts it: Romeo he cries aloud,
Hold Friends, Friends part, and swifter then his tongue,
His aged arme beats downe their fatall points,
And twixt them rushes, vnderneath whose arme,
An enuious thrust from Tybalt, hit the life
Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled.
But by and by comes backe to Romeo,
Who had but newly entertained Reuenge,
And too’t they goe like lightning, for ere I
Could draw to part them, was stout Tybalt slaine:
And as he fell, did Romeo turne and flie:
This is the truth, or let Benuolio die.
Cap. Wi.
He is a kinsman to the Mountague,
Affection makes him false, he speakes not true:
Some twenty of them fought in this blacke strife,
And all those twenty could but kill one life.
I beg for Iustice, which thou Prince must giue:
Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not liue.
Prin.
Romeo slew him, he slew Mercutio,
Who now the price of his deare blood doth owe.
Cap.
Not Romeo Prince, he was Mercutios Friend,
His fault concludes, but what the law should end,
The life of Tybalt.
Prin.
And for that offence,
Immediately we doe exile him hence:
I haue an interest in your hearts proceeding:
My bloud for your rude brawles doth lie a bleeding.
But Ile Amerce you with so strong a fine,
That you shall all repent the losse of mine.
It will be deafe to pleading and excuses,
Nor teares, nor prayers shall purchase our abuses.
Therefore vse none, let Romeo hence in hast,
Else when he is found, that houre is his last.
Beare hence his body, and attend our will:
Exeunt.Mercy not Murders, pardoning those that kill.
Enter Iuliet alone.
Iul.
Gallop apace, you fiery footed [steedes],
Towards Phæbus lodging, such a Wagoner
As Phaeton would whip you to the west,
And bring in Cloudie night immediately.
Spred thy close Curtaine Loue-performing night,
That run-awayes eyes may wincke, and Romeo
Leape to these armes, vntalkt of and vnseene,
Louers can see to doe their Amorous rights,
And by their owne Beauties: or if Loue be blind,
It best agrees with night: come ciuill night,
Thou sober suted Matron all in blacke,
And learne me how to loose a winning match,
Plaid for a paire of stainlesse Maidenhoods,
Hood my vnman’d blood bayting in my Cheekes,
With thy Blacke mantle, till strange Loue grow bold,
Thinke true Loue acted simple modestie:
Come night, come Romeo, come thou day in night,
For thou wilt lie vpon the wings of night
Whiter then new Snow vpon a Rauens backe:
Come gentle night, come louing blackebrow’d night.
Giue me my Romeo, and when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little starres,
And he will make the Face of heauen so fine,
That all the world will be in Loue with night,
And pay no worship to the Garish Sun.
O I haue bought the Mansion of a Loue,
But not possest it, and though I am sold,
Not yet enioy’d, so tedious is this day,
As is the night before some Festiuall,
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not weare them, O here comes my Nurse:
Enter Nurse with cords.
And she brings newes and euery tongue that speaks
But Romeos, name, speakes heauenly eloquence:
Now Nurse, what newes? what hast thou there?
The Cords that Romeo bid thee fetch?
Nur.
I, I, the Cords.
Iuli.
Ay me, what newes?
Why dost thou wring thy hands.
Nur.
A welady, hee’s dead, hee’s dead,
We are vndone Lady, we are vndone.
Alacke the day, hee’s gone, hee’s kil’d, he’s dead.
Iul.
Can heauen be so enuious?
Nur.
Romeo can,
Though heauen cannot. O Romeo, Romeo,
Who euer would haue thought it Romeo.
Iuli.
What diuell art thou,
That dost torment me thus?
This torture should be roar’d in dismall hell,
Hath Romeo slaine himselfe? say thou but I,
And that bare vowell I shall poyson more
Then the death-darting eye of Cockatrice,
I am not I, if there be such an I.
Or those eyes shot, that makes thee answere I:
If he be slaine say I, or if not, no.
Briefe, sounds, determine of my weale or wo.
Nur.
I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes,
God saue the marke, here on his manly brest,
A pitteous Coarse, a bloody piteous Coarse:
Pale, pale as ashes, all bedawb’d in blood,
All in gore blood, I sounded at the sight-
Iul.
O breake my heart,
Poore Banckrout breake at once,
To prison eyes, nere looke on libertie.
Vile earth to earth resigne, end motion here,
And thou and Romeo presse on heauie beere.
Nur.
O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best Friend I had:
O curteous Tybalt honest Gentleman,
That euer I should liue to see thee dead.
Iul.
What storme is this that blowes so contrarie?
Is Romeo slaughtred? and is Tybalt dead?
My dearest Cozen, and my dearer Lord:
Then dreadfull Trumpet sound the generall doome,
For who is liuing, if those two are gone?
Nur.
Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished,
Romeo that kil’d him, he is banished.
Iul.
O God!
Did Rom’os hand shed Tybalts blood
It did, it did, alas the day, it did.
Nur.
O Serpent heart, hid with a flowring face.
Iul.
Did euer Dragon keepe so faire a Caue?
Beautifull Tyrant, fiend Angelicall:
Rauenous Doue-feather’d Rauen,
Woluish-rauening Lambe,
Dispised substance of Diuinest show:
Iust opposite to what thou iustly seem’st,
A dimne Saint, an Honourable Villaine:
O Nature! what had’st thou to doe in hell,
When thou did’st bower the spirit of a fiend
In mortall paradise of such sweet flesh?
Was euer booke containing such vile matter
So fairely bound? O that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous Pallace.
Nur.
There’s no trust, no faith, no honestie in men,
All periur’d, all forsworne, all naught, all dissemblers,
Ah where’s my man? giue me some Aqua-vitæ?
These griefes, these woes, these sorrowes make me old:
Shame come to Romeo.
Iul.
Blister’d be thy tongue
For such a wish, he was not borne to shame:
Vpon his brow shame is asham’d to sit;
For ’tis a throane where Honour may be Crown’d
Sole Monarch of the vniuersall earth:
O what a beast was I to chide him?
Nur.
Will you speake well of him,
That kil’d your Cozen?
Iul.
Shall I speake ill of him that is my husband?
Ah poore my Lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I thy three houres wife haue mangled it.
But wherefore Villaine did’st thou kill my Cozin?
That Villaine Cozin would haue kil’d my husband:
Backe foolish teares, backe to your natiue spring,
Your tributarie drops belong to woe,
Which you mistaking offer vp to ioy:
My husband liues that Tibalt would haue slaine,
And Tibalt dead that would haue slaine my husband:
All this is comfort, wherefore weepe I then?
Some words there was worser then Tybalts death
That murdered me, I would forget it feine,
But oh, it presses to my memory,
Like damned guilty deedes to sinners minds,
Tybalt is dead and Romeo banished:
That banished, that one word banished,
Hath slaine ten thousand Tibalts: Tibalts death
Was woe inough if it had ended there:
Or if sower woe delights in fellowship,
And needly will be rankt with other griefes,
Why followed not when she said Tibalts dead,
Thy Father or thy Mother, nay or both,
Which moderne lamentation might haue mou’d.
But which a rere-ward following Tybalts death
Romeo is banished to speake that word,
Is Father, Mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Iuliet,
All slaine, all dead: Romeo is banished,
There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
In that words death, no words can that woe sound.
Where is my Father and my Mother Nurse?
Nur.
Weeping and wailing ouer Tybalts Coarse,
Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.
Iu.
Wash they his wounds with tears: mine shal be spent
When theirs are drie for Romeo’s banishment.
Take vp those Cordes, poore ropes you are beguil’d,
Both you and I for Romeo is exild:
He made you for a high-way to my bed,
But I a Maid, die Maiden widowed.
Come Cord, come Nurse, Ile to my wedding bed,
And death not Romeo, take my Maiden head.
Nur.
Hie to your Chamber, Ile find Romeo
To comfort you, I wot well where he is:
Harke ye your Romeo will be heere at night,
Ile to him, he is hid at Lawrence Cell.
Iul.
O find him, giue this Ring to my true Knight,
Exit.And bid him come, to take his last farewell.
Enter Frier and Romeo.
Fri.
Romeo come forth,
Come forth thou fearfull man,
Affliction is enamor’d of thy parts:
And thou art wedded to calamitie.
Rom.
Father what newes?
What is the Princes Doome?
What sorrow craues acquaintance at my hand,
That I yet know not?
Fri.
Too familiar
Is my deare Sonne with such sowre Company:
I bring thee tydings of the Princes Doome.
Rom.
What lesse then Doomesday,
Is the Princes Doome?
Fri.
A gentler iudgement vanisht from his lips,
Not bodies death, but bodies banishment.
Rom.
Ha, banishment? be mercifull, say death:
For exile hath more terror in his looke,
Much more then death: do not say banishment.
Fri.
Here from Verona art thou banished:
Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.
Rom.
There is no world without Verona walles,
But Purgatorie, Torture, hell it selfe:
Hence banished, is banisht from the world,
And worlds exile is death. Then banished,
Is death, mistearm’d, calling death banished,
Thou cut’st my head off with a golden Axe,
And smilest vpon the stroke that murders me.
Fri.
O deadly sin, O rude vnthankefulnesse!
Thy falt our Law calles death, but the kind Prince
Taking thy part, hath rusht aside the Law,
And turn’d that blacke word death, to banishment.
This is deare mercy, and thou seest it not.
Rom.
‘Tis Torture and not mercy, heauen is here
Where Iuliet liues, and euery Cat and Dog,
And little Mouse, euery vnworthy thing
Liue here in Heauen and may looke on her,
But Romeo may not. More Validitie,
More Honourable state, more Courtship liues
In carrion Flies, then Romeo: they may seaze
On the white wonder of deare Iuliets hand,
And steale immortall blessing from her lips,
Who euen in pure and vestall modestie
Still blush, as thinking their owne kisses sin.
This may Flies doe, when I from this must flie,
And saist thou yet, that exile is not death?
But Romeo may not, hee is banished.
Hadst thou no poyson mixt, no sharpe ground knife,
No sudden meane of death, though nere so meane,
But banished to kill me? Banished?
O Frier, the damned vse that word in hell:
Howlings attends it, how hast thou the hart
Being a Diuine, a Ghostly Confessor,
A Sin-Absoluer, and my Friend profest:
To mangle me with that word, banished?
Fri.
Then fond Mad man, heare me speake.
Rom.
O thou wilt speake againe of banishment.
Fri.
Ile giue thee Armour to keepe off that word,
Aduersities sweete milke, Philosophie,
To comfort thee, though thou art banished.
Rom.
Yet banished? hang vp Philosophie:
Vnlesse Philosohpie} can make a Iuliet,
Displant a Towne, reuerse a Princes Doome,
It helpes not, it preuailes not, talke no more.
Fri.
O then I see, that Mad men haue no eares.
Rom.
How should they,
When wisemen haue no eyes?
Fri.
Let me dispaire with thee of thy estate,
Rom.
Thou can’st not speake of that yu dost not feele,
Wert thou as young as Iuliet my Loue:
An houre but married, Tybalt murdered,
Doting like me, and like me banished,
Then mightest thou speake,
Then mightest thou teare thy hayre,
And fall vpon the ground as I doe now,
Taking the measure of an vnmade graue.
Enter Nurse, and knockes.
Frier.
Arise one knockes,
Good Romeo hide thy selfe.
Rom.
Not I,
Vnlesse the breath of Hartsicke groanes
Mist-like infold me from the search of eyes.
Knocke
Fri.
Harke how they knocke:
(Who’s there) Romeo arise,
Thou wilt be taken, stay a while, stand vp:
Knocke.
Run to my study: by and by, Gods will
What simplenesse is this: I come, I come.
Knocke
Who knocks so hard?
Whence come you? what’s your will?
Enter Nurse.
Nur.
Let me come in,
And you shall know my errand:
I come from Lady Iuliet.
Fri.
Welcome then.
Nur.
O holy Frier, O tell me holy Frier,
Where’s my Ladies Lord? where’s Romeo?
Fri.
There on the ground,
With his owne teares made drunke.
Nur.
O he is euen in my Mistresse case,
Iust in her case. O wofull simpathy:
Pittious predicament, euen so lies she,
Blubbring and weeping, weeping and blubbring,
Stand vp, stand vp, stand and you be a man,
For Iuliets sake, for her sake rise and stand:
Why should you fall into so deepe an O.
Rom.
Nurse.
Nur.
Ah sir, ah sir, deaths the end of all.
Rom.
Speak’st thou of Iuliet? how is it with her?
Doth not she thinke me an old Murtherer,
Now I haue stain’d the Childhood of our ioy,
With blood remoued, but little from her owne?
Where is she? and how doth she? and what sayes
My conceal’d Lady to our conceal’d Loue?
Nur.
Oh she sayes nothing sir, but weeps and weeps,
And now fals on her bed, and then starts vp,
And Tybalt calls, and then on Romeo cries,
And then downe falls againe.
Ro.
As if that name shot from the dead leuell of a Gun,
Did murder her, as that names cursed hand
Murdred her kinsman. Oh tell me Frier, tell me,
In what vile part of this Anatomie
Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sacke
The hatefull Mansion.
Fri.
Hold thy desperate hand:
Art thou a man? thy forme cries out thou art:
Thy teares are womanish, thy wild acts denote
The vnreasonable Furie of a beast.
Vnseemely woman, in a seeming man,
And ill beseeming beast in seeming both,
Thou hast amaz’d me. By my holy order,
I thought thy disposition better temper’d.
Hast thou slaine Tybalt? wilt thou slay thy selfe?
And slay thy Lady, that in thy life lies,
By doing damned hate vpon thy selfe?
Why rayl’st thou on thy birth? the heauen and earth?
Since birth, and heauen and earth, all three do meete
In thee at once, which thou at once would’st loose.
Fie, fie, thou sham’st thy shape, thy loue, thy wit,
Which like a Vsurer abound’st in all:
And vsest none in that true vse indeed,
Which should bedecke thy shape, thy loue, thy wit:
Thy Noble shape, is but a forme of waxe,
Digressing from the Valour of a man,
Thy deare Loue sworne but hollow periurie,
Killing that Loue which thou hast vow’d to cherish.
Thy wit, that Ornament, to shape and Loue,
Mishapen in the conduct of them both:
Like powder in a skillesse Souldiers flaske,
Is set a fire by thine owne ignorance,
And thou dismembred with thine owne defence.
What, rowse thee man, thy Iuliet is aliue,
For whose deare sake thou wast but lately dead.
There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,
But thou slew’st Tybalt, there art thou happie.
The law that threatned death became thy Friend,
And turn’d it to exile, there art thou happy.
A packe or blessing light vpon thy backe,
Happinesse Courts thee in her best array,
But like a mishaped and sullen wench,
Thou puttest vp thy Fortune and thy Loue:
Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
Goe get thee to thy Loue as was decreed,
Ascend her Chamber, hence and comfort her:
But looke thou stay not till the watch be set,
For then thou canst not passe to Mantua,
Where thou shalt liue till we can finde a time
To blaze your marriage, reconcile your Friends,
Beg pardon of thy Prince, and call thee backe,
With twenty hundred thousand times more ioy
Then thou went’st forth in lamentation.
Goe before Nurse, commend me to thy Lady,
And bid her hasten all the house to bed,
Which heauy sorrow makes them apt vnto.
Romeo is comming.
Nur.
O Lord, I could haue staid here all night,
To heare good counsell: oh what learning is!
My Lord Ile tell my Lady you will come.
Rom.
Do so, and bid my Sweete prepare to chide.
Nur.
Heere sir, a Ring she bid me giue you sir:
Hie you, make hast, for it growes very late.
Rom.
How well my comfort is reuiu’d by this.
Fri.
Go hence,
Goodnight, and here stands all your state:
Either be gone before the watch be set,
Or by the breake of day disguis’d from hence,
Soiourne in Mantua, Ile find out your man,
And he shall signifie from time to time,
Euery good hap to you, that chaunces heere:
Giue me thy hand, ’tis late, farewell, goodnight.
Rom.
But that a ioy past ioy, calls out on me,
It were a griefe, so briefe to part with thee:
Exeunt.Farewell.
Enter old Capulet, his Wife and Paris.
Cap.
Things haue falne out sir so vnluckily,
That we haue had no time to moue our Daughter:
Looke you, she Lou’d her kinsman Tybalt dearely,
And so did I. Well, we were borne to die.
‘Tis very late, she’l not come downe to night:
I promise you, but for your company,
I would haue bin a bed an houre ago.
Par.
These times of wo, affoord no times to wooe:
Madam goodnight, commend me to your Daughter.
Lady.
I will, and know her mind early to morrow,
To night, she is mewed vp to her heauinesse.
Cap.
Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender
Of my Childes loue: I thinke she will be rul’d
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 Sonne Paris Loue,
And bid her, marke you me, on Wendsday next,
But soft, what day is this?
Par.
Monday my Lord.
Cap.
Monday, ha ha: well Wendsday is too soone,
A Thursday let it be: a Thursday tell her,
She shall be married to this Noble Earle:
Will you be ready? do you like this hast?
Weele keepe no great adoe, a Friend or two,
For harke you, Tybalt being slaine so late,
It may be thought we held him carelesly,
Being our kinsman, if we reuell much:
Therefore weele haue some halfe a dozen Friends,
And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?
Paris.
My Lord,
I would that Thursday were to morrow.
Cap.
Well, get you gone, a Thursday, be it then:
Go you to Iuliet ere you go to bed,
Prepare her wife, against this wedding day.
Farewell my Lord, light to my Chamber hoa,
Afore me, it is so late, that we may call it early by and by,
Exeunt.Goodnight.
Enter Romeo and Iuliet aloft.
Iul.
Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet neere day:
It was the Nightingale, and not the Larke,
That pier’st the fearefull hollow of thine eare,
Nightly she sings on yond Pomgranet tree,
Beleeue me Loue, it was the Nightingale.
Rom.
It was the Larke the Herauld of the Morne:
No Nightingale: looke Loue what enuious streakes
Do lace the seuering Cloudes in yonder East:
Nights Candles are burnt out, and Iocond day
Stands tipto on the mistie Mountaines tops,
I must be gone and liue, or stay and die.
Iul.
Yond light is not daylight, 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 be gone,
Rom.
Let me be tane, let me be put to death,
I am content, so thou wilt haue it so.
Ile say yon gray is not the mornings eye,
‘Tis but the pale reflexe of Cinthias brow.
Nor that is not Larke whose noates do beate
The vaulty heauen so high aboue our heads,
I haue more care to stay, then will to go:
Come death and welcome, Iuliet wills it so.
How ist my soule, lets talke, it is not day.
Iuli.
It is, it is, hie hence be gone away:
It is the Larke that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh Discords, and vnpleasing Sharpes.
Some say the Larke makes sweete Diuision;
This doth not so: for she diuideth vs.
Some say, the Larke and loathed Toad change eyes,
O now I would they had chang’d voyces too:
Since arme from arme that voyce doth vs affray,
Hunting thee hence, with Hunts-vp to the day,
O now be gone, more light and it light growes.
Rom.
More light & light, more darke & darke our woes.
Enter Madam and Nurse.
Nur.
Madam.
Iul.
Nurse.
Nur.
Your Lady Mother is comming to your chamber,
The day is broke, be wary, looke about.
Iul.
Then window let day in, and let life out.
Rom.
Farewell, farewell, one kisse and Ile descend.
Iul.
Art thou gone so? Loue, Lord, ay Husband, Friend,
I must heare from thee euery day in the houre,
For in a minute there are many dayes,
O by this count I shall be much in yeares,
Ere I againe behold my Romeo.
Rom.
Farewell:
I will omit no oportunitie,
That may conuey my greetings Loue, to thee.
Iul.
O thinkest thou we shall euer meet againe?
Rom.
I doubt it not, and all these woes shall serue
For sweet discourses in our time to come.
Iuliet.
O God! I haue an ill Diuining soule,
Me thinkes I see thee now, thou art so lowe,
As one dead in the bottome of a Tombe,
Either my eye-sight failes, or thou look’st pale.
Rom.
And trust me Loue, in my eye so do you:
Exit.Drie sorrow drinkes our blood. Adue, adue.
Iul.
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 keepe him long,
But send him backe.
Enter Mother.
Lad.
Ho Daughter, are you vp?
Iul:
Who ist that calls? Is it my Lady Mother.
Is she not downe so late, or vp so early?
What vnaccustom’d cause procures her hither?
Lad.
Why how now Iuliet?
Iul.
Madam I am not well.
Lad.
Euermore weeping for your Cozins death?
What wilt thou wash him from his graue with teares?
And if thou couldst, thou could’st not make him liue:
Therefore haue done, some griefe shewes much of Loue,
But much of griefe, shewes still some want of wit.
Iul.
Yet let me weepe, for such a feeling losse.
Lad.
So shall you feele the losse, but not the Friend
Which you weepe for.
Iul.
Feeling so the losse,
I cannot chuse but euer weepe the Friend.
La.
Well Girle, thou weep’st not so much for his death,
As that the Villaine liues which slaughter’d him.
Iul.
What Villaine, Madam?
Lad.
That same Villaine Romeo.
Iul.
Villaine and he, be many Miles assunder:
God pardon, I doe with all my heart:
And yet no man like he, doth grieue my heart.
Lad.
That is because the Traitor liues.
Iul.
I Madam from the reach of these my hands:
Would none but I might venge my Cozins death.
Lad.
We will haue vengeance for it, feare thou not.
Then weepe no more, Ile send to one in Mantua’,
Where that same banisht Run-agate doth liue,
Shall giue him such an vnaccustom’d dram,
That he shall soone keepe Tybalt company:
And then I hope thou wilt be satisfied.
Iul.
Indeed I neuer shall be satisfied
With Romeo, till I behold him. Dead
Is my poore heart so for a kinsman vext:
Madam, if you could find out but a man
To beare a poyson, I would temper it;
That Romeo should vpon receit thereof,
Soone sleepe in quiet. O how my heart abhors
To heare him nam’d, and cannot come to him,
To wreake the Loue I bore my Cozin,
Vpon his body that hath slaughter’d him.
Mo.
Find thou the meanes, and Ile find such a man.
But now Ile tell thee ioyfull tidings Gyrle.
Iul.
And ioy comes well, in such a needy time,
What are they, beseech your Ladyship?
Mo.
Well, well, thou hast a carefull Father Child?
One who to put thee from thy heauinesse,
Hath sorted out a sudden day of ioy,
That thou expects not, nor I lookt not for.
Iul.
Madam in happy time, what day is this?
Mo.
Marry my Child, early next Thursday morne,
The gallant, young, and Noble Gentleman,
The Countie Paris at Saint Peters Church,
Shall happily make thee a ioyfull Bride.
Iul.
Now by Saint Peters Church, and Peter too,
He shall not make me there a ioyfull Bride.
I wonder at this hast, that I must wed
Ere he that should be Husband comes to woe:
I pray you tell my Lord and Father Madam,
I will not marrie yet, and when I doe, I sweare
It shallbe Romeo, whom you know I hate
Rather then Paris. These are newes indeed.
Mo.
Here comes your Father, tell him so your selfe,
And see how he will take it at your hands.
Enter Capulet and Nurse.
Cap.
When the Sun sets, the earth doth drizzle daew
But for the Sunset of my Brothers Sonne,
It raines downright.
How now? A Conduit Gyrle, what still in teares?
Euermore showring in one little body?
Thou counterfaits a Barke, a Sea, a Wind:
For still thy eyes, which I may call the Sea,
Do ebbe and flow with teares, the Barke thy body is
Sayling in this salt floud, the windes thy sighes,
Who raging with the teares and they with them,
Without a sudden calme will ouer set
Thy tempest tossed body. How now wife?
Haue you deliuered to her our decree?
Lady.
I sir;
But she will none, she giues you thankes,
I would the foole were married to her graue.
Cap.
Soft, take me with you, take me with you wife,
How, will she none? doth she not giue vs thanks?
Is she not proud? doth she not count her blest,
Vnworthy as she is, that we haue wrought
So worthy a Gentleman, to be her Bridegroome
Iul.
Not proud you haue,
But thankfull that you haue:
Proud can I neuer be of what I haue,
But thankfull euen for hate, that is meant Loue.
Cap.
How now?
How now: Chopt Logicke? what is this?
Proud, and I thanke you: and I thanke you not.
Thanke me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,
But fettle your fine ioints ‘gainst Thursday next,
To go with Paris to Saint Peters Church:
Or I will drag thee on a Hurdle thither.
Out you greene sicknesse carrion, out you baggage,
You tallow face.
Lady.
Fie, fie, what are you mad?
Iul.
Good Father, I beseech you on my knees
Heare me with patience, but to speake a word.
Fa.
Hang thee young baggage, disobedient wretch,
I tell thee what, get thee to Church a Thursday,
Or neuer after looke me in the face.
Speake not, reply not, do not answere me.
My fingers itch, wife: we scarce thought vs blest,
That God had lent vs but this onely Child,
But now I see this one is one too much,
And that we haue a curse in hauing her:
Out on her Hilding.
Nur.
God in heauen blesse her,
You are too blame my Lord to rate her so.
Fa.
And why my Lady wisedome? hold your tongue,
Good Prudence, smatter with your gossip, go.
Nur.
I speak no treason,
Father, O Godigoden,
May not one speake?
Fa.
Peace you mumbling foole,
Vtter your grauitie ore a Gossips bowles
For here we need it not.
La.
You are too hot.
Fa.
Gods bread, it makes me mad:
Day, night, houre, ride, time, worke, play,
Alone in companie, still my care hath bin
To haue her matcht, and hauing now prouided
A Gentleman of Noble Parentage,
Of faire Demeanes, Youthfull, and Nobly Allied,
Stuft as they say with Honourable parts,
Proportion’d as ones thought would wish a man,
And then to haue a wretched puling foole,
A whining mammet, in her Fortunes tender,
To answer, Ile not wed, I cannot Loue:
I am too young, I pray you pardon me.
But, and you will not wed, Ile pardon you.
Graze where you will, you shall not house with me:
Looke too’t, thinke on’t, I do not vse to iest.
Thursday is neere, lay hand on heart, aduise,
And you be mine, Ile giue you to my Friend:
And you be not, hang, beg, straue, die in the streets,
For by my soule, Ile nere acknowledge thee,
Nor what is mine shall neuer do thee good:
Exit,Trust too’t, bethinke you, Ile not be forsworne
Iuli.
Is there no pittie sitting in the Cloudes,
That sees into the bottome of my griefe?
O sweet my Mother cast me not away,
Delay this marriage, for a month, a weeke,
Or if you do not, make the Bridall bed
In that dim Monument where Tybalt lies.
Mo.
Talke not to me, for Ile not speake a word,
Exit.Do as thou wilt, for I haue done with thee.
Iul.
O God!
O Nurse, how shall this be preuented?
My Husband is on earth, my faith in heauen,
How shall that faith returne againe to earth,
Vnlesse that Husband send it me from heauen,
By leauing earth? Comfort me, counsaile me:
Hlacke, alacke, that heauen should practise stratagems
Vpon so soft a subiect as my selfe.
What faist thou? hast thou not a word of ioy?
Some comfort Nurse.
Nur.
Faith here it is,
Romeo is banished, and all the world to nothing,
That he dares nere come backe to challenge you:
Or if he do, it need must be by stealth.
Then since the case so stands as now it doth,
I thinke it best you married with the Countie,
O hee’s a Louely Gentleman:
Romeos a dish-clout to him: an Eagle Madam
Hath not so greene, so quicke, so faire an eye
As Paris hath, beshrow my very heart,
I thinke 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 liuing here and you no vse of him.
Iul.
Speakest thou from thy heart?
Nur.
And from my soule too,
Or else beshrew them both.
Iul.
Amen.
Nur.
What?
Iul.
Well, thou hast comforted me marue’lous much,
Go in, and tell my Lady I am gone,
Hauing displeas’d my Father, to Lawrence Cell,
To make confession, and to be absolu’d.
Nur.
Marrie I will, and this is wisely done.
Iul.
Auncient damnation, O most wicked fiend!
It is more sin to wish me thus forsworne,
Or to dispraise my Lord with that same tongue
Which she hath prais’d him with aboue compare,
So many thousand times? Go Counsellor,
Thou and my bosome henchforth shall be twaine:
Ile to the Frier to know his remedie,
Exeunt.If all else faile, my selfe haue power to die.
Enter Frier and Countie Paris.
Fri.
On Thursday sir? the time is very short.
Par.
My Father Capulet will haue it so,
And I am nothing slow to slack his hast.
Fri.
You say you do not know the Ladies mind?
Vneuen is the course, I like it not.
Pa.
Immoderately she weepes for Tybalts death,
And therfore haue I little talke of Loue,
For Venus smiles not in a house of teares.
Now sir, her Father counts it dangerous
That she doth giue her sorrow so much sway:
And in his wisedome, hasts our marriage,
To stop the inundation of her teares,
Which too much minded by her selfe alone,
May be put from her by societie.
Now doe you know the reason of this hast?
Fri.
I would I knew not why it should be slow’d.
Looke sir, here comes the Lady towards my Cell.
Enter Iuliet.
Par.
Happily met, my Lady and my wife.
Iul.
That may be sir, when I may be a wife.
Par.
That may be, must be Loue, on Thursday next.
Iul.
What must be shall be.
Fri.
That’s a certaine text.
Par.
Come you to make confession to this Father?
Iul.
To answere that, I should confesse to you.
Par.
Do not denie to him, that you Loue me.
Iul.
I will confesse to you that I Loue him.
Par.
So will ye, I am sure that you Loue me.
Iul.
If I do so, it will be of more price,
Being spoke behind your backe, then to your face.
Par.
Poore soule, thy face is much abus’d with teares.
Iul.
The teares haue got small victorie by that:
For it was bad inough before their spight.
Pa.
Thou wrong’st it more then teares with that report.
Iul.
That is no slaunder sir, which is a truth,
And what I spake, I spake it to thy face.
Par.
Thy face is mine, and thou hast slaundred it.
Iul.
It may be so, for it is not mine owne.
Are you at leisure, Holy Father now,
Or shall I come to you at euening Masse?
Fri.
My leisure serues me pensiue daughter now.
My Lord you must intreat the time alone.
Par.
Godsheild: I should disturbe Deuotion,
Iuliet, on Thursday early will I rowse yee,
Exit Paris.Till then adue, and keepe this holy kisse.
Iul.
O shut the doore, and when thou hast done so,
Come weepe with me, past hope, past care, past helpe.
Fri.
O Iuliet, I alreadie know thy griefe,
It streames me past the compasse of my wits:
I heare thou must and nothing may prorogue it,
On Thursday next be married to this Countie.
Iul.
Tell me not Frier that thou hearest of this,
Vnlesse thou tell me how I may preuent it:
If in thy wisedome, thou canst giue no helpe,
Do thou but call my resolution wise,
And with’ his knife, Ile helpe it presently.
God ioyn’d my heart, and Romeos, thou our hands,
And ere this hand by thee to Romeo seal’d:
Shall be the Labell to another Deede,
Or my true heart with trecherous reuolt,
Turne to another, this shall slay them both:
Therefore out of thy long expetien’st time,
Giue me some present counsell, or behold
Twixt my extreames and me, this bloody knife
Shall play the vmpeere, arbitrating that,
Which the commission of thy yeares 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, speake not of remedy.
Fri.
Hold Daughter, I doe spie a kind of hope,
Which craues as desperate an execution,
As that is desperate which we would preuent.
If rather then to marrie Countie Paris
Thou hast the strength of will to stay thy selfe,
Then is it likely thou wilt vndertake
A thing like death to chide away this shame,
That coap’st with death himselfe, to scape fro it:
And if thou dar’st, Ile giue thee remedie.
Iul.
Oh bid me leape, rather then marrie Paris,
From of the Battlements of any Tower,
Or walke in theeuish waies, or bid me lurke
Where Serpents are: chaine me with roaring Beares
Or hide me nightly in a Charnell house,
Orecouered quite with dead mens ratling bones,
With reckie shankes and yellow chappels sculls:
Or bid me go into a new made graue,
And hide me with a dead man in his graue,
Things that to heare them told, haue made me tremble,
And I will doe it without feare or doubt,
To liue an vnstained wife to my sweet Loue.
Fri.
Hold then: goe home, be merrie, giue consent,
To marrie Paris: wensday is to morrow,
To morrow night looke that thou lie alone,
Let not thy Nurse lie with thee in thy Chamber:
Take thou this Violl being then in bed,
And this distilling liquor drinke thou off,
When presently through all thy veines shall run,
A cold and drowsie humour: for no pulse
Shall keepe his natiue progresse, but surcease:
No warmth, no breath shall testifie thou liuest,
The Roses in thy lips and cheekes shall fade
To many ashes, the eyes windowes fall
Like death when he shut vp the day of life:
Each part depriu’d of supple gouernment,
Shall stiffe and starke, and cold appeare like death,
And in this borrowed likenesse of shrunke death
Thou shalt continue two and forty houres,
And then awake, as from a pleasant sleepe.
Now when the Bridegroome in the morning comes,
To rowse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead:
Then as the manner of our country is,
In thy best Robes vncouer’d on the Beere,
Be borne to buriall in thy kindreds graue:
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault,
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie,
In the meane time against thou shalt awake,
Shall Romeo by my Letters know our drift,
And hither shall he come, and that very night
Shall Romeo beare thee hence to Mantua.
And this shall free thee from this present shame,
If no inconstant toy nor womanish feare,
Abate thy valour in the acting it.
Iul.
Giue me, giue me, O tell me not of care.
Fri.
Hold get you gone, be strong and prosperous:
In this resolue, Ile send a Frier with speed
To Mantua with my Letters to thy Lord.
Iu.
Loue giue me strength,
And strength shall helpe afford:
ExitFarewell deare father.
Enter Father Capulet, Mother, Nurse, and
Seruing men, two or three.
Cap.
So many guests inuite as here are writ,
Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning Cookes.
Ser.
You shall haue none ill sir, for Ile trie if they can
licke their fingers.
Cap.
How canst thou trie them so?
Ser.
Marrie sir, ’tis an ill Cooke that cannot licke his
owne fingers: therefore he that cannot licke his fingers
goes not with me.
Cap.
Go be gone, we shall be much vnfurnisht for this
time: what is my Daughter gone to Frier Lawrence?
Nur.
I forsooth.
Cap.
Well he may chance to do some good on her,
A peeuish selfe-wild harlotry it is.
Enter Iuliet.
Nur.
See where she comes from shrift
With merrie looke.
Cap.
How now my headstrong,
Where haue you bin gadding?
Iul.
Where I haue learnt me to repent the sin
Of disobedient opposition:
To you and your behests, and am enioyn’d
By holy Lawrence, to fall prostrate here,
To beg your pardon: pardon I beseech you,
Henceforward I am euer rul’d by you.
Cap.
Send for the Countie, goe tell him of this,
Ile haue this knot knit vp to morrow morning.
Iul.
I met the youthfull Lord at Lawrence Cell,
And gaue him what becomed Loue I might,
Not stepping ore the bounds of modestie.
Cap.
Why I am glad on’t, this is well, stand vp,
This is as’t should be, let me see the County:
I marrie go I say, and fetch him hither.
Now afore God, this reueren’d holy Frier,
All our whole Cittie is much bound to him.
Iul.
Nurse will you goe with me into my Closet,
To helpe me sort such needfull ornaments,
As you thinke fit to furnish me to morrow?
Mo.
No not till Thursday, there’s time inough.
Fa.
Go Nurse, go with her,
Exeunt Iuliet and Nurse.Weele to Church to morrow.
Mo.
We shall be short in our prouision,
‘Tis now neere night.
Fa.
Tush, I will stirre about,
And all things shall be well, I warrant thee wife:
Go thou to Iuliet, helpe to decke vp her,
Ile not to bed to night, let me alone:
Ile play the huswife for this once. What ho?
They are all forth, well I will walke my selfe
To Countie Paris, to prepare him vp
Against to morrow, my heart is wondrous light,
Since this same way-ward Gyrle is so reclaim’d.
Exeunt Father and Mother.
Enter Iuliet and Nurse.
Iul.
I those attires are best, but gentle Nurse
I pray thee leaue me to my selfe to night:
For I haue need of many Orysons,
To moue the heauens to smile vpon my state,
Which well thou know’st, is crosse and full of sin.
Enter Mother.
Mo.
What are you busie ho? need you my help?
Iul.
No Madam, we haue cul’d such necessaries
As are behoouefull for our state to morrow:
So please you, let me now be left alone;
And let the Nurse this night sit vp with you,
For I am sure, you haue your hands full all,
In this so sudden businesse.
Mo.
Goodnight.
Exeunt.Get thee to bed and rest, for thou hast need.
Iul.
Farewell:
God knowes when we shall meete againe.
I haue a faint cold feare thrills through my veines,
That almost freezes vp the heate of fire:
Ile call them backe againe to comfort me.
Nurse, what should she do here?
My dismall Sceane, I needs must act alone:
Come Viall, what if this mixture do not worke at all?
Shall I be married then to morrow morning?
No, no, this shall forbid it. Lie thou there,
What if it be a poyson which the Frier
Subtilly hath ministred to haue me dead,
Least in this marriage he should be dishonour’d,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I feare it is, and yet me thinkes it should not,
For he hath still beene tried a holy man.
How, if when I am laid into the Tombe,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeeme me? There’s a fearefull point:
Shall I not then be stifled in the Vault?
To whose foule mouth no healthsome ayre breaths in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes.
Or if I liue, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,
As in a Vaulte, an ancient receptacle,
Where for these many hundred yeeres the bones
Of all my buried Auncestors are packt,
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but greene in earth,
Lies festring in his shrow’d, where as they say,
At some houres in the night, Spirits resort:
Alacke, alacke, is it not like that I
So early waking, what with loathsome smels,
And shrikes like Mandrakes torne out of the earth,
That liuing mortalls hearing them, run mad.
O if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Inuironed with all these hidious feares,
And madly play with my forefathers ioynts?
And plucke the mangled Tybalt from his shrow’d?
And in this rage, with some great kinsmans bone,
As (with a club) dash out my desperate braines.
O looke, me thinks I see my Cozins Ghost,
Seeking out Romeo that did spit his body
Vpon my Rapiers point: stay Tybalt, stay;
Romeo. Romeo, Romeo, here’s drinke: I drinke to thee.
Enter Lady of the house, and Nurse.
Lady.
Hold,
Take these keies, and fetch more spices Nurse.
Nur.
They call for Dates and Quinces in the Pastrie.
Enter old Capulet.
Cap.
Come, stir stir stir,
The second Cocke hath Crow’d,
The Curphew Bell hath rung, ’tis three a clocke:
Looke to the bakte meates, good Angelica,
Spare not for cost.
Nur.
Go you Cot-queane, go,
Get you to bed, faith youle be sicke to morrow
For this nights watching.
Cap.
No not a whit: what? I haue watcht ere now
All night for lesse cause, and nere beene sicke.
La.
I you haue bin a Mouse-hunt in your time,
But I will watch you from such watching now.
Exit Lady and Nurse.
Cap.
A iealous hood, a iealous hood,
Now fellow, what there?
Enter three or foure with spits, and logs, and baskets.
Fel.
Things for the Cooke sir, but I know not what.
Cap.
Make hast, make hast, sirrah, fetch drier Logs.
Call Peter, he will shew thee where they are.
Fel.
I haue a head sir, that will find out logs,
And neuer trouble Peter for the matter.
Cap.
Masse and well said, a merrie horson, ha,
Thou shalt be loggerhead; good Father, ’tis day.
Play Musicke
The Countie will be here with Musicke straight,
For so he said he would, I heare him neere,
Nurse, wife, what ho? what Nurse I say?
Enter Nurse.
Go waken Iuliet, go and trim her vp,
Ile go and chat with Paris: hie, make hast,
Make hast, the Bridegroome, he is come already:
Make hast I say.
Enter Nurse.
Nur.
Mistris, what Mistris? Iuliet? Fast I warrant her she.
Why Lambe, why Lady? fie you sluggabed,
Why Loue I say? Madam, sweet heart: why Bride?
What not a word? You take your peniworths now.
Sleepe for a weeke, for the next night I warrant
The Countie Paris hath set vp his rest,
That you shall rest but little, God forgiue me:
Marrie and Amen: how sound is she a sleepe?
I must needs wake her: Madam, Madam, Madam,
I, let the Countie take you in your bed,
Heele fright you vp yfaith. Will it not be?
What drest, and in your clothes, and downe againe?
I must needs wake you: Lady, Lady, Lady?
Alas, alas, helpe, helpe, my Ladyes dead,
Oh weladay, that euer I was borne,
Some Aqua-vitæ ho, my Lord, my Lady?
Mo.
Enter Mother.What noise is heere?
Nur.
O lamentable day.
Mo.
What is the matter?
Nur.
Looke, looke, oh heauie day.
Mo.
O me, O me, my Child, my onely life:
Reuiue, looke vp, or I will die with thee:
Helpe, helpe, call helpe.
Enter Father.
Fa.
For shame bring Iuliet forth, her Lord is come.
Nur.
Shee’s dead: deceast, shee’s dead: alacke the day.
M.
Alacke the day, shee’s dead, shee’s dead, shee’s dead.
Fa.
Ha? Let me see her: out alas shee’s cold,
Her blood is setled and her ioynts are stiffe:
Life and these lips haue long bene sep erated:
Death lies on her like an vntimely frost
Vpon the swetest flower of all the field.
Nur.
O Lamentable day!
Mo.
O wofull time.
Fa.
Death that hath tane her hence to make me waile,
Ties vp my tongue, and will not let me speake.
Enter Frier and the Countie.
Fri.
Come, is the Bride ready to go to Church?
Fa.
Ready to go, but neuer to returne.
O Sonne, the night before thy wedding day,
Hath death laine with thy wife: there she lies,
Flower as she was, deflowred by him.
Death is my Sonne in law, death is my Heire,
My Daughter he hath wedded. I will die,
And leaue him all life liuing, all is deaths.
Pa.
Haue I thought long to see this mornings face,
And doth it giue me such a sight as this?
Mo.
Accur’st, vnhappie, wretched hatefull day
Most miserable houre, that ere time saw
In lasting labour of his Pilgrimage.
But one, poore one, one poore and louing Child,
But one thing to reioyce and solace in,
And cruell death hath catcht it from my sight.
Nur.
O wo, O wofull, wofull, wofull day
Most lamentable day, most wofull day,
That euer, euer, I did yet behold.
O day, O day, O day, O hatefull day,
Neuer was seene so blacke a day as this:
O wofull day, O wofull day.
Pa.
Beguild, diuorced, wronged, spighted, slaine,
Most detestable death, by thee beguil’d,
By cruell, cruell thee, quite ouerthrowne:
O loue, O life; not life, but loue in death.
Fat.
Despis’d, distressed, hated, martir’d, kil’d,
Vncomfortable time, why cam’st thou now
To murther, murther our solemnitie?
O Child, O Child; my soule, and not my Child,
Dead art thou, alacke my Child is dead,
And with my Child, my ioyes are buried.
Fri.
Peace ho for shame, confusions: Care liues not
In these confusions, heauen and your selfe
Had part in this faire Maid, now heauen hath all,
And all the better is it for the Maid:
Your part in her, you could not keepe from death,
But heauen keepes his part in eternall life:
The most you sought was her promotion,
For ’twas your heauen, she shouldst be aduan’st,
And weepe ye now, seeing she is aduan’st
Aboue the Cloudes, as high as Heauen it selfe?
O in this loue, you loue your Child so ill,
That you run mad, seeing that she is well:
Shee’s not well married, that liues married long,
But shee’s best married, that dies married yong.
Drie vp your teares, and sticke your Rosemarie
On this faire Coarse, and as the custome is,
And in her best array beare her to Church:
For though some Nature bids all vs lament,
Yet Natures teares are Reasons merriment.
Fa.
All things that we ordained Festiuall,
Turne from their office to blacke Funerall:
Our instruments to melancholy Bells,
Our wedding cheare, to a sad buriall Feast:
Our solemne Hymnes, to sullen Dyrges change:
Our Bridall flowers serue for a buried Coarse:
And all things change them to the contrarie.
Fri.
Sir go you in; and Madam, go with him,
And go sir Paris, euery one prepare
To follow this faire Coarse vnto her graue:
The heauens do lowre vpon you, for some ill:
ExeuntMoue them no more, by crossing their high will.
Mu.
Faith we may put vp our Pipes and be gone.
Nur.
Honest goodfellowes: Ah put vp, put vp,
For well you know, this is a pitifull case.
Mu.
I by my troth, the case may be amended.
Enter Peter.
Pet.
Musitions, oh Musitions,
Hearts ease, hearts ease,
O, and you will haue me liue, play hearts ease.
Mu.
Why hearts ease;
Pet.
O Musitions,
Because my heart it selfe plaies, my heart is full.
Mu.
Not a dump we, ’tis no time to play now.
Pet.
You will not then?
Mu.
No.
Pet.
I will then giue it you soundly.
Mu.
What will you giue vs?
Pet.
No money on my faith, but the gleeke.
I will giue you the Minstrell.
Mu.
Then will I giue you the Seruing creature.
Peter.
Then will I lay the seruing Creatures Dagger
on your pate. I will carie no Crochets, Ile Re you, Ile Fa
you, do you note me?
Mu.
And you Re vs, and Fa vs, you Note vs.
2. M.
Pray you put vp your Dagger,
And put out your wit.
Then haue at you with my wit.
Peter.
I will drie-beate you with an yron wit,
And put vp my yron Dagger.
Answere me like men:
When griping griefes the heart doth wound, then Mu
sicke with her siluer sound.
Why siluer sound? why Musicke with her siluer sound?
what say you Simon Catling?
Mu.
Mary sir, because siluer hath a sweet sound.
Pet.
Pratest, what say you Hugh Rebicke?
2. M.
I say siluer sound, because Musitions sound for siluer
Pet.
Pratest to, what say you Iames Sound-Post?
3. Mu.
Faith I know not what to say.
Pet.
O I cry you mercy, you are the Singer.
I will say for you; it is Musicke with her siluer sound,
Because Musitions haue no gold for sounding:
Then Musicke with her siluer sound, with speedy helpe
Exit.doth lend redresse.
Mu.
What a pestilent knaue is this same?
M. 2.
Hang him Iacke, come weele in here, tarrie for
Exit.the Mourners, and stay dinner.
Enter Romeo.
Rom.
If I may trust the flattering truth of sleepe,
My dreames presage some ioyfull newes at hand:
My bosomes L. sits lightly in his throne:
And all thisan day an vnaccustom’d spirit,
Lifts me aboue the ground with cheerefull thoughts.
I dreamt my Lady came and found me dead,
(Strange dreame that giues a dead man leaue to thinke,)
And breath’d such life with kisses in my lips,
That I reuiud and was an Emperour.
Ah me, how sweet is loue it selfe possest,
When but loues shadowes are so rich in ioy.
Enter Romeos man.
Newes from Verona, how now Balthazer?
Dost thou not bring me Letters from the Frier?
How doth my Lady? Is my Father well?
How doth my Lady Iuliet? that I aske againe,
For nothing can be ill, is she be well.
Man.
Then she is well, and nothing can be ill.
Her body sleepes in Capels Monument,
And her immortall part with Angels liue,
I saw her laid low in her kindreds Vault,
And presently tooke Poste to tell it you:
O pardon me for bringing these ill newes,
Since you did leaue it for my office Sir.
Rom.
Is it euen so?
Then I denie you Starres.
Thou knowest my lodging, get me inke and paper,
And hire Post-Horses, I will hence to night.
Man.
I do beseech you sir, haue patience:
Your lookes are pale and wild, and do import
Some misaduenture.
Rom.
Tush, thou art deceiu’d,
Leaue me, and do the thing I bid thee do.
Hast thou no Letters to me from the Frier?
Man.
Exit Man.No my good Lord.
Rom.
No matter: Get thee gone,
And hyre those Horses, Ile be with thee straight.
Well Iuliet, I will lie with thee to night:
Lets see for meanes, O mischiefe thou art swift,
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men:
I do remember an Appothecarie,
And here abouts dwells, which late I noted
In tattred weeds, with ouerwhelming browes,
Culling of Simples, meager were his lookes,
Sharp miserie had worne him to the bones:
And in his needie shop a Tortoyrs hung,
An Allegater stuft, and other skins
Of ill shap’d fishes, and about his shelues,
A beggerly account of emptie boxes,
Greene earthen pots, Bladders, and mustie seedes,
Remnants of packthred, and old cakes of Roses
Were thinly scattered, to make vp a shew.
Noting this penury, to my selfe I said,
An if a man did need a poyson now,
Whose sale is persent death in Mantua,
Here liues a Caitiffe wretch would sell it him.
O this same thought did but fore-run my need,
And this same needie man must sell it me.
As I remember, this should be the house,
Being holy day, the beggers shop is shut.
What ho? Appothecarie?
Enter Appothecarie.
App.
Who call’s so low’d?
Rom.
Come hither man, I see that thou art poore,
Hold, there is fortie Duckets, let me haue
A dram of poyson, such soone speeding geare,
As will disperse it selfe through all the veines,
That the life-wearie-taker may fall dead,
And that the Trunke may be discharg’d of breath,
As violently, as hastie powder fier’d
Doth hurry from the fatall Canons wombe.
App.
Such mortall drugs I haue, but Mantuas law
Is death to any he, that vtters them.
Rom.
Art thou so bare and full of wretchednesse,
And fear’st to die? Famine is in thy cheekes,
Need and opression starueth in thy eyes,
Contempt and beggery hangs vpon thy backe i
The world is not thy friend, nor the worlds law:
The world affords no law to make thee rich.
Then be not poore, but breake it, and take this.
App.
My pouerty, but not my will consents.
Rom.
I pray thy pouerty, and not thy will.
App.
Put this in any liquid thing you will
And drinke it off, and if you had the strength
Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.
Rom.
There’s thy Gold,
Worse poyson to mens soules,
Doing more murther in this loathsome world,
Then these poore compounds that thou maiest not sell.
I sell thee poyson, thou hast sold me none,
Farewell, buy food, and get thy selfe in flesh.
Come Cordiall, and not poyson, go with me
Exeunt.To Iuliets graue, for there must I vse thee.
Enter Frier Iohn to Frier Lawrence.
Iohn.
Holy Franciscan Frier, Brother, ho?
Enter Frier Lawrence.
Law.
This same should be the voice of Frier Iohn.
Welcome from Mantua, what sayes Romeo?
Or if his mind be writ, giue me his Letter.
Iohn.
Going to find a bare-foote Brother out,
One of our order to associate me,
Here in this Citie visiting the sick,
And finding him, the Searchers of the Towne
Suspecting that we both were in a house
Where the infectious pestilence did raigne,
Seal’d vp the doores, and would not let vs forth,
So that my speed to Mantua there was staid.
Law.
Who bare my Letter then to Romeo?
Iohn.
I could not send it, here it is againe,
Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
So fearefull were they of infection.
Law.
Vnhappie Fortune: by my Brotherhood
The Letter was not nice, but full of charge,
Of deare import, and the neglecting it
May do much danger: Frier Iohn go hence,
Get me an Iron Crow, and bring it straight
Vnto my Cell.
Iohn.
Exit.Brother Ile go and bring it thee.
Law.
Now must I to the Monument alone,
Within this three houres will faire Iuliet wake,
Shee will beshrew me much that Romeo
Hath had no notice of these accidents:
But I will write againe to Mantua,
And keepe her at my Cell till Romeo come,
Exit.Poore liuing Coarse, clos’d in a dead mans Tombe,
Enter Paris and his Page.
Par.
Giue me thy Torch Boy, hence and stand aloft,
Yet put it out, for I would not be seene:
Vnder yond young Trees lay thee all along,
Holding thy eare close to the hollow ground,
So shall no foot vpon the Churchyard tread,
Being loose, vnfirme with digging vp of Graues,
But thou shalt heare it: whistle then to me,
As signall that thou hearest some thing approach,
Giue me those flowers. Do as I bid thee, go.
Page.
I am almost afraid to stand alone
Here in the Churchyard, yet I will aduenture.
Pa.
Sweet Flower with flowers thy Bridall bed I strew:
O woe, thy Canopie is dust and stones,
Which with sweet water nightly I will dewe,
Or wanting that, with teares destil’d by mones;
The obsequies that I for thee will keepe,
Nightly shall be, to strew thy graue, and weepe.
Whistle Boy.
The Boy giues warning, something doth approach,
What cursed foot wanders this wayes to night,
To crosse my obsequies, and true loues right?
What with a Torch? Muffle me night a while.
Enter Romeo, and Peter.
Rom.
Giue me that Mattocke, & the wrenching Iron,
Hold take this Letter, early in the morning
See thou deliuer it to my Lord and Father,
Giue me the light; vpon thy life I charge thee,
What ere thou hear’st or seest, stand all aloofe,
And do not interrupt me in my course.
Why I descend into this bed of death,
Is partly to behold my Ladies face:
But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger,
A precious Ring, a Ring that I must vse,
In deare employment, therefore hence be gone:
But if thou iealous dost returne to prie
In what I further shall intend to do,
By heauen I will teare thee ioynt by ioynt,
And strew this hungry Churchyard with thy limbs:
The time, and my intents are sauage wilde:
More fierce and more inexorable farre,
Them emptie Tygers, or the roaring Sea.
Pet.
I will be gone sir, and not trouble you
Ro.
So shalt thou shew me friendship: take thou that,
Liue and be prosperous, and farewell good fellow.
Pet.
For all this same, Ile hide me here about,
His lookes I feare, and his intents I doubt.
Rom.
Thou detestable mawe, thou wombe of death,
Gorg’d with the dearest morsell of the earth:
Thus I enforce thy rotten Iawes to open,
And in despight, Ile cram thee with more food.
Par.
This is that banisht haughtie Mountague,
That murdred my Loues Cozin; with which griefe,
It is supposed the faire Creature died,
And here is come to do some villanous shame
To the dead bodies: I will apprehend him.
Stop thy vnhallowed toyle, vile Mountague:
Can vengeance be pursued further then death?
Condemned villaine, I do apprehend thee.
Obey and go with me, for thou must die,
Rom.
I must indeed, and therfore came I hither:
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man,
Flie hence and leaue me, thinke vpon those gone,
Let them affright thee. I beseech thee Youth,
Put not an other sin vpon my head,
By vrging me to furie. O be gone,
By heauen I loue thee better then my selfe,
For I come hither arm’d against my selfe:
Stay not, be gone, liue, and hereafter say,
A mad mans mercy bid thee run away.
Par.
I do defie thy commisseration,
And apprehend thee for a Fellon here.
Ro.
Wilt thou prouoke me? Then haue at thee Boy.
Pet.
O Lord they fight, I will go call the Watch.
Pa.
O I am slaine, if thou be mercifull,
Open the Tombe, lay me with Iuliet.
Rom.
In faith I will, let me peruse this face:
Mercutius kinsman, Noble Countie Paris,
What said my man, when my betossed soule
Did not attend him as we rode? I thinke
He told me Paris should haue married Iuliet.
Said he not so? Or did I dreame it so?
Or am I mad, hearing him talke of Iuliet,
To thinke it was so? O giue me thy hand,
One, writ with me in sowre misfortunes booke.
Ile burie thee in a triumphant graue.
A Graue; O no, a Lanthorne; slaughtred Youth:
For here lies Iuliet, and her beautie makes
This Vault a feasting presence full of light.
Death lie thou there, by a dead man inter’d.
How oft when men are at the point of death,
Haue they beene merrie? Which their Keepers call
A lightning before death? Oh how may I
Call this a lightning? O my Loue, my Wife,
Death that hath suckt the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet vpon thy Beautie:
Thou are not conquer’d: Beauties ensigne yet
Is Crymson in thy lips, and in thy cheekes,
And Deaths pale flag is not aduanced there.
Tybalt, ly’st thou there in thy bloudy sheet?
O what more fauour can I do to thee,
Then with that hand that cut thy youth in twaine,
To sunder his that was thy enemie?
Forgiue me Cozen. Ah deare Iuliet:
Why art thou yet so faire? I will beleeue,
Shall I beleeue, that vnsubstantiall death is amorous?
And that the leane abhorred Monster keepes
Thee here in darke to be his Paramour?
For feare of that, I still will stay with thee,
And neuer from this Pallace of dym night
Depart againe: come lie thou in my armes,
Heere’s to thy health, where ere thou tumblest in.
O true Appothecarie!
Thy drugs are quicke. Thus with a kisse I die.
Depart againe; here, here will I remaine,
With Wormes that are thy Chambermaides: O here
Will I set vp my euerlasting rest:
And shake the yoke of inauspicious starres
From this world-wearied flesh: Eyes looke your last:
Armes take your last embrace: And lips, O you
The doores of breath, seale with a righteous kisse
A datelesse bargaine to ingrossing death:
Come bitter conduct, come vnsauory guide,
Thou desperate Pilot, now at once run on
The dashing Rocks, thy Sea-sicke wearie Barke:
Heere’s to my Loue. O true Appothecary:
Thy drugs are quicke. Thus with a kisse I die.
Enter Frier with a Lanthorne, Crow, and Spade.
Fri.
St. Francis be my speed, how oft to night
Haue my old feet stumbled at graues? Who’s there?
Man.
Here’s one, a Friend, & one that knowes you well.
Fri.
Blisse be vpon you. Tell me good my Friend
What Torch is yond that vainely lends his light
To grubs, and eyelesse Sculles? As I discerne,
It burneth in the Capels Monument.
Man.
It doth so holy sir,
And there’s my Master, one that you loue.
Fri.
Who is it?
Man.
Romeo.
Fri.
How long hath he bin there?
Man.
Full halfe an houre.
Fri.
Go with me to the Vault.
Man.
I dare not Sir.
My Master knowes not but I am gone hence,
And fearefully did menace me with death,
If I did stay to looke on his entents.
Fri.
Stay, then Ile go alone, feares comes vpon me.
O much I feare some ill vnluckie thing.
Man.
As I did sleepe vnder this young tree here,
I dreamt my maister and another fought,
And that my Maister slew him.
Fri.
Romeo.
Alacke, alacke, what blood is this which staines
The stony entrance of this Sepulcher?
What meane these Masterlesse, and goarie Swords
To lie discolour’d by this place of peace?
Romeo, oh pale: who else? what Paris too?
And steept in blood? Ah what an vn knd houre
Is guiltie of this lamentable chance?
The Lady stirs.
Iul.
O comfortable Frier, where’s my Lord?
I do remember well where I should be:
And there I am, where is my Romeo?
Fri.
I heare some noyse Lady, come from that nest
Of death, contagion, and vnnaturall sleepe,
A greater power then we can contradict
Hath thwarted our entents, come, come away,
Thy husband in thy bosome there lies dead:
And Paris too: come Ile dispose of thee,
Among a Sisterhood of holy Nunnes:
Stay not to question, for the watch is comming.
Exit.Come, go good Iuliet, I dare no longer stay.
Iul.
Go get thee hence, for I will [not away],
What’s here? A cup clos’d in my true lo:es hand?
Poyson I see hath bin his timelesse end
O churle, drinke all? and left no friendly drop,
To helpe me after, I will kisse thy lips,
Happlie some poyson yet doth hang on them,
To make me die with a restoratiue.
Thy lips are warme.
Enter Boy and Watch.
Watch.
Lead Boy, which way?
Iul.
Yea noise?
Then ile be briefe. O happy Dagger.
Kils herselfe.‘Tis in thy sheath, there rust and let me die
Boy.
This is the place,
There where the Torch doth burne
Watch.
The ground is bloody,
Search about the Churchyard.
Go some of you, who ere you find attach.
Pittifull sight, here lies the Countie slaine,
And Iuliets bleeding, warme and newly dead
Who here hath laine these two dayes buried.
Go tell the Prince, runne to the Capulets,
Raise vp the Mountagues, some others search,
We see the ground whereon these woes do lye,
But the true ground of all these piteous woes,
We cannot without circumstance descry.
Enter Romeo’s man.
Watch.
Here’s Romeos man,
We found him in the Churchyard.
Con.
Hold him in safety, till the Prince come hither.
Enter Frier, and another Watchman.
3. Wat.
Here is a Frier that trembles, sighes, and weepes
We tooke this Mattocke and this Spade from him,
As he was comming from this Church-yard side.
Con.
A great suspition, stay the Frier too.
Enter the Prince.
Prin.
What misaduenture is so earely vp,
That calls our person from our mornings rest?
Enter Capulet and his Wife.
Cap.
What should it be that they so shrike abroad?
Wife.
O the people in the streete crie Romeo.
Some Iuliet, and some Paris, and all runne
With open outcry toward out Monument.
Pri.
What feare is this which startles in your eares?
Wat.
Soueraigne, here lies the Countie Paris slaine,
And Romeo dead, and Iuliet dead before,
Warme and new kil’d.
Prin.
Search,
Seeke, and know how, this foule murder comes.
Wat.
Here is a Frier, and Slaughter’d Romeos man,
With Instruments vpon them fit to open
These dead mens Tombes.
Cap.
O heauen!
O wife looke how our Daughter bleedes!
This Dagger hath mistaine, for loe his house
Is empty on the backe of Mountague,
And is misheathed in my Daughters bosome.
Wife.
O me, this sight of death, is as a Bell
That waines my old age to a Sepulcher.
Enter Mountague.
Pri.
Come Mountague, for thou art early vp
To see thy Sonne and Heire, now early downe.
Moun.
Alas my liege, my wife is dead to night,
Griefe of my Sonnes exile hath stopt her breath:
What further woe conspires against my age?
Prin.
Looke: and thou shalt see.
Moun.
O thou vntaught, what manners in is this,
To presse before thy Father to a graue?
Prin.
Seale vp the mouth of outrage for a while,
Till we can cleare these ambiguities,
And know their spring, their head, their true descent,
And then I will be generall of your woes,
And lead you euen to death? meane time forbeare,
And let mischance be slaue to patience,
Bring forth the parties of suspition.
Fri.
I am the greatest, able to doe least,
Yet most suspected as the time and place
Doth make against me of this direfull murther:
And heere I stand both to impeach and purge
My selfe condemned, and my selfe excus’d.
Prin.
Then say at once, what thou dost know in this?
Fri.
I will be briefe, for my short date of breath
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
Romeo there dead, was husband to that Iuliet,
And she there dead, that’s Romeos faithfull wife:
I married them; and their stolne marriage day
Was Tybalts Doomesday: whose vntimely death
Banish’d the new-made Bridegroome from this Citie:
For whom (and not for Tybalt) Iuliet pinde.
You, to remoue that siege of Greefe from her,
Betroth’d, and would haue married her perforce
To Countie Paris. Then comes she to me,
And (with wilde lookes) bid me deuise some meanes
To rid her from this second Marriage,
Or in my Cell there would she kill her selfe.
Then gaue I her (so Tutor’d by my Art)
A sleeping Potion, which so tooke effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The forme of death. Meane time, I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come, as this dyre night,
To helpe to take her from her borrowed graue,
Being the time the Potions force should cease.
But he which bore my Letter, Frier Iohn,
Was stay’d by accident; and yesternight
Return’d my Letter backe. Then all alone,
At the prefixed houre of her waking,
Came I to take her from her Kindreds vault,
Meaning to keepe her closely at my Cell,
Till I conueniently could send to Romeo.
But when I came (some Minute ere the time
Of her awaking) heere vntimely lay
The Noble Paris, and true Romeo dead.
Shee wakes, and I intreated her come foorth,
And beare this worke of Heauen, with patience:
But then, a noyse did scarre me from the Tombe,
And she (too desperate) would not go with me,
But (as it seemes) did violence on her selfe.
All this I know, and to the Marriage her Nurse is priuy:
And if ought in this miscarried by my fault,
Let my old life be sacrific’d, some houre before the time,
Vnto the rigour of seuerest Law.
Prin.
We still haue knowne thee for a Holy man.
Where’s Romeo’s man? What can he say to this?
Boy.
I brought my Master newes of Iuliets death,
And then in poste he came from Mantua
To this same place, to this same Monument.
This Letter he early bid me giue his Father,
And threatned me with death, going in the Vault,
If I departed not, and left him there.
Prin.
Giue me the Letter, I will look on it.
Where is the Counties Page that rais’d the Watch?
Sirra, what made your Master in this place?
Page.
He came with flowres to strew his Ladies graue,
And bid me stand aloofe, and so I did:
Anon comes one with light to ope the Tombe,
And by and by my Maister drew on him,
And then I ran away to call the Watch.
Prin.
This Letter doth make good the Friers words,
Their course of Loue, the tydings of her death:
And heere he writes, that he did buy a poyson
Of a poore Pothecarie, and therewithall
Came to this Vault to dye, and lye with Iuliet.
Where be these Enemies? Capulet, Mountague,
See what a scourge is laide vpon your hate,
That Heauen finds meanes to kill your ioyes with Loue;
And I, for winking at your discords too,
Haue lost a brace of Kinsmen: All are punish’d.
Cap.
O Brother Mountague, giue me thy hand,
This is my Daughters ioynture, for no more
Can I demand.
Moun.
But I can giue thee more:
For I will raise her Statue in pure Gold,
That whiles Verona by that name is knowne,
There shall no figure at that Rate be set,
As that of True and Faithfull Iuliet.
Cap.
As rich shall Romeo by his Lady ly,
Poore sacrifices of our enmity.
Prin.
A glooming peace this morning with it brings,
The Sunne for sorrow will not shew his head;
Go hence, to haue more talke of these sad things,
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished.
For neuer was a Storie of more Wo,
Exeunt omnes.Then this of Iuliet, and her Romeo.
FINIS
| Romeo and Juliet | |
|---|---|
An 1870 oil painting by Ford Madox Brown depicting the play’s balcony scene |
|
| Written by | William Shakespeare |
| Characters |
|
| Date premiered | 1597[a] |
| Original language | English |
| Series | First Quarto |
| Subject | Love |
| Genre | Shakespearean tragedy |
| Setting | Italy (Verona and Mantua) |
The opening act of Romeo and Juliet.
See also: Acts II, III, IV, V
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare’s most popular plays during his lifetime and, along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.
Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale written by Matteo Bandello and translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but expanded the plot by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. The text of the first quarto version was of poor quality, however, and later editions corrected the text to conform more closely with Shakespeare’s original.
Shakespeare’s use of poetic dramatic structure (including effects such as switching between comedy and tragedy to heighten tension, the expansion of minor characters, and numerous sub-plots to embellish the story) has been praised as an early sign of his dramatic skill. The play ascribes different poetic forms to different characters, sometimes changing the form as the character develops. Romeo, for example, grows more adept at the sonnet over the course of the play.
Romeo and Juliet has been adapted numerous times for stage, film, musical, and opera venues. During the English Restoration, it was revived and heavily revised by William Davenant. David Garrick’s 18th-century version also modified several scenes, removing material then considered indecent, and Georg Benda’s Romeo und Julie omitted much of the action and used a happy ending. Performances in the 19th century, including Charlotte Cushman’s, restored the original text and focused on greater realism. John Gielgud’s 1935 version kept very close to Shakespeare’s text and used Elizabethan costumes and staging to enhance the drama. In the 20th and into the 21st century, the play has been adapted in versions as diverse as George Cukor’s 1936 film Romeo and Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film Romeo + Juliet, and most recently, Carlo Carlei’s 2013 film Romeo and Juliet.
Characters
- Ruling house of Verona
- Prince Escalus is the ruling Prince of Verona.
- Count Paris is a kinsman of Escalus who wishes to marry Juliet.
- Mercutio is another kinsman of Escalus, a friend of Romeo.
- House of Capulet
- Capulet is the patriarch of the house of Capulet.
- Lady Capulet is the matriarch of the house of Capulet.
- Juliet Capulet, the 13-year-old daughter of Capulet, is the play’s female protagonist.
- Tybalt is a cousin of Juliet, the nephew of Lady Capulet.
- The Nurse is Juliet’s personal attendant and confidante.
- Rosaline is Lord Capulet’s niece, Romeo’s love in the beginning of the story.
- Peter, Sampson, and Gregory are servants of the Capulet household.
- House of Montague
- Montague is the patriarch of the house of Montague.
- Lady Montague is the matriarch of the house of Montague.
- Romeo Montague, the son of Montague, is the play’s male protagonist.
- Benvolio is Romeo’s cousin and best friend.
- Abram and Balthasar are servants of the Montague household.
- Others
- Friar Laurence is a Franciscan friar and Romeo’s confidant.
- Friar John is sent to deliver Friar Laurence’s letter to Romeo.
- An Apothecary who reluctantly sells Romeo poison.
- A Chorus reads a prologue to each of the first two acts.
Synopsis
L’ultimo bacio dato a Giulietta da Romeo by Francesco Hayez. Oil on canvas, 1823.
The play, set in Verona, Italy, begins with a street brawl between Montague and Capulet servants who, like the masters they serve, are sworn enemies. Prince Escalus of Verona intervenes and declares that further breach of the peace will be punishable by death. Later, Count Paris talks to Capulet about marrying his daughter Juliet, but Capulet asks Paris to wait another two years and invites him to attend a planned Capulet ball. Lady Capulet and Juliet’s Nurse try to persuade Juliet to accept Paris’s courtship.
Meanwhile, Benvolio talks with his cousin Romeo, Montague’s son, about Romeo’s recent depression. Benvolio discovers that it stems from unrequited infatuation for a girl named Rosaline, one of Capulet’s nieces. Persuaded by Benvolio and Mercutio, Romeo attends the ball at the Capulet house in hopes of meeting Rosaline. However, Romeo instead meets and falls in love with Juliet. Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt, is enraged at Romeo for sneaking into the ball but is only stopped from killing Romeo by Juliet’s father, who does not wish to shed blood in his house. After the ball, in what is now famously known as the «balcony scene», Romeo sneaks into the Capulet orchard and overhears Juliet at her window vowing her love to him in spite of her family’s hatred of the Montagues. Romeo makes himself known to her, and they agree to be married. With the help of Friar Laurence, who hopes to reconcile the two families through their children’s union, they are secretly married the next day.
Tybalt, meanwhile, still incensed that Romeo had sneaked into the Capulet ball, challenges him to a duel. Romeo, now considering Tybalt his kinsman, refuses to fight. Mercutio is offended by Tybalt’s insolence, as well as Romeo’s «vile submission»,[1] and accepts the duel on Romeo’s behalf. Mercutio is fatally wounded when Romeo attempts to break up the fight, and declares a curse upon both households before he dies. («A plague o’ both your houses!») Grief-stricken and racked with guilt, Romeo confronts and slays Tybalt.
Benvolio argues that Romeo has justly executed Tybalt for the murder of Mercutio. The Prince, now having lost a kinsman in the warring families’ feud, exiles Romeo from Verona, under penalty of death if he ever returns. Romeo secretly spends the night in Juliet’s chamber, where they consummate their marriage. Capulet, misinterpreting Juliet’s grief, agrees to marry her to Count Paris and threatens to disown her when she refuses to become Paris’s «joyful bride».[2] When she then pleads for the marriage to be delayed, her mother rejects her.
Juliet visits Friar Laurence for help, and he offers her a potion that will put her into a deathlike coma or catalepsy for «two and forty hours».[3] The Friar promises to send a messenger to inform Romeo of the plan so that he can rejoin her when she awakens. On the night before the wedding, she takes the drug and, when discovered apparently dead, she is laid in the family crypt.
The messenger, however, does not reach Romeo and, instead, Romeo learns of Juliet’s apparent death from his servant, Balthasar. Heartbroken, Romeo buys poison from an apothecary and goes to the Capulet crypt. He encounters Paris who has come to mourn Juliet privately. Believing Romeo to be a vandal, Paris confronts him and, in the ensuing battle, Romeo kills Paris. Still believing Juliet to be dead, he drinks the poison. Juliet then awakens and, discovering that Romeo is dead, stabs herself with his dagger and joins him in death. The feuding families and the Prince meet at the tomb to find all three dead. Friar Laurence recounts the story of the two «star-cross’d lovers», fulfilling the curse that Mercutio swore. The families are reconciled by their children’s deaths and agree to end their violent feud. The play ends with the Prince’s elegy for the lovers: «For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.»[4]
Sources
Romeo and Juliet borrows from a tradition of tragic love stories dating back to antiquity. One of these is Pyramus and Thisbe, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which contains parallels to Shakespeare’s story: the lovers’ parents despise each other, and Pyramus falsely believes his lover Thisbe is dead.[5] The Ephesiaca of Xenophon of Ephesus, written in the 3rd century, also contains several similarities to the play, including the separation of the lovers, and a potion that induces a deathlike sleep.[6]
One of the earliest references to the names Montague and Capulet is from Dante’s Divine Comedy, who mentions the Montecchi (Montagues) and the Cappelletti (Capulets) in canto six of Purgatorio:[7]
Come and see, you who are negligent,
Montagues and Capulets, Monaldi and Filippeschi
One lot already grieving, the other in fear.[8]
Masuccio Salernitano, author of Mariotto & Ganozza (1476), the earliest known version of Romeo & Juliet tale
However, the reference is part of a polemic against the moral decay of Florence, Lombardy, and the Italian Peninsula as a whole; Dante, through his characters, chastises German King Albert I for neglecting his responsibilities towards Italy («you who are negligent»), and successive popes for their encroachment from purely spiritual affairs, thus leading to a climate of incessant bickering and warfare between rival political parties in Lombardy. History records the name of the family Montague as being lent to such a political party in Verona, but that of the Capulets as from a Cremonese family, both of whom play out their conflict in Lombardy as a whole rather than within the confines of Verona.[9] Allied to rival political factions, the parties are grieving («One lot already grieving») because their endless warfare has led to the destruction of both parties,[9] rather than a grief from the loss of their ill-fated offspring as the play sets forth, which appears to be a solely poetic creation within this context.
The earliest known version of the Romeo and Juliet tale akin to Shakespeare’s play is the story of Mariotto and Ganozza by Masuccio Salernitano, in the 33rd novel of his Il Novellino published in 1476.[10] Salernitano sets the story in Siena and insists its events took place in his own lifetime. His version of the story includes the secret marriage, the colluding friar, the fray where a prominent citizen is killed, Mariotto’s exile, Ganozza’s forced marriage, the potion plot, and the crucial message that goes astray. In this version, Mariotto is caught and beheaded and Ganozza dies of grief.[11][12]
Luigi da Porto (1485–1529) adapted the story as Giulietta e Romeo[13] and included it in his Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti (A Newly-Discovered History of two Noble Lovers), written in 1524 and published posthumously in 1531 in Venice.[14][15] Da Porto drew on Pyramus and Thisbe, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and Salernitano’s Mariotto e Ganozza, but it is likely that his story is also autobiographical: He was a soldier present at a ball on 26 February 1511, at a residence of the pro-Venice Savorgnan clan in Udine, following a peace ceremony attended by the opposing pro-Imperial Strumieri clan. There, Da Porto fell in love with Lucina, a Savorgnan daughter, but the family feud frustrated their courtship. The next morning, the Savorgnans led an attack on the city, and many members of the Strumieri were murdered. Years later, still half-paralyzed from a battle-wound, Luigi wrote Giulietta e Romeo in Montorso Vicentino (from which he could see the «castles» of Verona), dedicating the novella to the bellisima e leggiadra (the beautiful and graceful) Lucina Savorgnan.[13][16] Da Porto presented his tale as historically factual and claimed it took place at least a century earlier than Salernitano had it, in the days Verona was ruled by Bartolomeo della Scala[17] (anglicized as Prince Escalus).
Da Porto presented the narrative in close to its modern form, including the names of the lovers, the rival families of Montecchi and Capuleti (Cappelletti) and the location in Verona.[10] He named the friar Laurence (frate Lorenzo) and introduced the characters Mercutio (Marcuccio Guertio), Tybalt (Tebaldo Cappelletti), Count Paris (conte (Paride) di Lodrone), the faithful servant, and Giulietta’s nurse. Da Porto originated the remaining basic elements of the story: the feuding families, Romeo—left by his mistress—meeting Giulietta at a dance at her house, the love scenes (including the balcony scene), the periods of despair, Romeo killing Giulietta’s cousin (Tebaldo), and the families’ reconciliation after the lovers’ suicides.[18] In da Porto’s version, Romeo takes poison and Giulietta keeps her breath until she dies.[19]
In 1554, Matteo Bandello published the second volume of his Novelle, which included his version of Giuletta e Romeo,[15] probably written between 1531 and 1545. Bandello lengthened and weighed down the plot while leaving the storyline basically unchanged (though he did introduce Benvolio).[18] Bandello’s story was translated into French by Pierre Boaistuau in 1559 in the first volume of his Histories Tragiques. Boaistuau adds much moralising and sentiment, and the characters indulge in rhetorical outbursts.[20]
In his 1562 narrative poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, Arthur Brooke translated Boaistuau faithfully but adjusted it to reflect parts of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.[21] There was a trend among writers and playwrights to publish works based on Italian novelle—Italian tales were very popular among theatre-goers—and Shakespeare may well have been familiar with William Painter’s 1567 collection of Italian tales titled Palace of Pleasure.[22] This collection included a version in prose of the Romeo and Juliet story named «The goodly History of the true and constant love of Romeo and Juliett». Shakespeare took advantage of this popularity: The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Romeo and Juliet are all from Italian novelle. Romeo and Juliet is a dramatization of Brooke’s translation, and Shakespeare follows the poem closely but adds detail to several major and minor characters (the Nurse and Mercutio in particular).[23][24][25]
Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander and Dido, Queen of Carthage, both similar stories written in Shakespeare’s day, are thought to be less of a direct influence, although they may have helped create an atmosphere in which tragic love stories could thrive.[21]
Date and text
Title page of the first edition
It is unknown when exactly Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. Juliet’s Nurse refers to an earthquake she says occurred 11 years ago.[26] This may refer to the Dover Straits earthquake of 1580, which would date that particular line to 1591. Other earthquakes—both in England and in Verona—have been proposed in support of the different dates.[27] But the play’s stylistic similarities with A Midsummer Night’s Dream and other plays conventionally dated around 1594–95, place its composition sometime between 1591 and 1595.[28][b] One conjecture is that Shakespeare may have begun a draft in 1591, which he completed in 1595.[29]
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was published in two quarto editions prior to the publication of the First Folio of 1623. These are referred to as Q1 and Q2. The first printed edition, Q1, appeared in early 1597, printed by John Danter. Because its text contains numerous differences from the later editions, it is labelled a so-called ‘bad quarto’; the 20th-century editor T. J. B. Spencer described it as «a detestable text, probably a reconstruction of the play from the imperfect memories of one or two of the actors», suggesting that it had been pirated for publication.[30] An alternative explanation for Q1’s shortcomings is that the play (like many others of the time) may have been heavily edited before performance by the playing company.[31] However, «the theory, formulated by [Alfred] Pollard,» that the ‘bad quarto’ was «reconstructed from memory by some of the actors is now under attack. Alternative theories are that some or all of ‘the bad quartos’ are early versions by Shakespeare or abbreviations made either for Shakespeare’s company or for other companies.»[32] In any event, its appearance in early 1597 makes 1596 the latest possible date for the play’s composition.[27]
The superior Q2 called the play The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet. It was printed in 1599 by Thomas Creede and published by Cuthbert Burby. Q2 is about 800 lines longer than Q1.[31] Its title page describes it as «Newly corrected, augmented and amended». Scholars believe that Q2 was based on Shakespeare’s pre-performance draft (called his foul papers) since there are textual oddities such as variable tags for characters and «false starts» for speeches that were presumably struck through by the author but erroneously preserved by the typesetter. It is a much more complete and reliable text and was reprinted in 1609 (Q3), 1622 (Q4) and 1637 (Q5).[30] In effect, all later Quartos and Folios of Romeo and Juliet are based on Q2, as are all modern editions since editors believe that any deviations from Q2 in the later editions (whether good or bad) are likely to have arisen from editors or compositors, not from Shakespeare.[31]
The First Folio text of 1623 was based primarily on Q3, with clarifications and corrections possibly coming from a theatrical prompt book or Q1.[30][33] Other Folio editions of the play were printed in 1632 (F2), 1664 (F3), and 1685 (F4).[34] Modern versions—that take into account several of the Folios and Quartos—first appeared with Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition, followed by Alexander Pope’s 1723 version. Pope began a tradition of editing the play to add information such as stage directions missing in Q2 by locating them in Q1. This tradition continued late into the Romantic period. Fully annotated editions first appeared in the Victorian period and continue to be produced today, printing the text of the play with footnotes describing the sources and culture behind the play.[35]
Themes and motifs
Scholars have found it extremely difficult to assign one specific, overarching theme to the play. Proposals for a main theme include a discovery by the characters that human beings are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, but instead are more or less alike,[36] awaking out of a dream and into reality, the danger of hasty action, or the power of tragic fate. None of these have widespread support. However, even if an overall theme cannot be found it is clear that the play is full of several small thematic elements that intertwine in complex ways. Several of those most often debated by scholars are discussed below.[37]
Love
«Romeo
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.»
—Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene V[38]
Romeo and Juliet is sometimes considered to have no unifying theme, save that of young love.[36] Romeo and Juliet have become emblematic of young lovers and doomed love. Since it is such an obvious subject of the play, several scholars have explored the language and historical context behind the romance of the play.[39]
On their first meeting, Romeo and Juliet use a form of communication recommended by many etiquette authors in Shakespeare’s day: metaphor. By using metaphors of saints and sins, Romeo was able to test Juliet’s feelings for him in a non-threatening way. This method was recommended by Baldassare Castiglione (whose works had been translated into English by this time). He pointed out that if a man used a metaphor as an invitation, the woman could pretend she did not understand him, and he could retreat without losing honour. Juliet, however, participates in the metaphor and expands on it. The religious metaphors of «shrine», «pilgrim», and «saint» were fashionable in the poetry of the time and more likely to be understood as romantic rather than blasphemous, as the concept of sainthood was associated with the Catholicism of an earlier age.[40] Later in the play, Shakespeare removes the more daring allusions to Christ’s resurrection in the tomb he found in his source work: Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet.[41]
In the later balcony scene, Shakespeare has Romeo overhear Juliet’s soliloquy, but in Brooke’s version of the story, her declaration is done alone. By bringing Romeo into the scene to eavesdrop, Shakespeare breaks from the normal sequence of courtship. Usually, a woman was required to be modest and shy to make sure that her suitor was sincere, but breaking this rule serves to speed along the plot. The lovers are able to skip courting and move on to plain talk about their relationship—agreeing to be married after knowing each other for only one night.[39] In the final suicide scene, there is a contradiction in the message—in the Catholic religion, suicides were often thought to be condemned to Hell, whereas people who die to be with their loves under the «Religion of Love» are joined with their loves in Paradise. Romeo and Juliet’s love seems to be expressing the «Religion of Love» view rather than the Catholic view. Another point is that, although their love is passionate, it is only consummated in marriage, which keeps them from losing the audience’s sympathy.[42]
The play arguably equates love and sex with death. Throughout the story, both Romeo and Juliet, along with the other characters, fantasise about it as a dark being, often equating it with a lover. Capulet, for example, when he first discovers Juliet’s (faked) death, describes it as having deflowered his daughter.[43] Juliet later erotically compares Romeo and death. Right before her suicide, she grabs Romeo’s dagger, saying «O happy dagger! This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die.»[44][45]
Fate and chance
«O, I am fortune’s fool!»
—Romeo, Act III Scene I[46]
Scholars are divided on the role of fate in the play. No consensus exists on whether the characters are truly fated to die together or whether the events take place by a series of unlucky chances. Arguments in favour of fate often refer to the description of the lovers as «star-cross’d». This phrase seems to hint that the stars have predetermined the lovers’ future.[47] John W. Draper points out the parallels between the Elizabethan belief in the four humours and the main characters of the play (for example, Tybalt as a choleric). Interpreting the text in the light of humours reduces the amount of plot attributed to chance by modern audiences.[48] Still, other scholars see the play as a series of unlucky chances—many to such a degree that they do not see it as a tragedy at all, but an emotional melodrama.[48] Ruth Nevo believes the high degree to which chance is stressed in the narrative makes Romeo and Juliet a «lesser tragedy» of happenstance, not of character. For example, Romeo’s challenging Tybalt is not impulsive; it is, after Mercutio’s death, the expected action to take. In this scene, Nevo reads Romeo as being aware of the dangers of flouting social norms, identity, and commitments. He makes the choice to kill, not because of a tragic flaw, but because of circumstance.[49]
Duality (light and dark)
«O brawling love, O loving hate,
O any thing 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!»
—Romeo, Act I, Scene I[50]
Scholars have long noted Shakespeare’s widespread use of light and dark imagery throughout the play. Caroline Spurgeon considers the theme of light as «symbolic of the natural beauty of young love» and later critics have expanded on this interpretation.[49][51] For example, both Romeo and Juliet see the other as light in a surrounding darkness. Romeo describes Juliet as being like the sun,[52] brighter than a torch,[53] a jewel sparkling in the night,[54] and a bright angel among dark clouds.[55] Even when she lies apparently dead in the tomb, he says her «beauty makes / This vault a feasting presence full of light.»[56] Juliet describes Romeo as «day in night» and «Whiter than snow upon a raven’s back.»[57][58] This contrast of light and dark can be expanded as symbols—contrasting love and hate, youth and age in a metaphoric way.[49] Sometimes these intertwining metaphors create dramatic irony. For example, Romeo and Juliet’s love is a light in the midst of the darkness of the hate around them, but all of their activity together is done in night and darkness while all of the feuding is done in broad daylight. This paradox of imagery adds atmosphere to the moral dilemma facing the two lovers: loyalty to family or loyalty to love. At the end of the story, when the morning is gloomy and the sun hiding its face for sorrow, light and dark have returned to their proper places, the outward darkness reflecting the true, inner darkness of the family feud out of sorrow for the lovers. All characters now recognise their folly in light of recent events, and things return to the natural order, thanks to the love and death of Romeo and Juliet.[51] The «light» theme in the play is also heavily connected to the theme of time since light was a convenient way for Shakespeare to express the passage of time through descriptions of the sun, moon, and stars.[59]
Time
«These times of woe afford no time to woo.»
—Paris, Act III, Scene IV[60]
Time plays an important role in the language and plot of the play. Both Romeo and Juliet struggle to maintain an imaginary world void of time in the face of the harsh realities that surround them. For instance, when Romeo swears his love to Juliet by the moon, she protests «O swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon, / That monthly changes in her circled orb, / Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.»[61] From the very beginning, the lovers are designated as «star-cross’d»[62][c] referring to an astrologic belief associated with time. Stars were thought to control the fates of humanity, and as time passed, stars would move along their course in the sky, also charting the course of human lives below. Romeo speaks of a foreboding he feels in the stars’ movements early in the play, and when he learns of Juliet’s death, he defies the stars’ course for him.[48][64]
Another central theme is haste: Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet spans a period of four to six days, in contrast to Brooke’s poems spanning nine months.[59] Scholars such as G. Thomas Tanselle believe that time was «especially important to Shakespeare» in this play, as he used references to «short-time» for the young lovers as opposed to references to «long-time» for the «older generation» to highlight «a headlong rush towards doom».[59] Romeo and Juliet fight time to make their love last forever. In the end, the only way they seem to defeat time is through a death that makes them immortal through art.[65]
Time is also connected to the theme of light and dark. In Shakespeare’s day, plays were most often performed at noon or in the afternoon in broad daylight.[d] This forced the playwright to use words to create the illusion of day and night in his plays. Shakespeare uses references to the night and day, the stars, the moon, and the sun to create this illusion. He also has characters frequently refer to days of the week and specific hours to help the audience understand that time has passed in the story. All in all, no fewer than 103 references to time are found in the play, adding to the illusion of its passage.[66][67]
Criticism and interpretation
Critical history
The earliest known critic of the play was diarist Samuel Pepys, who wrote in 1662: «it is a play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life.»[68] Poet John Dryden wrote 10 years later in praise of the play and its comic character Mercutio: «Shakespear show’d the best of his skill in his Mercutio, and he said himself, that he was forc’d to kill him in the third Act, to prevent being killed by him.»[68] Criticism of the play in the 18th century was less sparse but no less divided. Publisher Nicholas Rowe was the first critic to ponder the theme of the play, which he saw as the just punishment of the two feuding families. In mid-century, writer Charles Gildon and philosopher Lord Kames argued that the play was a failure in that it did not follow the classical rules of drama: the tragedy must occur because of some character flaw, not an accident of fate. Writer and critic Samuel Johnson, however, considered it one of Shakespeare’s «most pleasing» plays.[69]
In the later part of the 18th and through the 19th century, criticism centred on debates over the moral message of the play. Actor and playwright David Garrick’s 1748 adaptation excluded Rosaline: Romeo abandoning her for Juliet was seen as fickle and reckless. Critics such as Charles Dibdin argued that Rosaline had been included in the play in order to show how reckless the hero was and that this was the reason for his tragic end. Others argued that Friar Laurence might be Shakespeare’s spokesman in his warnings against undue haste. At the beginning of the 20th century, these moral arguments were disputed by critics such as Richard Green Moulton: he argued that accident, and not some character flaw, led to the lovers’ deaths.[70]
Dramatic structure
In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare employs several dramatic techniques that have garnered praise from critics, most notably the abrupt shifts from comedy to tragedy (an example is the punning exchange between Benvolio and Mercutio just before Tybalt arrives). Before Mercutio’s death in Act III, the play is largely a comedy.[71] After his accidental demise, the play suddenly becomes serious and takes on a tragic tone. When Romeo is banished, rather than executed, and Friar Laurence offers Juliet a plan to reunite her with Romeo, the audience can still hope that all will end well. They are in a «breathless state of suspense» by the opening of the last scene in the tomb: If Romeo is delayed long enough for the Friar to arrive, he and Juliet may yet be saved.[72] These shifts from hope to despair, reprieve, and new hope serve to emphasise the tragedy when the final hope fails and both the lovers die at the end.[73]
Shakespeare also uses sub-plots to offer a clearer view of the actions of the main characters. For example, when the play begins, Romeo is in love with Rosaline, who has refused all of his advances. Romeo’s infatuation with her stands in obvious contrast to his later love for Juliet. This provides a comparison through which the audience can see the seriousness of Romeo and Juliet’s love and marriage. Paris’ love for Juliet also sets up a contrast between Juliet’s feelings for him and her feelings for Romeo. The formal language she uses around Paris, as well as the way she talks about him to her Nurse, show that her feelings clearly lie with Romeo. Beyond this, the sub-plot of the Montague–Capulet feud overarches the whole play, providing an atmosphere of hate that is the main contributor to the play’s tragic end.[73]
Language
Shakespeare uses a variety of poetic forms throughout the play. He begins with a 14-line prologue in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, spoken by a Chorus. Most of Romeo and Juliet is, however, written in blank verse, and much of it in strict iambic pentameter, with less rhythmic variation than in most of Shakespeare’s later plays.[74] In choosing forms, Shakespeare matches the poetry to the character who uses it. Friar Laurence, for example, uses sermon and sententiae forms and the Nurse uses a unique blank verse form that closely matches colloquial speech.[74] Each of these forms is also moulded and matched to the emotion of the scene the character occupies. For example, when Romeo talks about Rosaline earlier in the play, he attempts to use the Petrarchan sonnet form. Petrarchan sonnets were often used by men to exaggerate the beauty of women who were impossible for them to attain, as in Romeo’s situation with Rosaline. This sonnet form is used by Lady Capulet to describe Count Paris to Juliet as a handsome man.[75] When Romeo and Juliet meet, the poetic form changes from the Petrarchan (which was becoming archaic in Shakespeare’s day) to a then more contemporary sonnet form, using «pilgrims» and «saints» as metaphors.[76] Finally, when the two meet on the balcony, Romeo attempts to use the sonnet form to pledge his love, but Juliet breaks it by saying «Dost thou love me?»[77] By doing this, she searches for true expression, rather than a poetic exaggeration of their love.[78] Juliet uses monosyllabic words with Romeo but uses formal language with Paris.[79] Other forms in the play include an epithalamium by Juliet, a rhapsody in Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech, and an elegy by Paris.[80] Shakespeare saves his prose style most often for the common people in the play, though at times he uses it for other characters, such as Mercutio.[81] Humour, also, is important: scholar Molly Mahood identifies at least 175 puns and wordplays in the text.[82] Many of these jokes are sexual in nature, especially those involving Mercutio and the Nurse.[83]
Psychoanalytic criticism
Early psychoanalytic critics saw the problem of Romeo and Juliet in terms of Romeo’s impulsiveness, deriving from «ill-controlled, partially disguised aggression»,[84] which leads both to Mercutio’s death and to the double suicide.[84][e] Romeo and Juliet is not considered to be exceedingly psychologically complex, and sympathetic psychoanalytic readings of the play make the tragic male experience equivalent with sicknesses.[86] Norman Holland, writing in 1966, considers Romeo’s dream[87] as a realistic «wish fulfilling fantasy both in terms of Romeo’s adult world and his hypothetical childhood at stages oral, phallic and oedipal» – while acknowledging that a dramatic character is not a human being with mental processes separate from those of the author.[88] Critics such as Julia Kristeva focus on the hatred between the families, arguing that this hatred is the cause of Romeo and Juliet’s passion for each other. That hatred manifests itself directly in the lovers’ language: Juliet, for example, speaks of «my only love sprung from my only hate»[89] and often expresses her passion through an anticipation of Romeo’s death.[90] This leads on to speculation as to the playwright’s psychology, in particular to a consideration of Shakespeare’s grief for the death of his son, Hamnet.[91]
Feminist criticism
Feminist literary critics argue that the blame for the family feud lies in Verona’s patriarchal society. For Coppélia Kahn, for example, the strict, masculine code of violence imposed on Romeo is the main force driving the tragedy to its end. When Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo shifts into a violent mode, regretting that Juliet has made him so «effeminate».[92] In this view, the younger males «become men» by engaging in violence on behalf of their fathers, or in the case of the servants, their masters. The feud is also linked to male virility, as the numerous jokes about maidenheads aptly demonstrate.[93][94] Juliet also submits to a female code of docility by allowing others, such as the Friar, to solve her problems for her. Other critics, such as Dympna Callaghan, look at the play’s feminism from a historicist angle, stressing that when the play was written the feudal order was being challenged by increasingly centralised government and the advent of capitalism. At the same time, emerging Puritan ideas about marriage were less concerned with the «evils of female sexuality» than those of earlier eras and more sympathetic towards love-matches: when Juliet dodges her father’s attempt to force her to marry a man she has no feeling for, she is challenging the patriarchal order in a way that would not have been possible at an earlier time.[95]
Queer theory
A number of critics have found the character of Mercutio to have unacknowledged homoerotic desire for Romeo.[96] Jonathan Goldberg examined the sexuality of Mercutio and Romeo utilising queer theory in Queering the Renaissance (1994), comparing their friendship with sexual love.[97] Mercutio, in friendly conversation, mentions Romeo’s phallus, suggesting traces of homoeroticism.[98] An example is his joking wish «To raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle … letting it there stand / Till she had laid it and conjured it down.»[99][100] Romeo’s homoeroticism can also be found in his attitude to Rosaline, a woman who is distant and unavailable and brings no hope of offspring. As Benvolio argues, she is best replaced by someone who will reciprocate. Shakespeare’s procreation sonnets describe another young man who, like Romeo, is having trouble creating offspring and who may be seen as being a homosexual. Goldberg believes that Shakespeare may have used Rosaline as a way to express homosexual problems of procreation in an acceptable way. In this view, when Juliet says «…that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet»,[101] she may be raising the question of whether there is any difference between the beauty of a man and the beauty of a woman.[102]
The balcony scene
The balcony scene was introduced by Da Porto in 1524. He had Romeo walk frequently by her house, «sometimes climbing to her chamber window», and wrote, «It happened one night, as love ordained, when the moon shone unusually bright, that whilst Romeo was climbing the balcony, the young lady … opened the window, and looking out saw him».[103] After this they have a conversation in which they declare eternal love to each other. A few decades later, Bandello greatly expanded this scene, diverging from the familiar one: Julia has her nurse deliver a letter asking Romeo to come to her window with a rope ladder, and he climbs the balcony with the help of his servant, Julia and the nurse (the servants discreetly withdraw after this).[18]
Nevertheless, in October 2014, Lois Leveen pointed out in The Atlantic that the original Shakespeare play did not contain a balcony; it just says that Juliet appears at a window.[104] The word balcone is not known to have existed in the English language until two years after Shakespeare’s death.[105] The balcony was certainly used in Thomas Otway’s 1679 play, The History and Fall of Caius Marius, which had borrowed much of its story from Romeo and Juliet and placed the two lovers in a balcony reciting a speech similar to that between Romeo and Juliet. Leveen suggested that during the 18th century, David Garrick chose to use a balcony in his adaptation and revival of Romeo and Juliet and modern adaptations have continued this tradition.[104]
Legacy
Shakespeare’s day
Romeo and Juliet ranks with Hamlet as one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays. Its many adaptations have made it one of his most enduring and famous stories.[107] Even in Shakespeare’s lifetime, it was extremely popular. Scholar Gary Taylor measures it as the sixth most popular of Shakespeare’s plays, in the period after the death of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd but before the ascendancy of Ben Jonson during which Shakespeare was London’s dominant playwright.[108][f] The date of the first performance is unknown. The First Quarto, printed in 1597, reads «it hath been often (and with great applause) plaid publiquely», setting the first performance before that date. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were certainly the first to perform it. Besides their strong connections with Shakespeare, the Second Quarto actually names one of its actors, Will Kemp, instead of Peter, in a line in Act V. Richard Burbage was probably the first Romeo, being the company’s chief tragedian; and Master Robert Goffe (a boy), the first Juliet.[106] The premiere is likely to have been at The Theatre, with other early productions at the Curtain.[109] Romeo and Juliet is one of the first Shakespeare plays to have been performed outside England: a shortened and simplified version was performed in Nördlingen in 1604.[110]
Restoration and 18th-century theatre
All theatres were closed down by the puritan government on 6 September 1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King’s Company and the Duke’s Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire was divided between them.[111]
Sir William Davenant of the Duke’s Company staged a 1662 adaptation in which Henry Harris played Romeo, Thomas Betterton Mercutio, and Betterton’s wife Mary Saunderson Juliet: she was probably the first woman to play the role professionally.[112] Another version closely followed Davenant’s adaptation and was also regularly performed by the Duke’s Company. This was a tragicomedy by James Howard, in which the two lovers survive.[113]
Thomas Otway’s The History and Fall of Caius Marius, one of the more extreme of the Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare, debuted in 1680. The scene is shifted from Renaissance Verona to ancient Rome; Romeo is Marius, Juliet is Lavinia, the feud is between patricians and plebeians; Juliet/Lavinia wakes from her potion before Romeo/Marius dies. Otway’s version was a hit, and was acted for the next seventy years.[112] His innovation in the closing scene was even more enduring, and was used in adaptations throughout the next 200 years: Theophilus Cibber’s adaptation of 1744, and David Garrick’s of 1748 both used variations on it.[114] These versions also eliminated elements deemed inappropriate at the time. For example, Garrick’s version transferred all language describing Rosaline to Juliet, to heighten the idea of faithfulness and downplay the love-at-first-sight theme.[115][116] In 1750, a «Battle of the Romeos» began, with Spranger Barry and Susannah Maria Arne (Mrs. Theophilus Cibber) at Covent Garden versus David Garrick and George Anne Bellamy at Drury Lane.[117]
The earliest known production in North America was an amateur one: on 23 March 1730, a physician named Joachimus Bertrand placed an advertisement in the Gazette newspaper in New York, promoting a production in which he would play the apothecary.[118] The first professional performances of the play in North America were those of the Hallam Company.[119]
19th-century theatre
The American Cushman sisters, Charlotte and Susan, as Romeo and Juliet in 1846
Garrick’s altered version of the play was very popular, and ran for nearly a century.[112] Not until 1845 did Shakespeare’s original return to the stage in the United States with the sisters Susan and Charlotte Cushman as Juliet and Romeo, respectively,[120] and then in 1847 in Britain with Samuel Phelps at Sadler’s Wells Theatre.[121] Cushman adhered to Shakespeare’s version, beginning a string of eighty-four performances. Her portrayal of Romeo was considered genius by many. The Times wrote: «For a long time Romeo has been a convention. Miss Cushman’s Romeo is a creative, a living, breathing, animated, ardent human being.»[122][120] Queen Victoria wrote in her journal that «no-one would ever have imagined she was a woman».[123] Cushman’s success broke the Garrick tradition and paved the way for later performances to return to the original storyline.[112]
Professional performances of Shakespeare in the mid-19th century had two particular features: firstly, they were generally star vehicles, with supporting roles cut or marginalised to give greater prominence to the central characters. Secondly, they were «pictorial», placing the action on spectacular and elaborate sets (requiring lengthy pauses for scene changes) and with the frequent use of tableaux.[124] Henry Irving’s 1882 production at the Lyceum Theatre (with himself as Romeo and Ellen Terry as Juliet) is considered an archetype of the pictorial style.[125] In 1895, Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson took over from Irving and laid the groundwork for a more natural portrayal of Shakespeare that remains popular today. Forbes-Robertson avoided the showiness of Irving and instead portrayed a down-to-earth Romeo, expressing the poetic dialogue as realistic prose and avoiding melodramatic flourish.[126]
American actors began to rival their British counterparts. Edwin Booth (brother to John Wilkes Booth) and Mary McVicker (soon to be Edwin’s wife) opened as Romeo and Juliet at the sumptuous Booth’s Theatre (with its European-style stage machinery, and an air conditioning system unique in New York) on 3 February 1869. Some reports said it was one of the most elaborate productions of Romeo and Juliet ever seen in America; it was certainly the most popular, running for over six weeks and earning over $60,000 (equivalent to $1,000,000 in 2021).[127][g][h] The programme noted that: «The tragedy will be produced in strict accordance with historical propriety, in every respect, following closely the text of Shakespeare.»[i]
The first professional performance of the play in Japan may have been George Crichton Miln’s company’s production, which toured to Yokohama in 1890.[128] Throughout the 19th century, Romeo and Juliet had been Shakespeare’s most popular play, measured by the number of professional performances. In the 20th century it would become the second most popular, behind Hamlet.[129]
20th-century theatre
In 1933, the play was revived by actress Katharine Cornell and her director husband Guthrie McClintic and was taken on a seven-month nationwide tour throughout the United States. It starred Orson Welles, Brian Aherne and Basil Rathbone. The production was a modest success, and so upon the return to New York, Cornell and McClintic revised it, and for the first time the play was presented with almost all the scenes intact, including the Prologue. The new production opened on Broadway in December 1934. Critics wrote that Cornell was «the greatest Juliet of her time», «endlessly haunting», and «the most lovely and enchanting Juliet our present-day theatre has seen».[130]
John Gielgud, who was among the more famous 20th-century actors to play Romeo, Friar Laurence and Mercutio on stage
John Gielgud’s New Theatre production in 1935 featured Gielgud and Laurence Olivier as Romeo and Mercutio, exchanging roles six weeks into the run, with Peggy Ashcroft as Juliet.[131] Gielgud used a scholarly combination of Q1 and Q2 texts and organised the set and costumes to match as closely as possible the Elizabethan period. His efforts were a huge success at the box office, and set the stage for increased historical realism in later productions.[132] Olivier later compared his performance and Gielgud’s: «John, all spiritual, all spirituality, all beauty, all abstract things; and myself as all earth, blood, humanity … I’ve always felt that John missed the lower half and that made me go for the other … But whatever it was, when I was playing Romeo I was carrying a torch, I was trying to sell realism in Shakespeare.»[133]
Peter Brook’s 1947 version was the beginning of a different style of Romeo and Juliet performances. Brook was less concerned with realism, and more concerned with translating the play into a form that could communicate with the modern world. He argued, «A production is only correct at the moment of its correctness, and only good at the moment of its success.»[134] Brook excluded the final reconciliation of the families from his performance text.[135]
Throughout the century, audiences, influenced by the cinema, became less willing to accept actors distinctly older than the teenage characters they were playing.[136] A significant example of more youthful casting was in Franco Zeffirelli’s Old Vic production in 1960, with John Stride and Judi Dench, which would serve as the basis for his 1968 film.[135] Zeffirelli borrowed from Brook’s ideas, altogether removing around a third of the play’s text to make it more accessible. In an interview with The Times, he stated that the play’s «twin themes of love and the total breakdown of understanding between two generations» had contemporary relevance.[135][j]
Recent performances often set the play in the contemporary world. For example, in 1986, the Royal Shakespeare Company set the play in modern Verona. Switchblades replaced swords, feasts and balls became drug-laden rock parties, and Romeo committed suicide by hypodermic needle.
Neil Bartlett’s production of Romeo and Juliet themed the play very contemporary with a cinematic look which started its life at the Lyric Hammersmith, London then went to West Yorkshire Playhouse for an exclusive run in 1995. The cast included Emily Woof as Juliet, Stuart Bunce as Romeo, Sebastian Harcombe as Mercutio, Ashley Artus as Tybalt, Souad Faress as Lady Capulet and Silas Carson as Paris.[138] In 1997, the Folger Shakespeare Theatre produced a version set in a typical suburban world. Romeo sneaks into the Capulet barbecue to meet Juliet, and Juliet discovers Tybalt’s death while in class at school.[139]
The play is sometimes given a historical setting, enabling audiences to reflect on the underlying conflicts. For example, adaptations have been set in the midst of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict,[140] in the apartheid era in South Africa,[141] and in the aftermath of the Pueblo Revolt.[142] Similarly, Peter Ustinov’s 1956 comic adaptation, Romanoff and Juliet, is set in a fictional mid-European country in the depths of the Cold War.[143] A mock-Victorian revisionist version of Romeo and Juliet‘s final scene (with a happy ending, Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio, and Paris restored to life, and Benvolio revealing that he is Paris’s love, Benvolia, in disguise) forms part of the 1980 stage-play The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.[144] Shakespeare’s R&J, by Joe Calarco, spins the classic in a modern tale of gay teenage awakening.[145] A recent comedic musical adaptation was The Second City’s Romeo and Juliet Musical: The People vs. Friar Laurence, the Man Who Killed Romeo and Juliet, set in modern times.[146]
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Romeo and Juliet has often been the choice of Shakespeare plays to open a classical theatre company, beginning with Edwin Booth’s inaugural production of that play in his theatre in 1869, the newly re-formed company of the Old Vic in 1929 with John Gielgud, Martita Hunt, and Margaret Webster,[147] as well as the Riverside Shakespeare Company in its founding production in New York City in 1977, which used the 1968 film of Franco Zeffirelli’s production as its inspiration.[148]
21st-century theatre
In 2013, Romeo and Juliet ran on Broadway at Richard Rodgers Theatre from 19 September to 8 December for 93 regular performances after 27 previews starting on 24 August with Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad in the starring roles.[149]
In 2018, independent theater company Stairwell Theater presented Romeo and Juliet with a basketball theme
Ballet
The best-known ballet version is Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.[150] Originally commissioned by the Kirov Ballet, it was rejected by them when Prokofiev attempted a happy ending and was rejected again for the experimental nature of its music. It has subsequently attained an «immense» reputation, and has been choreographed by John Cranko (1962) and Kenneth MacMillan (1965) among others.[151]
In 1977, Michael Smuin’s production of one of the play’s most dramatic and impassioned dance interpretations was debuted in its entirety by San Francisco Ballet. This production was the first full-length ballet to be broadcast by the PBS series «Great Performances: Dance in America»; it aired in 1978.[152]
Dada Masilo, a South African dancer and choreographer, reinterpreted Romeo and Juliet in a new modern light. She introduced changes to the story, notably that of presenting the two families as multiracial.[153]
Music
«Romeo loved Juliet
Juliet, she felt the same
When he put his arms around her
He said Julie, baby, you’re my flame
Thou givest fever …»
—Peggy Lee’s rendition of «Fever»[154][155]
At least 24 operas have been based on Romeo and Juliet.[156] The earliest, Romeo und Julie in 1776, a Singspiel by Georg Benda, omits much of the action of the play and most of its characters and has a happy ending. It is occasionally revived. The best-known is Gounod’s 1867 Roméo et Juliette (libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré), a critical triumph when first performed and frequently revived today.[157][158] Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi is also revived from time to time, but has sometimes been judged unfavourably because of its perceived liberties with Shakespeare; however, Bellini and his librettist, Felice Romani, worked from Italian sources—principally Romani’s libretto for Giulietta e Romeo by Nicola Vaccai—rather than directly adapting Shakespeare’s play.[159] Among later operas, there is Heinrich Sutermeister’s 1940 work Romeo und Julia.[160]
Roméo et Juliette by Berlioz is a «symphonie dramatique», a large-scale work in three parts for mixed voices, chorus, and orchestra, which premiered in 1839.[161] Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture (1869, revised 1870 and 1880) is a 15-minute symphonic poem, containing the famous melody known as the «love theme».[162] Tchaikovsky’s device of repeating the same musical theme at the ball, in the balcony scene, in Juliet’s bedroom and in the tomb[163] has been used by subsequent directors: for example, Nino Rota’s love theme is used in a similar way in the 1968 film of the play, as is Des’ree’s «Kissing You» in the 1996 film.[164] Other classical composers influenced by the play include Henry Hugh Pearson (Romeo and Juliet, overture for orchestra, Op. 86), Svendsen (Romeo og Julie, 1876), Delius (A Village Romeo and Juliet, 1899–1901), Stenhammar (Romeo och Julia, 1922), and Kabalevsky (Incidental Music to Romeo and Juliet, Op. 56, 1956).[165]
The play influenced several jazz works, including Peggy Lee’s «Fever».[155] Duke Ellington’s Such Sweet Thunder contains a piece entitled «The Star-Crossed Lovers»[166] in which the pair are represented by tenor and alto saxophones: critics noted that Juliet’s sax dominates the piece, rather than offering an image of equality.[167] The play has frequently influenced popular music, including works by The Supremes, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Lou Reed,[168] and Taylor Swift.[169] The most famous such track is Dire Straits’ «Romeo and Juliet».[170]
The most famous musical theatre adaptation is West Side Story with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It débuted on Broadway in 1957 and in the West End in 1958 and was twice adapted as popular films in 1961 and in 2021. This version updated the setting to mid-20th-century New York City and the warring families to ethnic gangs.[171] Other musical adaptations include Terrence Mann’s 1999 rock musical William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, co-written with Jerome Korman;[172] Gérard Presgurvic’s 2001 Roméo et Juliette, de la Haine à l’Amour; Riccardo Cocciante’s 2007 Giulietta & Romeo[173] and Johan Christher Schütz; and Johan Petterssons’s 2013 adaptation Carnival Tale (Tivolisaga), which takes place at a travelling carnival.[174]
Literature and art
Romeo and Juliet had a profound influence on subsequent literature. Before then, romance had not even been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy.[175] In Harold Bloom’s words, Shakespeare «invented the formula that the sexual becomes the erotic when crossed by the shadow of death».[176] Of Shakespeare’s works, Romeo and Juliet has generated the most—and the most varied—adaptations, including prose and verse narratives, drama, opera, orchestral and choral music, ballet, film, television, and painting.[177][k] The word «Romeo» has even become synonymous with «male lover» in English.[178]
Romeo and Juliet was parodied in Shakespeare’s own lifetime: Henry Porter’s Two Angry Women of Abingdon (1598) and Thomas Dekker’s Blurt, Master Constable (1607) both contain balcony scenes in which a virginal heroine engages in bawdy wordplay.[179] The play directly influenced later literary works. For example, the preparations for a performance form a major plot in Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby.[180]
Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most-illustrated works.[181] The first known illustration was a woodcut of the tomb scene,[182] thought to be created by Elisha Kirkall, which appeared in Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition of Shakespeare’s plays.[183] Five paintings of the play were commissioned for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in the late 18th century, one representing each of the five acts of the play.[184] Early in the 19th century, Henry Thomson painted Juliet after the Masquerade, an 
engraving. of which was published in The Literary Souvenir, 1828, with an accompanying poem by Letitia Elizabeth Landon. The 19th-century fashion for «pictorial» performances led to directors’ drawing on paintings for their inspiration, which, in turn, influenced painters to depict actors and scenes from the theatre.[185] In the 20th century, the play’s most iconic visual images have derived from its popular film versions.[186]
David Blixt’s 2007 novel The Master Of Verona imagines the origins of the famous Capulet-Montague feud, combining the characters from Shakespeare’s Italian plays with the historical figures of Dante’s time.[187] Blixt’s subsequent novels Voice Of The Falconer (2010), Fortune’s Fool (2012), and The Prince’s Doom (2014) continue to explore the world, following the life of Mercutio as he comes of age. More tales from Blixt’s Star-Cross’d series appear in Varnished Faces: Star-Cross’d Short Stories (2015) and the plague anthology, We All Fall Down (2020). Blixt also authored Shakespeare’s Secrets: Romeo & Juliet (2018), a collection of essays on the history of Shakespeare’s play in performance, in which Blixt asserts the play is structurally not a Tragedy, but a Comedy-Gone-Wrong. In 2014 Blixt and his wife, stage director Janice L Blixt, were guests of the city of Verona, Italy for the launch of the Italian language edition of The Master Of Verona, staying with Dante’s descendants and filmmaker Anna Lerario, with whom Blixt collaborated on a film about the life of Veronese prince Cangrande della Scala.[188][189]
Lois Leveen’s 2014 novel Juliet’s Nurse imagined the fourteen years leading up to the events in the play from the point of view of the nurse. The nurse has the third largest number of lines in the original play; only the eponymous characters have more lines.[190]
The play was the subject of a 2017 General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) question by the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations board that was administered to c. 14000 students. The board attracted widespread media criticism and derision after the question appeared to confuse the Capulets and the Montagues,[191][192][193] with exams regulator Ofqual describing the error as unacceptable.[194]
Romeo and Juliet was adapted into manga format by publisher UDON Entertainment’s Manga Classics imprint and was released in May 2018.[195]
Screen
Romeo and Juliet may be the most-filmed play of all time.[196] The most notable theatrical releases were George Cukor’s multi-Oscar-nominated 1936 production, Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version, and Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 MTV-inspired Romeo + Juliet. The latter two were both, in their time, the highest-grossing Shakespeare film ever.[197] Romeo and Juliet was first filmed in the silent era, by Georges Méliès, although his film is now lost.[196] The play was first heard on film in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, in which John Gilbert recited the balcony scene opposite Norma Shearer.[198]
Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet, in the 1936 MGM film directed by George Cukor
Shearer and Leslie Howard, with a combined age over 75, played the teenage lovers in George Cukor’s MGM 1936 film version. Neither critics nor the public responded enthusiastically. Cinema-goers considered the film too «arty», staying away as they had from Warner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream a year before: leading to Hollywood abandoning the Bard for over a decade.[199] Renato Castellani won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival for his 1954 film of Romeo and Juliet.[200] His Romeo, Laurence Harvey, was already an experienced screen actor.[201] By contrast, Susan Shentall, as Juliet, was a secretarial student who was discovered by the director in a London pub and was cast for her «pale sweet skin and honey-blonde hair».[202][l]
Stephen Orgel describes Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juliet as being «full of beautiful young people, and the camera and the lush technicolour make the most of their sexual energy and good looks».[186] Zeffirelli’s teenage leads, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, had virtually no previous acting experience but performed capably and with great maturity.[203][204] Zeffirelli has been particularly praised,[m] for his presentation of the duel scene as bravado getting out-of-control.[206] The film courted controversy by including a nude wedding-night scene[207] while Olivia Hussey was only fifteen.[208]
Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet and its accompanying soundtrack successfully targeted the «MTV Generation»: a young audience of similar age to the story’s characters.[209] Far darker than Zeffirelli’s version, the film is set in the «crass, violent and superficial society» of Verona Beach and Sycamore Grove.[210] Leonardo DiCaprio was Romeo and Claire Danes was Juliet.
The play has been widely adapted for TV and film. In 1960, Peter Ustinov’s cold-war stage parody, Romanoff and Juliet was filmed.[143] The 1961 film West Side Story—set among New York gangs—featured the Jets as white youths, equivalent to Shakespeare’s Montagues, while the Sharks, equivalent to the Capulets, are Puerto Rican.[211] In 2006, Disney’s High School Musical made use of Romeo and Juliet‘s plot, placing the two young lovers in different high-school cliques instead of feuding families.[212] Film-makers have frequently featured characters performing scenes from Romeo and Juliet.[213][n] The conceit of dramatising Shakespeare writing Romeo and Juliet has been used several times,[214][215] including John Madden’s 1998 Shakespeare in Love, in which Shakespeare writes the play against the backdrop of his own doomed love affair.[216][217] An anime series produced by Gonzo and SKY Perfect Well Think, called Romeo x Juliet, was made in 2007 and the 2013 version is the latest English-language film based on the play. In 2013, Sanjay Leela Bhansali directed the Bollywood film Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela, a contemporary version of the play which starred Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone in leading roles. The film was a commercial and critical success.[218][219] In February 2014, BroadwayHD released a filmed version of the 2013 Broadway Revival of Romeo and Juliet. The production starred Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad.[220]
Modern social media and virtual world productions
In April and May 2010, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Mudlark Production Company presented a version of the play, entitled Such Tweet Sorrow, as an improvised, real-time series of tweets on Twitter. The production used RSC actors who engaged with the audience as well each other, performing not from a traditional script but a «Grid» developed by the Mudlark production team and writers Tim Wright and Bethan Marlow. The performers also make use of other media sites such as YouTube for pictures and video.[221]
Astronomy
Two of Uranus’s moons, Juliet and Mab, are named for the play.[222]
Scene by scene
-
Title page of the Second Quarto of Romeo and Juliet published in 1599
-
Act I prologue
-
Act I scene 1: Quarrel between Capulets and Montagues
-
Act I scene 2
-
Act I scene 3
-
Act I scene 4
-
Act I scene 5
-
Act I scene 5: Romeo’s first interview with Juliet
-
Act II prologue
-
Act II scene 3
-
Act II scene 5: Juliet intreats her nurse
-
Act II scene 6
-
Act III scene 5: Romeo takes leave of Juliet
-
Act IV scene 5: Juliet’s fake death
-
Act IV scene 5: Another depiction
-
Act V scene 3: Juliet awakes to find Romeo dead
See also
- Pyramus and Thisbe
- Lovers of Cluj-Napoca
- Lovers of Teruel
- Antony and Cleopatra
- Tristan and Iseult
- Mem and Zin
Notes and references
Notes
- ^ see § Shakespeare’s day
- ^ As well as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Gibbons draws parallels with Love’s Labour’s Lost and Richard II.[28]
- ^ Levenson defines «star-cross’d» as «thwarted by a malign star».[63]
- ^ When performed in the central yard of an inn and in public theaters such as the Globe Theatre the only source of lighting was daylight. When performed at Court, inside the stately home of a member of the nobility and in indoor theaters such as the Blackfriars theatre candle lighting was used and plays could be performed even at night.
- ^ Halio here quotes Karl A. Menninger’s Man Against Himself (1938).[85]
- ^ The five more popular plays, in descending order, are Henry VI, Part 1, Richard III, Pericles, Hamlet and Richard II.[108]
- ^ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. «Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–». Retrieved 16 April 2022.
- ^ Booth’s Romeo and Juliet was rivalled in popularity only by his own «hundred night Hamlet» at The Winter Garden of four years before.
- ^ First page of the program for the opening night performance of Romeo and Juliet at Booth’s Theatre, 3 February 1869.
- ^ Levenson provides the quote from the 1960 interview with Zeffirelli in The Times.[137]
- ^ Levenson credits this list of genres to Stanley Wells.
- ^ Brode quotes Renato Castellani.
- ^ Brode cites Anthony West of Vogue and Mollie Panter-Downes of The New Yorker as examples.[205]
- ^ McKernan and Terris list 39 instances of uses of Romeo and Juliet, not including films of the play itself.
References
All references to Romeo and Juliet, unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Arden Shakespeare second edition (Gibbons, 1980) based on the Q2 text of 1599, with elements from Q1 of 1597.[223] Under its referencing system, which uses Roman numerals, II.ii.33 means act 2, scene 2, line 33, and a 0 in place of a scene number refers to the prologue to the act.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, III.i.73.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, III.v.115.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, IV.i.105.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, V.iii.308–309.
- ^ Halio 1998, p. 93.
- ^ Gibbons 1980, p. 33.
- ^ Moore 1930, pp. 264–77.
- ^ Higgins 1998, p. 223.
- ^ a b Higgins 1998, p. 585.
- ^ a b Hosley 1965, p. 168.
- ^ Gibbons 1980, pp. 33–34.
- ^ Levenson 2000, p. 4.
- ^ a b da Porto 1831.
- ^ Prunster 2000, pp. 2–3.
- ^ a b Moore 1937, pp. 38–44.
- ^ Muir 1998, pp. 86–89.
- ^ Da Porto does not specify which Bartolomeo is intended, whether Bartolomeo I (regnat 1301–1304) or Bartolomeo II (regnat 1375–1381), though the association of the former with his patronage of Dante makes him perhaps slightly more likely, given that Dante actually mentions the Cappelletti and Montecchi in his Commedia.
- ^ a b c Scarci 1993–1994.
- ^ Da Porto, Luigi. «Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti, (A Newly-Discovered History of two Noble Lovers)».
- ^ Gibbons 1980, pp. 35–36.
- ^ a b Gibbons 1980, p. 37.
- ^ Keeble 1980, p. 18.
- ^ Roberts 1902, pp. 41–44.
- ^ Gibbons 1980, pp. 32, 36–37.
- ^ Levenson 2000, pp. 8–14.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, I.iii.23.
- ^ a b Gibbons 1980, pp. 26–27.
- ^ a b Gibbons 1980, pp. 29–31.
- ^ Gibbons 1980, p. 29.
- ^ a b c Spencer 1967, p. 284.
- ^ a b c Halio 1998, pp. 1–2.
- ^ Wells 2013.
- ^ Gibbons 1980, p. 21.
- ^ Gibbons 1980, p. ix.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 8–9.
- ^ a b Bowling 1949, pp. 208–20.
- ^ Halio 1998, p. 65.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, I.v.92–99.
- ^ a b Honegger 2006, pp. 73–88.
- ^ Groves 2007, pp. 68–69.
- ^ Groves 2007, p. 61.
- ^ Siegel 1961, pp. 371–92.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, II.v.38–42.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, V.iii.169–170.
- ^ MacKenzie 2007, pp. 22–42.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, III.i.138.
- ^ Evans 1950, pp. 841–65.
- ^ a b c Draper 1939, pp. 16–34.
- ^ a b c Nevo 1972, pp. 241–58.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, I.i.167–171.
- ^ a b Parker 1968, pp. 663–74.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, I.v.42.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, I.v.44–45.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.26–32.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, I.v.85–86.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, III.ii.17–19.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 55–56.
- ^ a b c Tanselle 1964, pp. 349–61.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, III.iv.8–9.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.109–111.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, I.0.6.
- ^ Levenson 2000, p. 142.
- ^ Muir 2005, pp. 34–41.
- ^ Lucking 2001, pp. 115–26.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 55–58.
- ^ Driver 1964, pp. 363–70.
- ^ a b Scott 1987, p. 415.
- ^ Scott 1987, p. 410.
- ^ Scott 1987, pp. 411–12.
- ^ Shapiro 1964, pp. 498–501.
- ^ Bonnard 1951, pp. 319–27.
- ^ a b Halio 1998, pp. 20–30.
- ^ a b Halio 1998, p. 51.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 47–48.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 48–49.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.90.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 49–50.
- ^ Levin 1960, pp. 3–11.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 51–52.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 52–55.
- ^ Bloom 1998, pp. 92–93.
- ^ Wells 2004, pp. 11–13.
- ^ a b Halio 1998, p. 82.
- ^ Menninger 1938.
- ^ Appelbaum 1997, pp. 251–72.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, V.i.1–11.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 81, 83.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, I.v.137.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 84–85.
- ^ Halio 1998, p. 85.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, III.i.112.
- ^ Kahn 1977, pp. 5–22.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 87–88.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 89–90.
- ^ Levenson 2000, pp. 25–26.
- ^ Goldberg 1994.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 85–86.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, II.i.24–26.
- ^ Rubinstein 1989, p. 54.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.43–44.
- ^ Goldberg 1994, pp. 221–27.
- ^ da Porto 1868, p. 10.
- ^ a b Leveen 2014.
- ^ OED: balcony.
- ^ a b Halio 1998, p. 97.
- ^ Halio 1998, p. ix.
- ^ a b Taylor 2002, p. 18.
- ^ Levenson 2000, p. 62.
- ^ Dawson 2002, p. 176.
- ^ Marsden 2002, p. 21.
- ^ a b c d Halio 1998, pp. 100–02.
- ^ Levenson 2000, p. 71.
- ^ Marsden 2002, pp. 26–27.
- ^ Branam 1984, pp. 170–79.
- ^ Stone 1964, pp. 191–206.
- ^ Pedicord 1954, p. 14.
- ^ Morrison 2007, p. 231.
- ^ Morrison 2007, p. 232.
- ^ a b Gay 2002, p. 162.
- ^ Halliday 1964, pp. 125, 365, 420.
- ^ The Times 1845.
- ^ Potter 2001, pp. 194–95.
- ^ Levenson 2000, p. 84.
- ^ Schoch 2002, pp. 62–63.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 104–05.
- ^ Winter 1893, pp. 46–47, 57.
- ^ Holland 2002, pp. 202–03.
- ^ Levenson 2000, pp. 69–70.
- ^ Mosel 1978, p. 354.
- ^ Smallwood 2002, p. 102.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 105–07.
- ^ Smallwood 2002, p. 110.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 107–09.
- ^ a b c Levenson 2000, p. 87.
- ^ Holland 2001, p. 207.
- ^ The Times 1960.
- ^ Halio 1998, p. 110.
- ^ Halio 1998, pp. 110–12.
- ^ Pappe 1997, p. 63.
- ^ Quince 2000, pp. 121–25.
- ^ Munro 2016, pp. 68–69.
- ^ a b Howard 2000, p. 297.
- ^ Edgar 1982, p. 162.
- ^ Marks 1997.
- ^ Houlihan 2004.
- ^ Barranger 2004, p. 47.
- ^ The New York Times 1977.
- ^ Hetrick & Gans 2013.
- ^ Nestyev 1960, p. 261.
- ^ Sanders 2007, pp. 66–67.
- ^ Winn 2007.
- ^ Curnow 2010.
- ^ Buhler 2007, p. 156.
- ^ a b Sanders 2007, p. 187.
- ^ Meyer 1968, pp. 38.
- ^ Huebner 2002.
- ^ Holden 1993, p. 393.
- ^ Collins 1982, pp. 532–38.
- ^ Levi 2002.
- ^ Sanders 2007, pp. 43–45.
- ^ Stites 1995, p. 5.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, I.v, II.ii, III.v, V.iii.
- ^ Sanders 2007, pp. 42–43.
- ^ Sanders 2007, p. 42.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, I.0.6.
- ^ Sanders 2007, p. 20.
- ^ Sanders 2007, p. 187–88.
- ^ Swift 2009.
- ^ Buhler 2007, p. 157.
- ^ Sanders 2007, pp. 75–76.
- ^ Ehren 1999.
- ^ Arafay 2005, p. 186.
- ^ Review from NT: «Den fina recensionen i NT
Skriver… — Johan Christher Schütz | Facebook». Facebook. Archived from the original on 18 June 2020.
- ^ Levenson 2000, pp. 49–50.
- ^ Bloom 1998, p. 89.
- ^ Levenson 2000, p. 91.
- ^ OED: romeo.
- ^ Bly 2001, p. 52.
- ^ Muir 2005, pp. 352–62.
- ^ Fowler 1996, p. 111.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, V.iii.
- ^ Fowler 1996, pp. 112–13.
- ^ Fowler 1996, p. 120.
- ^ Fowler 1996, pp. 126–27.
- ^ a b Orgel 2007, p. 91.
- ^ «The Master of Verona». Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 14 July 2021.
- ^ «Biografia di David Blixt» [Biography of David Blixt]. veronaeconomia.it (in Italian). 5 May 2014. Retrieved 14 July 2021.
- ^ «Film documentario su Cangrande, il Principe di Verona» [Documentary film on Cangrande, the Prince of Verona]. Verona-in.it (in Italian). 24 October 2013. Retrieved 14 July 2021.
- ^ Kirkus Reviews 2017.
- ^ Sabur 2017.
- ^ Marsh 2017.
- ^ Richardson 2017.
- ^ Pells 2017.
- ^ Manga Classics: Romeo and Juliet (2018) UDON Entertainment ISBN 978-1-947808-03-4
- ^ a b Brode 2001, p. 42.
- ^ Rosenthal 2007, p. 225.
- ^ Brode 2001, p. 43.
- ^ Brode 2001, p. 48.
- ^ Tatspaugh 2000, p. 138.
- ^ Brode 2001, pp. 48–49.
- ^ Brode 2001, p. 51.
- ^ Brode 2001, pp. 51–25.
- ^ Rosenthal 2007, p. 218.
- ^ Brode 2001, pp. 51–53.
- ^ Brode 2001, p. 53.
- ^ Romeo and Juliet, III.v.
- ^ Rosenthal 2007, pp. 218–20.
- ^ Tatspaugh 2000, p. 140.
- ^ Tatspaugh 2000, p. 142.
- ^ Rosenthal 2007, pp. 215–16.
- ^ Symonds 2017, p. 172.
- ^ McKernan & Terris 1994, pp. 141–56.
- ^ Lanier 2007, p. 96.
- ^ McKernan & Terris 1994, p. 146.
- ^ Howard 2000, p. 310.
- ^ Rosenthal 2007, p. 228.
- ^ Goyal 2013.
- ^ International Business Times 2013.
- ^ Lee 2014.
- ^ Kennedy 2010.
- ^ «Uranus Moons». NASA Solar System Exploration. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ^ Gibbons 1980, p. vii.
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Editions of Romeo and Juliet
- Gibbons, Brian, ed. (1980). Romeo and Juliet. The Arden Shakespeare, second series. London: Thomson Learning. ISBN 978-1-903436-41-7.
- Levenson, Jill L., ed. (2000). Romeo and Juliet. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-281496-6.
- Spencer, T.J.B., ed. (1967). Romeo and Juliet. The New Penguin Shakespeare. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-070701-4.
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- Arafay, Mireia (2005). Books in Motion: Adaptation, Adaptability, Authorship. Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-1957-7.
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External links
- Romeo and Juliet at Standard Ebooks
- Romeo and Juliet at Project Gutenberg
- Romeo and Juliet at the British Library
- Romeo and Juliet HTML version at MIT
- Romeo and Juliet Complete Annotated Text on One Page Without Ads or Images
- Romeo and Juliet HTML Annotated Play
- Easy Read Romeo and Juliet Full text with portraits and location drawings to make the play easy to follow from the printed page.
Romeo and Juliet public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Romeo and Juliet public domain audiobook at LibriVox