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Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;

One desperate grief cures with another's languish.

Take thou some new infection to thy eye,

And the rank poison of the old will die.

Rom. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.

Ben. For what, I pray thee?

Rom. For your broken shin.

Ben. Why, Romeo, art thou mad?

Rom. Not mad, but bound more than a madman is;

Shut up in prison, kept without my food,

Whipp'd and tormented and- God-den, good fellow.

Serv. God gi' go-den. I pray, sir, can you read?

Rom. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.

Serv. Perhaps you have learned it without book. But I pray, can you

read anything you see?

Rom. Ay, If I know the letters and the language.

Serv. Ye say honestly. Rest you merry!

Rom. Stay, fellow; I can read. He reads.

'Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;

County Anselmo and his beauteous sisters;

The lady widow of Vitruvio;

Signior Placentio and His lovely nieces;

Mercutio and his brother Valentine;

Mine uncle Capulet, his wife, and daughters;

My fair niece Rosaline and Livia;

Signior Valentio and his cousin Tybalt;

Lucio and the lively Helena.'

[Gives back the paper.] A fair assembly. Whither should they come?

Serv. Up.

Rom. Whither?

Serv. To supper, to our house.

Rom. Whose house?

Serv. My master's.

Rom. Indeed I should have ask'd you that before.

Serv. Now I'll tell you without asking. My master is the great rich

Capulet; and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come

and crush a cup of wine. Rest you merry! Exit.

Ben. At this same ancient feast of Capulet's

Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lov'st;

With all the admired beauties of Verona.

Go thither, and with unattainted eye

Compare her face with some that I shall show,

And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

Rom. When the devout religion of mine eye

Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;

And these, who, often drown'd, could never die,

Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!

One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun

Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.

Ben. Tut! you saw her fair, none else being by,

Herself pois'd with herself in either eye;

But in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd

Your lady's love against some other maid

That I will show you shining at this feast,

And she shall scant show well that now seems best.

Rom. I'll go along, no such sight to be shown,

But to rejoice in splendour of my own. [Exeunt.]

Scene III. Capulet's house.

Enter Capulet's Wife, and Nurse.

Wife. Nurse, where's my daughter? Call her forth to me.

Nurse. Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old,

I bade her come. What, lamb! what ladybird!

God forbid! Where's this girl? What, Juliet!

Enter Juliet.

Jul. How now? Who calls?

Nurse. Your mother.

Jul. Madam, I am here.

What is your will?

Wife. This is the matter- Nurse, give leave awhile,

We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again;

I have rememb'red me, thou's hear our counsel.

Thou knowest my daughter's of a pretty age.

Nurse. Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.

Wife. She's not fourteen.

Nurse. I'll lay fourteen of my teeth-

And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four-

She is not fourteen. How long is it now

To Lammastide?

Wife. A fortnight and odd days.

Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year,

Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.

Susan and she (God rest all Christian souls!)

Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;

She was too good for me. But, as I said,

On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen;

That shall she, marry; I remember it well.

'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;

And she was wean'd (I never shall forget it),

Of all the days of the year, upon that day;

For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,

Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.

My lord and you were then at Mantua.

Nay, I do bear a brain. But, as I said,

When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple

Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,

To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!