• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Rom. Yet 'banished'? Hang up philosophy!

Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,

Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,

It helps not, it prevails not. Talk no more.

Friar. O, then I see that madmen have no ears.

Rom. How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?

Friar. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.

Rom. Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.

Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,

An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,

Doting like me, and like me banished,

Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,

And fall upon the ground, as I do now,

Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

Knock [within].

Friar. Arise; one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.

Rom. Not I; unless the breath of heartsick groans,

Mist-like infold me from the search of eyes. Knock.

Friar. Hark, how they knock! Who's there? Romeo, arise;

Thou wilt be taken.- Stay awhile!- Stand up; Knock.

Run to my study.- By-and-by!- God's will,

What simpleness is this.- I come, I come! Knock.

Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? What's your will?

Nurse. [within] Let me come in, and you shall know my errand.

I come from Lady Juliet.

Friar. Welcome then.

Enter Nurse.

Nurse. O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar,

Where is my lady's lord, where's Romeo?

Friar. There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.

Nurse. O, he is even in my mistress' case,

Just in her case!

Friar. O woeful sympathy!

Piteous predicament!

Nurse. Even so lies she,

Blubb'ring and weeping, weeping and blubbering.

Stand up, stand up! Stand, an you be a man.

For Juliet's sake, for her sake, rise and stand!

Why should you fall into so deep an O?

Rom. (rises) Nurse-

Nurse. Ah sir! ah sir! Well, death's the end of all.

Rom. Spakest thou of Juliet? How is it with her?

Doth not she think me an old murtherer,

Now I have stain'd the childhood of our joy

With blood remov'd but little from her own?

Where is she? and how doth she! and what says

My conceal'd lady to our cancell'd love?

Nurse. O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps;

And now falls on her bed, and then starts up,

And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,

And then down falls again.

Rom. As if that name,

Shot from the deadly level of a gun,

Did murther her; as that name's cursed hand

Murder'd her kinsman. O, tell me, friar, tell me,

In what vile part of this anatomy

Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack

The hateful mansion. [Draws his dagger.]

Friar. Hold thy desperate hand.

Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art;

Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote

The unreasonable fury of a beast.

Unseemly woman in a seeming man!

Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!

Thou hast amaz'd me. By my holy order,

I thought thy disposition better temper'd.

Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself?

And slay thy lady that in thy life lives,

By doing damned hate upon thyself?

Why railest thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth?

Since birth and heaven and earth, all three do meet

In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose.

Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit,

Which, like a usurer, abound'st in all,

And usest none in that true use indeed

Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.

Thy noble shape is but a form of wax

Digressing from the valour of a man;

Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,

Killing that love which thou hast vow'd to cherish;

Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,

Misshapen in the conduct of them both,

Like powder in a skilless soldier's flask,

Is set afire by thine own ignorance,

And thou dismemb'red with thine own defence.

What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive,

For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead.

There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,

But thou slewest Tybalt. There art thou happy too.

The law, that threat'ned death, becomes thy friend

And turns it to exile. There art thou happy.

A pack of blessings light upon thy back;

Happiness courts thee in her best array;

But, like