Fri. Hold; get you gone, be strong and pros perous In this resolve: I'll send a friar with speed To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord. Jul. Love, give me strength! and strength shall help afford. Farewell, dear father! [Exeunt. SCENE II. A Room in Capulet's House. Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, Nurse, and Servant. Cap. So many guests invite as here are writ. [Exit Servant. Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks1. 2 Serv. You shall have none ill, sir; for I'll try if they can lick their fingers 2. Cap. How canst thou try them so ? 2 Serv. Marry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers: therefore he, that cannot lick his fingers, goes not with me. Cap. Go, begone.- [Exit Servant. We shall be much unfurnish'd for this time.— What, is my daughter gone to friar Laurence? Cap. Well, he may chance to do some good on her: A peevish self-will'd harlotry it is. 1 Capulet has in a former scene said: We'll keep no great ado: we'll have some half a dozen friends.' The poet has made him alter his mind strangely, or had forgotten what he had made him say before. (See Act iii. Sc. iv.) Malone observes that the former scene was of the poet's own invention, and that he here recollected the poem : he myndes to make for him a costly feast.' 2 This adage is found in Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, 1589: 'As the olde cocke crowes so doeth the chicke: Enter JULIET. Nurse. See, where she comes from shrift3 with merry look. Cap. How now, my headstrong? where have you been gadding? Jul. Where I have learn'd me to repent the sin Of disobedient opposition To you, and your behests; and am enjoin'd Cap. Send for the county: go tell him of this; Cap. Why, I am glad on't; this is well,-stand up: This is as't should be.-Let me see the county; Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.Now, afore God, this reverend holy friar, All our whole city is much bound to him 5. Jul. Nurse, will you go with me into my closet, To help me sort such needful ornaments As you think fit to furnish me to-morrow? La. Cap. No, not till Thursday; there is time enough. morrow. Cap. Go, nurse, go with her :--we'll to church to[Exeunt JULIET and Nurse. La. Cap. We shall be short in our provision; 'Tis now near night. 3 i. e. confession. Becomed for becoming: one participle for another, a frequent practice with Shakspeare. 5 Thus the folio and the quartos 1599 and 1609: The oldest quarto reads perhaps more grammatically: 'All our whole city is much bound unto.' Cap. Tush! I will stir about, And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife: Against to-morrow: my heart is wondrous light, I SCENE III. Juliet's Chamber. Enter JULIET and Nurse. [Exeunt. Jul. Ay, those attires are best:-But, gentle nurse, pray thee, leave me to myself to-night; For I have need of many orisons To move the heavens to smile upon my state. Which, well thou know'st, is cross and full of sin. Enter LADY CAPULET. La. Cap. What, are you busy? do you need my help? Jul. No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries As are behoveful for our state to-morrow; So please you, let me now be left alone, La. Cap. Good night! Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need. [Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse. Jul. Farewell1!-God knows, when we shall meet again. This speech received considerable additions after the first copy was published. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, My dismal scene I needs must act alone.— What if this mixture do not work at all? Must I of force be married to the county? No, no;-this shall forbid it :-lie thou there.[Laying down a Dagger2. What if it be a poison, which the friar Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point! To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, The horrible conceit of death and night, Where, for these many hundred years, the bones tors. 2 This stage direction has been supplied by the modern ediThe quarto of 1597 reads:- Knife, lie thou there.' Daggers, or, as they were more commonly called, knives (says Mr. Gifford), were worn at all times by every woman in England; whether they were so worn in Italy, Shakspeare, I believe, never inquired, and I cannot tell.'-Works of Ben Jonson, vol. v. p. 221. 3 This idea was probably suggested to the poet by his native Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, Alack, alack! is it not like, that I, So early waking, what with loathsome smells, And madly play with my forefathers' joints? [She throws herself on the Bed. SCENE IV. Capulet's Hall. Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse. La. Cap. Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse. place. The charnel at Stratford-upon-Avon is a very large one, and perhaps contains a greater number of bones than are to be found in any other repository of the same kind in England. 4 To fester is to corrupt. So in King Edward III. 1599:'Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.' This line also occurs in the ninety-fourth Sonnet of Shakspeare. The play of Edward III. has been ascribed to him. 5 See vol v. p. 263; and vol. vi. p. 204. The mandrake (says Thomas Newton in his Herbal) has been idly represented as 'a creature having life, and engendered under the earth of the seed of some dead person that hath beene convicted and put to death for some felonie or murther, and that they had the same in such dampish and funerall places where the saide convicted persons were buried,' &c. So in Webster's Duchess of Malfy, 1623:I have this night digg'd up a mandrake, And am grown mad with it.' 6 i. e. distracted. |