And steal immortal blessing from her lips;
Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,
Still blush as thinking their own kisses sin;
But Romeo may not; he is banished.
Flies may do this, when I from this must fly;
They are free men, but I am banished.

And say'st thou yet, that exile is not death?
Hadst thou no poison mixed, no sharp-ground knife,
No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean,
But-banished-to kill me; banished?

O friar, the damned use that word in hell;
Howlings attend it. How hast thou the heart,
Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,

A sin-absolver, and my friend professed,

To mangle me with that word-banishment?

Fri. Thou fond mad man, hear me but speak a word.

Rom. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment. Fri. I'll give thee armor to keep off that word; Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy,

To comfort thee, though thou art banished.

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.

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

Rom. How should they, when that wise men have

no eyes?

Fri. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.1

Rom. Thou canst not speak of what 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 might'st thou tear thy hair,

1 The same phrase, and with the same meaning, occurs in The Winter's Tale:

Know man from man! dispute his own estate?”

i. e. his own affairs, or the present state he is in?

And fall upon the ground, as I do now,
Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

Fri. Arise; one knocks; good Romeo, hide thyself. [Knocking within. Rom. Not I; unless the breath of heart-sick groans, Mist-like, infold me from the search of eyes.

[Knocking. Fri. Hark, how they knock!-Who's there?—

Romeo, arise?

Thou wilt be taken.-Stay awhile: stand up;

[Knocking.

Run to my study.-By and by;-God's will!
What wilfulness is this?-I come, I come.

[Knocking.

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.

Fri.

Welcome, then.

Enter Nurse.

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

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

Fri. There, on the ground, with his own tears made

drunk.

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

Blubbering 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. Nurse !

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

all.

Rom. Spak'st thou of Juliet? How is it with her?

Doth she not think me an old murderer,

Now I have stained the childhood of our joy
With blood removed but little from her own?

Where is she? and how doth she? and what says
My concealed lady1 to our cancelled 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 murder her; as that name's cursed hand
Murdered 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. [Drawing his sword. Hold thy desperate hand.

Fri.

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 amazed me; by my holy order,
I thought thy disposition better tempered.
Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself,
And slay thy lady too, that lives in thee,
By doing damned hate upon thyself?

Why rail'st thou on thy birth,2 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 sham'st thy shape, thy love, thy wit ;
Which, like an 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,

1 "My lady, whose being so, together with our marriage which made her so, is concealed from the world."

2 The lines from Why rail'st thou on thy birth, &c., to thy own defence, are not in the first copy; they are formed on a passage in the poem.

Digressing from the valor of a man;

Thy dear love, sworn, but hollow perjury,
Killing that love which thou hast vowed 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,1
Is set on fire by thine own ignorance,

And thou dismembered with thine own defence.2
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 slew'st Tybalt; there art thou happy too.
The law, that threatened death, becomes thy friend,
And turns it to exile; there art thou happy.
A pack of blessings lights upon thy back;
Happiness courts thee in her best array;
But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love.
Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed,
Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her;
But look thou stay not till the watch be set,
For then thou canst not pass to Mantua ;
Where thou shalt live, till we can find a time
To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,
Beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back
With twenty hundred thousand times more joy
Than thou went'st forth in lamentation.-
Go before, nurse; commend me to thy lady;
And bid her hasten all the house to bed,
Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto.
Romeo is coming.3

Nurse. O Lord, I could have staid here all the

night,

1 To understand the force of this allusion, it should be remembered, that the ancient English soldiers, using match-locks, instead of locks with flints, as at present, were obliged to carry a lighted match hanging at their belts, very near to the wooden flask in which they carried their powder.

2 And thou torn to pieces with thine own weapons.

3 Much of this speech has also been added since the first edition.

To hear good counsel. O, what learning is!-
My lord, I'll tell my lady you will come.

Rom. Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.
Nurse. Here, sir, a ring she bade me give you, sir.
Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.

Exit Nurse.
Rom. How well my comfort is revived by this!
Fri. Go hence; good night! and here stands all
your state 9

1

Either be gone before the watch be set,

Or by the break of day, disguised from hence.
Sojourn in Mantua; I'll find out your man,
And he shall signify from time to time
Every good hap to you, that chances here.

Give me thy hand; 'tis late: farewell; good night.
Rom. But that a joy past joy calls out on me,

It were a grief, so brief to part with thee.
Farewell.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV. A Room in Capulet's House.

Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, and PARIS.
Cap. Things have fallen out, sir, so unluckily,
That we have had no time to move our daughter.
Look you, she loved her kinsman Tybalt dearly,
And so did I;-Well, we were born to die.-
'Tis very late; she'll not come down to-night.
I promise you, but for your company,

I would have been abed an hour ago.

Par. These times of woe afford no time to woo. Madam, good night; commend me to your daughter. La. Cap. I will, and know her mind early to-morrow; To-night she's mewed up to her heaviness.

2

Cap. Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender
Of my child's love. I think she will be ruled