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!

SCENE II.—A Room in Capulet's House.

[Exeunt.

Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, Nurse, and Servants. Cap. So many guests invite as here are writ.-[Exit Serv. Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks."

2 Serv. You shall have none ill, sir; for I'll try if they can lick their fingers.

Cap. How canst thou try them so?

2 Serv. Marry, sir, 't is an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me.

Cap. Go, begone.

We shall be much unfurnish'd for this time.

[Exit Servant.

What, is my daughter gone to friar Laurence?

Nurse. Ay, forsooth.

Cap. Well, he may chance to do some good on her: A peevish self-will'd harlotry it is.

Enter JULIet.

Nurse. See, where she comes from shrift 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
By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here,
To beg your pardon:-Pardon, I beseech you!
Henceforward I am ever rul'd by you.

Cap. Send for the county; go tell him of this;
I'll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning.
Jul. I met the youthful lord at Laurence' cell;
And gave him what becomed a love I might,
Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty.

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.

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. Cap. Go, nurse, go with her :-we'll to church to-morrow. [Exeunt JULIET and Nurse. La. Cap. We shall be short in our provision; "Tis now near night.

Cap.

Tush! I will stir about,

And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife :
Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her;

I'll not to bed to-night ;-let me alone;

I'll play the housewife for this once.-What, ho!-
They are all forth: Well, I will walk myself
To county Paris, to prepare him up

Against to-morrow: my heart is wondrous light,
Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim'd.

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.

a

La. Cap. What, are you busy, ho? Need you 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,

And let the nurse this night sit up with you;

For, I am sure, you have your hands full all,
In this so sudden business.

Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.

[Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse.

Jul. Farewell!-God knows when we shall meet again.

I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,

That almost freezes up the heat of life:

I'll call them back again to comfort me ;

Nurse!-What should she do here?

My dismal scene I needs must act alone.—
Come, phial.—

What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?a
No, no;-this shall forbid it :-lie thou there.-

[Laying down a dagger.

a This speech of Juliet, like many others of the great passages throughout the play, received the most careful elaboration and the most minute touching. In the first edition it occupies only eighteen lines; it extends to forty-five in the "amended " edition of 1599. And yet the modern editors will make a patchwork of the two. This line in (A) is thus:

"Must I of force be married to the county?"

The line which follows lower down

"I will not entertain so bad a thought "

Steevens says he has recovered from the quarto. We print the eighteen lines of the original, that the reader may see with what consummate skill the author's corrections have been made:

Farewell, God knows when we shall meet again.

Ah, I do take a fearful thing in hand.

What if this potion should not work at all,
Must I of force be married to the county?
This shall forbid it. Knife, lie thou there.
What if the friar should give me this drink
To poison me, for fear I should disclose
Our former marriage? Ah, I wrong him much,
He is a holy and religious man:

I will not entertain so bad a thought.

What if I should be stifled in the tomb?

Awake an hour before the appointed time:
Ah, then I fear I shall be lunatic:
And playing with my dead forefathers' bones,
Dash out my frantic brains. Methinks I see
My cousin Tybalt weltering in his blood,
Seeking for Romeo: Stay, Tybalt, stay.
Romeo, I come, this do I drink to thee."

What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead;
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
Because he married me before to Romeo?

:

I fear, it is and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man:
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,

I wake before the time that Romeo

Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,

The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,—
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,

Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;

Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies fest'ring in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;-
Alack, alack! is it not like, that I,

So early waking,—what with loathsome smells;
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad ;—
O! if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefathers' joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks, I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point:-Stay, Tybalt, stay!——

Romeo, Romeo, Romeo,-here 's drink-I drink to thee.

[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.

Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.

Enter CAPULET.

Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow'd. The curfew bell hath rung, 't is three o'clock :

Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica:

Spare not for cost.

Nurse.

Go, you cot-quean, go.

Get you to bed; 'faith, you 'll be sick to-morrow
For this night's watching.

Cap. No, not a whit; What! I have watch'd ere now All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick.

La. Cap. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time; But I will watch you from such watching now.

[Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse. Cap. A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!—Now, fellow, What's there?

Enter Servants, with spits, logs, and baskets.*

1 Serv. Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what. Cap. Make haste, make haste.

fetch drier logs;

[Exit 1 Serv.]—Sirrah,

Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.

2 Serv. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs, And never trouble Peter for the matter.

Cap. 'Mass, and well said; A merry whoreson! ha, Thou shalt be loggerhead.--Good father, 't is day:

[Exit.

The county will be here with music straight, [Music within. For so he said he would. I hear him near

Nurse! Wife !-what, ho!-what, nurse, I say!

Enter Nurse.

Go, waken Juliet, go, and trim her up;

I'll

go and chat with Paris:-Hie, make haste,