Thou wilt be taken: Stay a while: stand up; [Knocking. By and by: I come!

Run to my study:

What wilfulness 1 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;2

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,

Just in her case!

FRI.

O woeful sympathy!

Piteous predicament!
NURSE.

Even so lies she,

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?3

ROм. Nurse!

NURSE. Ah sir! ah sir!

Well, death's the end of all.

ROM. Spak'st thou of Juliet? how is it with her?

Does she not think me an old murderer,

Now I haye stain'd the childhood of our joy
With blood remov'd but little from her own?4

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

My cónceal'd lady to our cancell'd love? 5

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

1) Obstinacy, perverseness. 2) Message, something to be told or done, business.

3) The exclamation O, expressing woe, grief, sorrow, misery.

4) That is, one of her nearest relatives, her cousin.

5) The epithet concealed is to be understood not of the person, but of the condition of the lady: the circumstance of her being Romeo's wife is concealed from the world. cancel means, to destroy.

. To

Murder'd her kinsman. O tell me, friar, tell me,
In what vile part of this anatomy1

Doth my name lodge? tell me, that I may sack?
The hateful mansion.

[Drawing his Sword.

FRI.
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!3
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 too that lives in thee,
By doing violence upon thyself?

Why rail'st 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.
Fye, fye! 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,
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,
Mis-shapen in the conduct of them both,
Like powder in a skill-less soldier's flask,"
Is set on fire by thine own ignorance,
And thou dismember'd with thine own defence."

1) Anatomy, the art of dissecting, means here, by an improper use of the word, the body stripped of its integuments and muscles: a skeleton. It is also used ironically, for a meager person.

2) Sack, i. e. plunder, pillage, that is, take away by violence.

3) A monster, and of course an ill-beseeming beast, under this appearance both of a woman, that weeps, and a man, who rages and shows wild acts.

4) To rail, the French railler, to reproach or censure in opprobrious terms, followed by at or against, formerly by on.

5) To understand the force of this allusion, it should be remembered that the ancient soldiers, using matches, instead of locks as at present, were obliged to carry a lighted match hanging at their belts, very near to the wooden flask in which they kept their powder. Steevens.

6) And thou torn to pieces with thine own weapons.

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 threaten'd 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;1
But, like a mis-behav'd and sullen wench,
Thou pout'st2 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 blaze3 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 bofore, 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.

NURSE. I could have staid all night,

-

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 bid me give you, sir:

Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.

[Exit Nurse.

ROM. How well my comfort is reviv'd by this! FRI. Go hence: Good night: and here stands all your state; 4

Either be gone before the watch be set,

Or by the break of day disguis'd from hence:
Sojourn in Mantua; I'll find out your man,
And he shall signify from time to time

1) Array, dress of a splendid kind, adornment, splendour.

2) To pout, to thrust out the lips, as in sullenness, contempt, or displeasure.

3) To make public.

4) Your fate wholly depends on

this.

Every good hap1 to you, that chances here:
Give me thy hand; 'tis late; farewell; good night.
ROM. But that2 a joy past joy calls out on me,
It were a grief, so brief to part with thee:
Farewell.

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 lov'd 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 a-bed an hour ago.

[Exeunt.

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 mew'd up to her heaviness.

CAP. Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender
Of my child's love: I think, she will be rul'd
In all respects by me; nay more, I doubt it not.
Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed;
Acquaint her here of my son Paris' love;

And bid her, mark you me, on Wednesday next
But soft: What day is this?

PAR.

Monday, my lord. CAP. Monday? ha! ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon, O' Thursday let it be; o' Thursday, tell her,

She shall be married to this noble earl:

Will you be ready? do you
We'll keep no great ado;5

like this haste?
a friend, or two:

1) Chance, fortune, accident. This 4) Desperate means only bold, adword is obsolete or obsolescent, ex-venturous, as if he had said in the cept in compounds and derivatives. | vulgar phrase, I will speak a bold 2) In this and all similar phrases, word, and venture to promise you but denotes exception. That is often my daughter. Johnson. A tender omitted after but. means, any offer for acceptance; as, The gentleman made me a tender of his services.

3) This is a phrase from falconry. A men was a plan of confinement for hawks, a cage for birds. From this noun the verb, to mew, to shut up, to confine (as in a cage or other inclosure).

-

5) Bustle, trouble, fuss; as, to make a great ado (fuss) about trifles. Much ado about nothing.

For, hark you, Tybalt being slain so late,
It may be thought we held him carelessly,
Being our kinsman, if we revel much:

Therefore we'll have some half a dozen friends,
And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?

PAR. My lord, I would that Thursday were to-morrow. CAP. Well, get you gone: - O' Thursday be it then: Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed,

Prepare her, wife, against this wedding-day,
Farewell, my lord. — Light to my chamber, ho!
Afore1 me, it is so very late, that we

May call it early by and by:

-Good night.

SCENE V. Juliet's Chamber.

Enter ROMEO and JULIEt.

JUL. Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree:
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

ROM. It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe 2 on the misty mountain tops;
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

JUL. Yon light is not day-light, I know it,
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua:
Therefore stay yet, thou need'st not to be gone.

I:

ROM. Let me be ta'en, 3 let me be put to death;

I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say, yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow!4
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:

1) Afore is now inelegant, and superseded by before.

2) Tiptoe is the end of the toe. To be or stand on tiptoe, to be awake or alive to anything.

3) Taken, seized, made prisoner.

[Exeunt.