And in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death
Thou shalt remain full two and forty hours,
And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.
Now when the bridgeroom in the morning comes
To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead:
Then (as the manner of our country is,)

In thy best robes uncover'd on the bier,
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault,
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.
In the mean time, against thou shalt awake,
Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift;
And hither shall he come; and he and I
Will watch thy waking, and that very night
Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.
And this shall free thee from this present shame;
If no inconstant toy, 2 nor womanish fear,
Abate thy valour in the acting it.

JUL. Give me, O give me! tell me not of fear.
FRI. Hold; get you gone, be strong and prosperous
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. 4

Farewell, dear father!

SCENE II. A Room in Capulet's House.

Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, Nurse, and Servants.

САР. So many guests invite as here are writ.

Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks. 5

[Exeunt.

[Exit Servant.

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. Merry, sir, 'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers: therefore he, that cannot lick his fingers, goes not with me.

etc. i. e. completely mad, absolutely blind.

1) That is, about which.

2) If no fickle freak, no light caprice, no change of fancy, hinder the performance. Johnson.

3) Resolution, purpose,

4) Strength shall afford, i. e. produce help; confer it.

5) Either Capulet has altered his mind strangely, or our author forgot what he had just made him tell us, Ritson.

CAP. Go, begone.

We shall be much unfurnish'd for this time.
What, is my daughter gone to friar Laurence?
NURSE. Ay, forsooth.1

[Exit Servant.

CAP. Well, he may chance to do some good on her: A peevish self-will'd harlotry2 it is.

Enter JULIET.

NURSE. See, where she comes from shrift3 with merry look.

CAP. How now, my headstrong? where have you been gadding?4

JUL. Where I have learn'd me to repent the sin
Of disobedient opposition

To you, and your behests; 5 and am enjoin'd
By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here,

And 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 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, by my life, 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[Exeunt JULIET and Nurse.

morrow.

1) In truth, certainly. This word | collect money, under pretence of is used generally in an ironical or singing carols to the Blessed Virgin. contemptuous sense. Steevens.

2) A contemptuous and coarse term; used towards a female. 3) From confession.

4) To gad, to ramble about without any settled purpose. The primitive sense of this word was to straggle from house to house, and

5) Behest, command, precept; the German Geheiss, from heissen, to call, tell or command.

6) Becomed for becoming: one participle for the other; a frequent practice with our author.

7) To choose; to select.

LA. CAP. We shall be short1 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; 2

What, ho!

I'll not to bed to night; let me alone;
I'll play the housewife for this once.
They are all forth:3 Well, I will walk myself

To county Paris, to prepare him up

Against to-morrow: 4 my heart is wondrous light,
Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim'd.

[Exeunt.

JUL. Ay, those attires are best: But, gentle nurse, I pray thee, leave me to myself to-night;

For I have need of many orisons 7

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 10 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.

LA. CAP.

Good night!

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

[Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse.

1) Short, defective, scantily supplied; as Capulet says in the beginning of this scene: "We shall be much unfurnished for this time." We usually say: to be short of provisions, short of money.

2) To dress or adorn her.

3) Forth, originally forward, but here, out of doors, gone abroad.

4) Against means here, in expecta

tion of.

5) To reclaim, to reform, to correct, to tame.

6) Clothes, dress.

7) Prayer, supplication; as Hamlet says to Ophelia: "Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remem. bered."

8) Cross, transverse, perverse, unfortunate.

9) To cull, to select from others, to pick out; the French cueillir,

10) Useful. Pronounce, behooveful, from behoof. The same sound of the vowel must be preserved, both in the noun and verb: as, proof, prove; wife, mive.

again.

I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, 1
That almost freezes up the heat of life:
I'll call them back again to comfort me;
What should she do here?

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

What if this mixture do not work at all?
Must I of force be married to the county?
No, no;

3

this shall forbid it: lie thou there.

[Laying down a dagger.

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:
I will not entertain so bad a thought.
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, 5
Where for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;

Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,6
Lies fest'ring in his shroud; where, as they say,

1) A fear which thrills, i. e. pene-ed to our poet by his native place. trates or passes through my veins. To thrill particularly means to cause a tingling sensation that runs through the system with a slight shivering.

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. Steevens.

6) Fresh in earth, newly buried.

7) Festering, rankling, growing virulent.

At some hours in the night spirits resort;
Alack, alack! is it not like, that I,1

So early waking, what with loathsome smell,
And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad;2.
O! if I wake, shall I not be distraught, 3
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, I come! this do I drink to thee.

SCENE IV.

[She throws herself on the bed. V

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. 5

Enter CAPULET.

CAP. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow'd,

1) This speech is confused, and inconsequential, according to the disorder of Juliet's mind. Johnson.

2) Mandrake, the English name of the plant Mandragoras (atropa mandragora, Linnée; in French mandragore, solanée narcotique; in German: Alraun, Schlafapfel, Hexenkraut), concerning which some very superstitious notions prevailed. An inferior degree of animal life was attributed to it; and it was commonly supposed that, when torn from the ground, it uttered groans of so pernicious a nature, that the person who committed the violence, went mad or died. To escape that danger, it was recommended to tie one end of a string to the plant and the other to a dog, upon whom the fatal groan would then discharge its whole malignity. These strange notions arose,

probably, from little less fanciful comparison of the root to the human figure; strengthened, doubtless, in England by the accidental circumstance of man being the first syllable of the word. The ancients, however, made the same comparison of its form:

Quamvis semihominis, vesano gramine foeta,

Mandragorae pariat flores. Columella, de 1. Hort. v. 19. Nares.

3) Be distracted, have lost my senses.

4) Run him through. To spit, to put upon a spit, the German Spiess, an iron bar pointed, on which meat is roasted.

5) i. e. in the room where paste was made. So laundry, spicery, etc. Malone.