Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.
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BENVOLIO Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by:
Herself pois’d with herself in either eye.
But in that crystal scales let there be weigh’d
Your lady’s love against some other maid
That I will show you shining at this feast,
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And she shall scant show well that now seems best.
ROMEO I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown,
But to rejoice in splendour of mine own. Exeunt.
1.3 Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse.
LADY CAPULET
Nurse, where’s my daughter? Call her forth to me.
NURSE Now by my maidenhead at twelve year old,
I bade her come. What, lamb. What, ladybird.
God forbid. Where’s this girl? What, Juliet!
Enter JULIET.
JULIET How now, who calls?
NURSE Your mother.
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JULIET Madam, I am here, what is your will?
LADY CAPULET
This is the matter. Nurse, give leave awhile,
We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again,
I have remember’d me, thou’s hear our counsel.
Thou knowest my daughter’s of a pretty age.
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NURSE Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
LADY CAPULET She’s not fourteen.
NURSE I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth –
And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four –
She’s not fourteen. How long is it now
To Lammas-tide?
LADY CAPULET A fortnight and odd days.
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NURSE Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she – God rest all Christian souls –
Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me. But as I said,
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On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
That shall she; marry, I remember it well.
’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years,
And she was wean’d – I never shall forget it –
Of all the days of the year upon that day.
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For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.
My lord and you were then at Mantua –
Nay I do bear a brain. But as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
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Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug.
Shake! quoth the dovehouse. ’Twas no need, I trow,
To bid me trudge.
And since that time it is eleven years.
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For then she could stand high-lone, nay, by th’rood,
She could have run and waddled all about;
For even the day before she broke her brow,
And then my husband – God be with his soul,
A was a merry man – took up the child,
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‘Yea’, quoth he, ‘dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,
Wilt thou not, Jule?’ And by my holidame,
The pretty wretch left crying and said ‘Ay’.
To see now how a jest shall come about.
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I warrant, and I should live a thousand years
I never should forget it. ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ quoth he,
And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said ‘Ay’.
LADY CAPULET Enough of this, I pray thee, hold thy peace.
NURSE Yes, madam, yet I cannot choose but laugh
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To think it should leave crying and say ‘Ay’;
And yet I warrant it had upon it brow
A bump as big as a young cockerel’s stone,
A perilous knock, and it cried bitterly.
‘Yea’, quoth my husband, ‘fall’st upon thy face?
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Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age,
Wilt thou not, Jule?’ It stinted, and said ‘Ay’.
JULIET And stint thou too, I pray thee, Nurse, say I.
NURSE Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace,
Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nurs’d.
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And I might live to see thee married once,
I have my wish.
LADY CAPULET Marry, that marry is the very theme
I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,
How stands your dispositions to be married?
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JULIET It is an honour that I dream not of.
NURSE An honour. Were not I thine only nurse
I would say thou hadst suck’d wisdom from thy teat.
LADY CAPULET
Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
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Are made already mothers. By my count
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief:
The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.
NURSE A man, young lady. Lady, such a man
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As all the world – why, he’s a man of wax.
LADY CAPULET
Verona’s summer hath not such a flower.
NURSE Nay, he’s a flower, in faith a very flower.
LADY CAPULET
What say you, can you love the gentleman?
This night you shall behold him at our feast;
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Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face
And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen.
Examine every married lineament
And see how one another lends content;
And what obscur’d in this fair volume lies,
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Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea; and ’tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
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That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him, making yourself no less.
NURSE No less, nay bigger. Women grow by men.
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LADY CAPULET
Speak briefly, can you like of Paris’ love?
JULIET I’ll look to like if looking liking move,
But no more deep will I endart mine eye
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
Enter a Servingman.
SERVINGMAN Madam, the guests are come, supper
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served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the
Nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in
extremity. I must hence to wait, I beseech you follow
straight. Exit.
LADY CAPULET
We follow thee; Juliet, the County stays.
NURSE Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.
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Exeunt.
1.4 Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six other masquers and torchbearers.
ROMEO
What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
Or shall we on without apology?
BENVOLIO The date is out of such prolixity.
We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,
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Scaring the ladies like a crowkeeper,
Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
After
the prompter, for our entrance.
But let them measure us by what they will,
We’ll measure them a measure and be gone.
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ROMEO Give me a torch, I am not for this ambling.
Being but heavy I will bear the light.
MERCUTIO
Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.
ROMEO Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes
With nimble soles, I have a soul of lead
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So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
MERCUTIO You are a lover, borrow Cupid’s wings
And soar with them above a common bound.
ROMEO I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
To soar with his light feathers, and so bound
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I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.
Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.
MERCUTIO
And, to sink in it, should you burden love –
Too great oppression for a tender thing.
ROMEO Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
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Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.
MERCUTIO
If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.
Give me a case to put my visage in:
A visor for a visor. What care I
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What curious eye doth quote deformities?
Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.
BENVOLIO Come, knock and enter, and no sooner in
But every man betake him to his legs.
ROMEO A torch for me. Let wantons light of heart
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Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels,
For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase –
I’ll be a candle-holder and look on.
The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done.
MERCUTIO
Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word.
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If thou art dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire
Of – save your reverence – love, wherein thou stickest
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho.
ROMEO Nay, that’s not so.
MERCUTIO I mean sir, in delay
We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day.
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Take our good meaning, for our judgement sits
Five times in that ere once in our five wits.
ROMEO And we mean well in going to this masque,
But ’tis no wit to go.
MERCUTIO Why, may one ask?
ROMEO I dreamt a dream tonight.
MERCUTIO And so did I.
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ROMEO Well what was yours?
MERCUTIO That dreamers often lie.
ROMEO In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
MERCUTIO
O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
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On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomi
Over men’s noses as they lie asleep.
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
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Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
Her traces of the smallest spider web,
Her collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
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Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;
And in this state she gallops night by night
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Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight;
O’er lawyers’ fingers who straight dream on fees;
O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues
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Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail,
Tickling a parson’s nose as a lies asleep;
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Then dreams he of another benefice.
Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
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The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 443