The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 451
Come death, and welcome. Juliet wills it so.
How is’t, my soul? Let’s talk. It is not day.
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JULIET It is, it is. Hie hence, begone, away.
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division.
This doth not so, for she divideth us.
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Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes.
O, now I would they had chang’d voices too,
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt’s-up to the day.
O now be gone, more light and light it grows.
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ROMEO
More light and light: more dark and dark our woes.
Enter Nurse hastily.
NURSE Madam.
JULIET Nurse?
NURSE Your lady mother is coming to your chamber.
The day is broke, be wary, look about. Exit.
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JULIET Then, window, let day in and let life out.
ROMEO Farewell, farewell, one kiss and I’ll descend.
[He goes down.]
JULIET
Art thou gone so? Love, lord, ay husband, friend,
I must hear from thee every day in the hour,
For in a minute there are many days.
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O, by this count I shall be much in years
Ere I again behold my Romeo.
ROMEO Farewell.
I will omit no opportunity
That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.
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JULIET O think’st thou we shall ever meet again?
ROMEO I doubt it not, and all these woes shall serve
For sweet discourses in our times to come.
JULIET O God, I have an ill-divining soul!
Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low,
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As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.
Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.
ROMEO And trust me, love, in my eye so do you.
Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu. Exit.
JULIET O Fortune, Fortune! All men call thee fickle;
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If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him
That is renown’d for faith? Be fickle, Fortune,
For then I hope thou wilt not keep him long,
But send him back.
Enter LADY CAPULET.
LADY CAPULET Ho, daughter, are you up?
JULIET Who is’t that calls? It is my lady mother.
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Is she not down so late, or up so early?
What unaccustom’d cause procures her hither?
[She goeth down from the window.]
LADY CAPULET Why, how now Juliet?
Enter JULIET.
JULIET Madam, I am not well.
LADY CAPULET
Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death?
What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
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And if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live.
Therefore have done: some grief shows much of love,
But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
JULIET Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
LADY CAPULET
So shall you feel the loss but not the friend
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Which you weep for.
JULIET Feeling so the loss,
I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
LADY CAPULET
Well, girl, thou weepst not so much for his death
As that the villain lives which slaughter’d him.
JULIET What villain, madam?
LADY CAPULET That same villain Romeo.
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JULIET Villain and he be many miles asunder.
God pardon him. I do with all my heart.
And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.
LADY CAPULET
That is because the traitor murderer lives.
JULIET
Ay madam, from the reach of these my hands.
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Would none but I might venge my cousin’s death.
LADY CAPULET
We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not.
Then weep no more. I’ll send to one in Mantua,
Where that same banish’d runagate doth live,
Shall give him such an unaccustom’d dram
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That he shall soon keep Tybalt company;
And then I hope thou wilt be satisfied.
JULIET Indeed I never shall be satisfied
With Romeo, till I behold him – dead –
Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vex’d.
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Madam, if you could find out but a man
To bear a poison, I would temper it –
That Romeo should upon receipt thereof
Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors
To hear him nam’d, and cannot come to him
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To wreak the love I bore my cousin
Upon his body that hath slaughter’d him.
LADY CAPULET
Find thou the means and I’ll find such a man.
But now I’ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.
JULIET And joy comes well in such a needy time.
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What are they, I beseech your ladyship?
LADY CAPULET
Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child;
One who to put thee from thy heaviness
Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy,
That thou expects not, nor I look’d not for.
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JULIET Madam, in happy time. What day is that?
LADY CAPULET
Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn
The gallant, young, and noble gentleman,
The County Paris, at Saint Peter’s Church,
Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.
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JULIET Now by Saint Peter’s Church, and Peter too,
He shall not make me there a joyful bride.
I wonder at this haste, that I must wed
Ere he that should be husband comes to woo.
I pray you tell my lord and father, madam,
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I will not marry yet. And when I do, I swear
It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,
Rather than Paris. These are news indeed.
LADY CAPULET
Here comes your father, tell him so yourself,
And see how he will take it at your hands.
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Enter CAPULET and Nurse.
CAPULET
When the sun sets the earth doth drizzle dew,
But for the sunset of my brother’s son
It rains downright.
How now, a conduit, girl? What, still in tears?
Evermore showering? In one little body
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Thou counterfeits a bark, a sea, a wind.
For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
Do ebb and flow with tears. The bark thy body is,
Sailing in this salt flood, the winds thy sighs,
Who raging with thy tears and they with them,
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Without a sudden calm will overset
Thy tempest-tossed body. How now, wife?
Have you deliver’d to her our decree?
LADY CAPULET
Ay sir, but she will none, she gives you thanks.
I would the fool were married to her grave.
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CAPULET
Soft. Take me with you, take me with you, wife.
How? Will she none? Doth she not give us thanks?
Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blest,
Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought
So worthy a ge
ntleman to be her bride?
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JULIET
Not proud you have, but thankful that you have.
Proud can I never be of what I hate,
But thankful even for hate that is meant love.
CAPULET
How, how, how, how? Chopp’d logic? What is this?
‘Proud’ and ‘I thank you’ and ‘I thank you not’
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And yet ‘not proud’? Mistress minion you,
Thank me no thankings nor proud me no prouds,
But fettle your fine joints ‘gainst Thursday next
To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
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Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage!
You tallow-face!
LADY CAPULET Fie, fie. What, are you mad?
JULIET Good father, I beseech you on my knees.
[She kneels down.]
Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
CAPULET
Hang thee young baggage, disobedient wretch!
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I tell thee what – get thee to church a’ Thursday
Or never after look me in the face.
Speak not, reply not, do not answer me.
My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest
That God had lent us but this only child;
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But now I see this one is one too much,
And that we have a curse in having her.
Out on her, hilding.
NURSE God in heaven bless her.
You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.
CAPULET
And why, my Lady Wisdom? Hold your tongue,
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Good Prudence! Smatter with your gossips, go.
NURSE I speak no treason.
CAPULET O God ‘i’ good e’en!
NURSE May not one speak?
CAPULET Peace, you mumbling fool!
Utter your gravity o’er a gossip’s bowl,
For here we need it not.
LADY CAPULET You are too hot.
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CAPULET
God’s bread, it makes me mad! Day, night, work, play,
Alone, in company, still my care hath been
To have her match’d. And having now provided
A gentleman of noble parentage,
Of fair demesnes, youthful and nobly lign’d,
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Stuff ‘d, as they say, with honourable parts,
Proportion’d as one’s thought would wish a man –
And then to have a wretched puling fool,
A whining mammet, in her fortune’s tender,
To answer ‘I’ll not wed, I cannot love,
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I am too young, I pray you pardon me!’
But, and you will not wed, I’ll pardon you!
Graze where you will, you shall not house with me.
Look to’t, think on’t, I do not use to jest.
Thursday is near. Lay hand on heart. Advise.
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And you be mine I’ll give you to my friend;
And you be not, hang! Beg! Starve! Die in the streets!
For by my soul I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee,
Nor what is mine shall never do thee good.
Trust to’t, bethink you. I’ll not be forsworn. Exit.
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JULIET Is there no pity sitting in the clouds
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O sweet my mother, cast me not away,
Delay this marriage for a month, a week,
Or if you do not, make the bridal bed
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In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.
LADY CAPULET
Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word.
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee. Exit.
JULIET O God, O Nurse, how shall this be prevented?
My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven.
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How shall that faith return again to earth
Unless that husband send it me from heaven
By leaving earth? Comfort me, counsel me.
Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems
Upon so soft a subject as myself.
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What sayst thou? Hast thou not a word of joy?
Some comfort, Nurse.
NURSE Faith, here it is.
Romeo is banish’d, and all the world to nothing
That he dares ne’er come back to challenge you.
Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth.
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Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,