The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works
Page 455
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It is supposed the fair creature died –
And here is come to do some villainous shame
To the dead bodies. I will apprehend him.
Stop thy unhallow’d toil, vile Montague.
Can vengeance be pursu’d further than death?
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Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee.
Obey, and go with me, for thou must die.
ROMEO I must indeed, and therefore came I hither.
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man.
Fly hence and leave me. Think upon these gone.
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Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,
Put not another sin upon my head
By urging me to fury. O be gone.
By heaven I love thee better than myself,
For I come hither arm’d against myself.
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Stay not, be gone, live, and hereafter say
A mad man’s mercy bid thee run away.
PARIS I do defy thy conjuration
And apprehend thee for a felon here.
ROMEO Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!
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[They fight.]
PAGE O Lord, they fight! I will go call the Watch.
Exit Page.
PARIS O, I am slain! If thou be merciful,
Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. [Paris dies.]
ROMEO In faith I will. Let me peruse this face.
Mercutio’s kinsman, noble County Paris!
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What said my man, when my betossed soul
Did not attend him, as we rode? I think
He told me Paris should have married Juliet.
Said he not so? Or did I dream it so?
Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,
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To think it was so? O, give me thy hand,
One writ with me in sour misfortune’s book.
I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave.
A grave? O no, a lantern, slaughter’d youth.
For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
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This vault a feasting presence, full of light.
Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr’d.
How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! Which their keepers call
A lightning before death. O how may I
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Call this a lightning? O my love, my wife,
Death that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
Thou art not conquer’d. Beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
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And Death’s pale flag is not advanced there.
Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favour can I do to thee
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
To sunder his that was thine enemy?
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Forgive me, cousin. Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial Death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
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For fear of that I still will stay with thee,
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again. Here, here, will I remain
With worms that are thy chambermaids. O here
Will I set up my everlasting rest
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And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last.
Arms, take your last embrace! And lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing Death.
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Come, bitter conduct, come unsavoury guide,
Thou desperate pilot now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark.
Here’s to my love! [He drinks.] O true apothecary,
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
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[He falls.]
Enter FRIAR LAURENCE with lantern, crow and spade.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Saint Francis be my speed. How oft tonight
Have my old feet stumbled at graves. Who’s there?
BALTHASAR
Here’s one, a friend, and one that knows you well.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Bliss be upon you. Tell me, good my friend,
What torch is yond that vainly lends his light
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To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern,
It burneth in the Capels’ monument.
BALTHASAR
It doth so, holy sir, and there’s my master,
One that you love.
FRIAR LAURENCE Who is it?
BALTHASAR Romeo.
FRIAR LAURENCE How long hath he been there?
BALTHASAR Full half an hour.
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FRIAR LAURENCE Go with me to the vault.
BALTHASAR I dare not, sir.
My master knows not but I am gone hence,
And fearfully did menace me with death
If I did stay to look on his intents.
FRIAR LAURENCE
Stay then, I’ll go alone. Fear comes upon me.
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O, much I fear some ill unthrifty thing.
BALTHASAR As I did sleep under this yew tree here
I dreamt my master and another fought,
And that my master slew him.
FRIAR LAURENCE Romeo!
[Friar stoops and looks on the blood and weapons.]
Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains
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The stony entrance of this sepulchre?
What mean these masterless and gory swords
To lie discolour’d by this place of peace?
Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris too?
And steep’d in blood? Ah what an unkind hour
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Is guilty of this lamentable chance?
The lady stirs.
JULIET rises.
JULIET O comfortable Friar, where is my lord?
I do remember well where I should be,
And there I am. Where is my Romeo?
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FRIAR LAURENCE
I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest
Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep.
A greater power than we can contradict
Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away.
Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead,
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And Paris too. Come, I’ll dispose of thee
Among a sisterhood of holy nuns.
Stay not to question, for the Watch is coming.
Come, go, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay.
JULIET Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.
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Exit Friar Laurence.
What’s here? A cup clos’d in my true love’s hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.
O churl. Drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips.
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them
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To make me die with a restorative. [She kisses him.]
Thy lips are warm!
WATCHMAN [within] Lead, boy. Which way?
JULIET Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger.
This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die.
[She stabs herself and falls.]
Enter Page and Watchmen.
PAGE
This is the place. There, where the torch doth burn.
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1 WATCHMAN
The ground is bloody. Search about the churchyard.
Go, some of you: who
e’er you find, attach.
Exeunt some watchmen.
Pitiful sight! Here lies the County slain
And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,
Who here hath lain this two days buried.
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Go tell the Prince. Run to the Capulets.
Raise up the Montagues. Some others search.
Exeunt some watchmen.
We see the ground whereon these woes do lie,
But the true ground of all these piteous woes
We cannot without circumstance descry.
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Enter several Watchmen with BALTHASAR.
2 WATCHMAN Here’s Romeo’s man. We found him in the churchyard.
1 WATCHMAN
Hold him in safety till the Prince come hither.
Enter another Watchman with FRIAR LAURENCE.
3 WATCHMAN
Here is a friar that trembles, sighs and weeps.
We took this mattock and this spade from him
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As he was coming from this churchyard’s side.
1 WATCHMAN A great suspicion. Stay the friar too.
Enter the PRINCE and attendants.
PRINCE What misadventure is so early up,
That calls our person from our morning rest?
Enter CAPULET and LADY CAPULET and servants.
CAPULET What should it be that is so shriek’d abroad?
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LADY CAPULET O, the people in the street cry ‘Romeo’,
Some ‘Juliet’, and some ‘Paris’, and all run
With open outcry toward our monument.
PRINCE What fear is this which startles in our ears?
1 WATCHMAN
Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain,
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And Romeo dead, and Juliet, dead before,
Warm, and new kill’d.
PRINCE
Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.
1 WATCHMAN
Here is a friar, and slaughter’d Romeo’s man,
With instruments upon them fit to open
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These dead men’s tombs.
CAPULET
O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!
This dagger hath mista’en, for lo, his house
Is empty on the back of Montague,
And it mis-sheathed in my daughter’s bosom.
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LADY CAPULET
O me! This sight of death is as a bell
That warns my old age to a sepulchre.
Enter MONTAGUE and servants.
PRINCE Come, Montague, for thou art early up
To see thy son and heir now early down.
MONTAGUE Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight.
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Grief of my son’s exile hath stopp’d her breath.
What further woe conspires against mine age?
PRINCE Look, and thou shalt see.
MONTAGUE O thou untaught! What manners is in this,
To press before thy father to a grave?
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PRINCE Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while
Till we can clear these ambiguities
And know their spring, their head, their true descent,
And then will I be general of your woes
And lead you, even to death. Meantime forbear,
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And let mischance be slave to patience.
Bring forth the parties of suspicion.
FRIAR LAURENCE I am the greatest, able to do least,
Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me, of this direful murder.
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And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned and myself excus’d.
PRINCE Then say at once what thou dost know in this.
FRIAR LAURENCE
I will be brief, for my short date of breath
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
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Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet,
And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife.
I married them, and their stol’n marriage day
Was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death
Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from this city;
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For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin’d.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth’d and would have married her perforce
To County Paris. Then comes she to me
And with wild looks bid me devise some mean
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To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself.