The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains 140

  The stony entrance of this sepulchre?

  What mean these masterless and gory swords

  To lie discoloured by this place of peace?

  Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris, too,

  And steeped in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour

  Is guilty of this lamentable chance IJuliet awakes ⌈and rises⌉

  The lady stirs.

  JULIET

  O comfortable friar, where is my lord?

  I do remember well where I should be,

  And there I am. Where is my Romeo? 150

  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, 155

  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. Exit

  JULIET

  Go, get thee hence, for I will not away. 160

  What’s here? A cup closed in my true love’s hand?

  Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.

  O churt!—drunk all, and left no friendly drop

  To help me after? I will kiss thy lips.

  Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,

  To make me die with a restorative.She kisses Romeo’s lips

  Thy lips are warm.

  CHIEF WATCHMAN ⌈within⌉ Lead, boy. Which way?

  JULIET

  Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief.She takes Romeo’s dagger

  O happy dagger,

  This is thy sheath! There rust, and let me die.

  She stabs herself, falls, and dies.

  Enter the Page and Watchmen

  ⌈PAGE⌉

  This is the place, there where the torch doth burn. 170

  CHIEF WATCHMAN

  The ground is bloody. Search about the churchyard.

  Go, some of you. Whoe’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.

  Go tell the Prince. Run to the Capulets,

  Raise up the Montagues. Some others search.Exeunt other Watchmen ⌈severally⌉

  We see the ground whereon these woes do lie,

  But the true ground of all these piteous woes

  We cannot without circumstance descry.Enter ⌈Watchmen⌉ with Balthasar

  ⌈SECOND⌉ WATCHMAN

  Here’s Romeo’s man. We found him in the churchyard.

  CHIEF WATCHMAN

  Hold him in safety till the Prince come hither.

  Enter another Watchman with Friar Laurence

  THIRD WATCHMAN

  Here is a friar that trembles, sighs, and weeps.

  We took this mattock and this spade from him

  As he was coming from this churchyard’s side.

  CHIEF WATCHMAN

  A great suspicion. Stay the friar, too.

  Enter the Prince ⌈with others⌉

  PRINCE

  What misadventure is so early up,

  That calls our person from our morning rest?

  Enter Capulet and his Wife

  CAPULET

  What should it be that is so shrieked abroad?

  CAPULET’S WIFE

  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?

  CHIEF WATCHMAN

  Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain,

  And Romeo dead, and Juliet, dead before,

  Warm, and new killed.

  PRINCE

  Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.

  CHIEF WATCHMAN

  Here is a friar, and slaughtered Romeo’s man,

  With instruments upon them fit to open

  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-sheathèd in my daughter’s bosom.

  CAPULET’S WIFE

  O me, this sight of death is as a bell 205

  That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

  Enter Montague

  PRINCE

  Come, Montague, for thou art early up

  To see thy son and heir more early down.

  MONTAGUE

  Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight.

  Grief of my son’s exile hath stopped her breath. 210

  What further woe conspires against mine age?

  PRINCE Look, and thou shalt see.

  MONTAGUE (seeing Romeo’s body)

  O thou untaught! What manners is in this,

  To press before thy father to a grave?

  PRINCE

  Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, 215

  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,

  And let mischance be slave to patience. 220

  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;

  And here I stand, both to impeach and purge

  Myself condemned and myself excused.

  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.

  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

  Banished the new-made bridegroom from this city,

  For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.

  You, to remove that siege of grief from her,

  Betrothed and would have married her perforce

  To County Paris. Then comes she to me,

  And with wild looks bid me devise some mean

  To rid her from this second marriage,

  Or in my cell there would she kill herself.

  Then gave I her—so tutored by my art—

  A sleeping potion, which so took effect

  As I intended, for it wrought on her

  The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo

  That he should hither come as this dire night

  To help to take her from her borrowed grave,

  Being the time the potion’s force should cease.

  But he which bore my letter, Friar John,

  Was stayed by accident, and yesternight 250

  Returned my letter back. Then all alone,

  At the prefixèd hour of her waking,

  Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault,

  Meaning to keep her closely at my cell

  Till I conveniently could send to Romeo.

  But when I came, some minute ere the time

  Of her awakening, here untimely lay

  The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.

  She wakes, and I entreated her come forth

  And bear this work of heaven with patience. 260

  But then a noise did scare me from the tomb,

  And she, too desperate, would not go with me,

&nb
sp; But, as it seems, did violence on herself.

  All this I know, and to the marriage

  Her nurse is privy; and if aught in this

  Miscarried by my fault, let my old life

  Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,

  Unto the rigour of severest law.

  PRINCE

  We still have known thee for a holy man.

  Where’s Romeo’s man? What can he say to this? 270

  BALTHASAR

  I brought my master news of Juliet’s death,

  And then in post he came from Mantua

  To this same place, to this same monument.

  This letter he early bid me give his father,

  And threatened me with death, going in the vault,

  If I departed not and left him there.

  PRINCE

  Give me the letter. I will look on it.He takes the letter

  Where is the County’s page that raised the watch?

  Sirrah, what made your master in this place?

  PAGE

  He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave,

  And bid me stand aloof, and so I did.

  Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb,

  And by and by my master drew on him,

  And then I ran away to call the watch.

  PRINCE

  This letter doth make good the friar’s words,

  Their course of love, the tidings of her death;

  And here he writes that he did buy a poison

  Of a poor ’pothecary, and therewithal

  Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.

  Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague, 290

  See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

  That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.

  And I, for winking at your discords, too

  Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished.

  CAPULET

  O brother Montague, give me thy hand. 295

  This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more

  Can I demand.

  MONTAGUE But I can give thee more,

  For I will raise her statue in pure gold,

  That whiles Verona by that name is known

  There shall no figure at such rate be set 300

  As that of true and faithful Juliet.

  CAPULET

  As rich shall Romeo’s by his lady’s lie,

  Poor sacrifices of our enmity.

  PRINCE

  A glooming peace this morning with it brings.

  The sun for sorrow will not show his head. 305

  Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.

  Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd;

  For never was a story of more woe

  Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

  ⌈The tomb is closed.⌉ Exeunt

  A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

  FRANCIS MERES mentions A Midsummer Night’s Dream in his Palladis Tamia, of 1598, and it was first printed in 1600. The Folio (1623) version offers significant variations apparently deriving from performance, and is followed in the present edition. It has often been thought that Shakespeare wrote the play for an aristocratic wedding, but there is no evidence to support this speculation, and the 1600 title-page states that it had been ’sundry times publicly acted’ by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. In stylistic variation it resembles Love’s Labour’s Lost: both plays employ a wide variety of verse measures and rhyme schemes, along with prose that is sometimes (as in Bottom’s account of his dream, 4.1.202―15) rhetorically patterned. Probably it was written in 1594 or 1595, either just before or just after Romeo and Juliet.

  Shakespeare built his own plot from diverse elements of literature, drama, legend, and folklore, supplemented by his imagination and observation. There are four main strands. One, which forms the basis of the action, shows the preparations for the marriage of Theseus, Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and (in the last act) its celebration. This is indebted to Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, as is the play’s second strand, the love story of Lysander and Hermia (who elope to escape her father’s opposition) and of Demetrius. In Chaucer, two young men fall in love with the same girl and quarrel over her; Shakespeare adds the comic complication of another girl (Helena) jilted by, but still loving, one of the young men. A third strand shows the efforts of a group of Athenian workmen—the ‘mechanicals’—led by Bottom the Weaver to prepare a play, Pyramus and Thisbe (based mainly on Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses) for performance at the Duke’s wedding. The mechanicals themselves belong rather to Elizabethan England than to ancient Greece. Bottom’s partial transformation into an ass has many literary precedents. Fourthly, Shakespeare depicts a quarrel between Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the Fairies. Oberon’s attendant, Robin Goodfellow, a puck (or pixie), interferes mischievously in the workmen’s rehearsals and the affairs of the lovers. The fairy part of the play owes something to both folklore and literature; Robin Goodfellow was a well-known figure about whom Shakespeare could have read in Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft (1586).

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers a glorious celebration of the powers of the human imagination while also making comic capital out of its limitations. It is one of Shakespeare’s most polished achievements, a poetic drama of exquisite grace, wit, and humanity. In performance, its imaginative unity has sometimes been violated, but it has become one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, with a special appeal for the young.

  THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

  THESEUS, Duke of Athens

  HIPPOLYTA, Queen of the Amazons, betrothed to Theseus

  PHILOSTRATE, Master of the Revels to Theseus

  EGEUS, father of Hermia

  HERMIA, daughter of Egeus, in love with Lysander

  LYSANDER, loved by Hermia

  DEMETRIUS, suitor to Hermia

  HELENA, in love with Demetrius

  OBERON, King of Fairies

  TITANIA, Queen of Fairies

  ROBIN GOODFELLOW, a puck

  Peter QUINCE, a carpenter

  Nick BOTTOM, a weaver

  Francis FLUTE, a bellows-mender

  Tom SNOUT, a tinker

  SNUG, a joiner

  Robin STARVELING, a tailor

  Attendant lords and fairies

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  1.1 Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, and Philostrate, with others

  THESEUS

  Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour

  Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in

  Another moon—but O, methinks how slow

  This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires

  Like to a stepdame or a dowager

  Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

  HIPPOLYTA

  Four days will quickly steep themselves in night,

  Four nights will quickly dream away the time;

  And then the moon, like to a silver bow

  New bent in heaven, shall behold the night

  Of our solemnities.

  THESEUS Go, Philostrate,

  Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments.

  Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth.

  Turn melancholy forth to funerals—

  The pale companion is not for our pomp.

  ⌈Exit Philostrate⌉

  Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,

  And won thy love doing thee injuries.

  But I will wed thee in another key—

  With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.

  Enter Egeus and his daughter Hermia, and Lysander and Demetrius

  EGEUS

  Happy be Theseus, our renowned Duke.

  THESEUS

  Thanks, good Egeus. What’s the news with thee?

  EGEUS

  Full of vexation come I, with complaint

  Against my child, my daughter Hermia.—

  Stand forth Demetrius.—My noble lord,

  This man h
ath my consent to marry her.—

  Stand forth Lysander.—And, my gracious Duke,

  This hath bewitched the bosom of my child.

  Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,

  And interchanged love tokens with my child.

  Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung

  With feigning voice verses of feigning love,

  And stol’n the impression of her fantasy

  With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gauds, conceits,

  Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats—messengers

  Of strong prevailment in unhardened youth. 35

  With cunning hast thou filched my daughter’s heart,

  Turned her obedience which is due to me

  To stubborn harshness. And, my gracious Duke,

  Be it so she will not here before your grace

  Consent to marry with Demetrius,

  I beg the ancient privilege of Athens:

  As she is mine, I may dispose of her,

  Which shall be either to this gentleman

  Or to her death, according to our law

  Immediately provided in that case.

  THESEUS

  What say you, Hermia? Be advised, fair maid.

  To you your father should be as a god,

  One that composed your beauties, yea, and one

  To whom you are but as a form in wax,

  By him imprinted, and within his power

  To leave the figure or disfigure it.

  Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

  HERMIA

  So is Lysander.

  THESEUS In himself he is,

  But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice,

  The other must be held the worthier.

  HERMIA

  I would my father looked but with my eyes.

  THESEUS

  Rather your eyes must with his judgement look.

  HERMIA

  I do entreat your grace to pardon me.

  I know not by what power I am made bold,

  Nor how it may concern my modesty

  In such a presence here to plead my thoughts,

  But I beseech your grace that I may know

  The worst that may befall me in this case