The Complete Tragedies of William Shakespeare - All 12 Books in One Edition. William Shakespeare

for I will not away.—

       [Exit Friar Lawrence.]

       What’s here? a cup, clos’d in my true love’s hand?

       Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:—

       O churl! drink 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.

       [Kisses him.]

       Thy lips are warm!

       1 Watch. [Within.] Lead, boy:—which way?

       Juliet.

       Yea, noise?—Then I’ll be brief.—O happy dagger!

       [Snatching Romeo’s dagger.]

       This is thy sheath [stabs herself]; there rest, and let me die.

       [Falls on Romeo’s body and dies.]

       [Enter Watch, with the Page of Paris.]

       Page.

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

       1 Watch.

       The ground is bloody; search about the churchyard:

       Go, some of you, whoe’er you find attach.

       [Exeunt some of the Watch.]

       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 others of the Watch.]

       We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;

       But the true ground of all these piteous woes

       We cannot without circumstance descry.

       [Re-enter some of the Watch with Balthasar.]

       2 Watch. Here’s Romeo’s man; we found him in the churchyard.

       1 Watch. Hold him in safety till the prince come hither.

       [Re-enter others of the Watch with Friar Lawrence.]

       3 Watch.

       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 side.

       1 Watch. 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’s rest?

       [Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, and others.]

       Capulet.

       What should it be, that they so shriek abroad?

       Lady Capulet.

       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 Watch.

       Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain;

       And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,

       Warm and new kill’d.

       Prince.

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

       1 Watch.

       Here is a friar, and slaughter’d Romeo’s man,

       With instruments upon them fit to open

       These dead men’s tombs.

       Capulet.

       O heaven!—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!

       Lady Capulet.

       O me! this sight of death is as a bell

       That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

       [Enter Montague and others.]

       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 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?

       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,

       And let mischance be slave to patience.—

       Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

       Friar.

       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 excus’d.

       Prince.

       Then say at once what thou dost know in this.

       Friar.

       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

       Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from this city;

       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 means

       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 borrow’d grave,

       Being the time the potion’s force should cease.

       But