The Quintessential Shakespeare: 11 Most Famous Plays in One Edition. William Shakespeare

to Friar Lawrence?

       Nurse.

       Ay, forsooth.

       Capulet.

       Well, be may chance to do some good on her:

       A peevish self-will’d harlotry it is.

       Nurse.

       See where she comes from shrift with merry look.

       [Enter Juliet.]

       Capulet.

       How now, my headstrong! where have you been gadding?

       Juliet.

       Where I have learn’d me to repent the sin

       Of disobedient opposition

       To you and your behests; and am enjoin’d

       By holy Lawrence to fall prostrate here,

       To beg your pardon:—pardon, I beseech you!

       Henceforward I am ever rul’d by you.

       Capulet.

       Send for the county; go tell him of this:

       I’ll have this knot knit up tomorrow morning.

       Juliet.

       I met the youthful lord at Lawrence’ cell;

       And gave him what becomed love I might,

       Not stepping o’er the bounds of modesty.

       Capulet.

       Why, I am glad on’t; this is well,—stand up,—

       This is as’t should be.—Let me see the county;

       Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.—

       Now, afore God, this reverend holy friar,

       All our whole city is much bound to him.

       Juliet.

       Nurse, will you go with me into my closet,

       To help me sort such needful ornaments

       As you think fit to furnish me tomorrow?

       Lady Capulet.

       No, not till Thursday; there is time enough.

       Capulet.

       Go, nurse, go with her.—We’ll to church tomorrow.

       [Exeunt Juliet and Nurse.]

       Lady Capulet.

       We shall be short in our provision:

       ‘Tis now near night.

       Capulet.

       Tush, I will stir about,

       And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife:

       Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her;

       I’ll not to bed tonight;—let me alone;

       I’ll play the housewife for this once.—What, ho!—

       They are all forth: well, I will walk myself

       To County Paris, to prepare him up

       Against tomorrow: my heart is wondrous light

       Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim’d.

       [Exeunt.]

       SCENE III. Juliet’s Chamber.

       [Enter Juliet and Nurse.]

       Juliet.

       Ay, those attires are best:—but, gentle nurse,

       I pray thee, leave me to myself tonight;

       For I have need of many orisons

       To move the heavens to smile upon my state,

       Which, well thou know’st, is cross and full of sin.

       [Enter Lady Capulet.]

       Lady Capulet.

       What, are you busy, ho? need you my help?

       Juliet.

       No, madam; we have cull’d such necessaries

       As are behoveful for our state tomorrow:

       So please you, let me now be left alone,

       And let the nurse this night sit up with you;

       For I am sure you have your hands full all

       In this so sudden business.

       Lady Capulet.

       Good night:

       Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.

       [Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.]

       Juliet.

       Farewell!—God knows when we shall meet again.

       I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins

       That almost freezes up the heat of life:

       I’ll call them back again to comfort me;—

       Nurse!—What should she do here?

       My dismal scene I needs must act alone.—

       Come, vial.—

       What if this mixture do not work at all?

       Shall I be married, then, tomorrow morning?—

       No, No!—this shall forbid it:—lie thou there.—

       [Laying down her dagger.]

       What if it be a poison, which the friar

       Subtly hath minister’d to have me dead,

       Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour’d,

       Because he married me before to Romeo?

       I fear it is: and yet methinks it should not,

       For he hath still been tried a holy man:—

       I will not entertain so bad a thought.—

       How if, when I am laid into the tomb,

       I wake before the time that Romeo

       Come to redeem me? there’s a fearful point!

       Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,

       To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

       And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?

       Or, if I live, is it not very like

       The horrible conceit of death and night,

       Together with the terror of the place,—

       As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,

       Where, for this many hundred years, the bones

       Of all my buried ancestors are pack’d;

       Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,

       Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,

       At some hours in the night spirits resort;—

       Alack, alack, is it not like that I,

       So early waking,—what with loathsome smells,

       And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,

       That living mortals, hearing them, run mad;—

       O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,

       Environed with all these hideous fears?

       And madly play with my forefathers’ joints?

       And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?

       And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone,

       As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?—

       O, look! methinks I see my cousin’s ghost

       Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body

       Upon a rapier’s point:—stay, Tybalt, stay!—

       Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

       [Throws herself