Romeo and Juliet · William Shakespeare
SCENE III. A churchyard; in it a Monument belonging to the Capulets.
Enter Paris, and his Page bearing flowers and a torch. PARIS. Give me thy torch, boy. Hence and stand aloof. Yet put it out, for I would not be seen. Under yond yew tree lay thee all along, Holding thy ear close to the hollow ground; So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread, Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves, But thou shalt hear it. Whistle then to me, As signal that thou hear’st something approach. Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee, go. PAGE. [_Aside._] I am almost afraid to stand alone Here in the churchyard; yet I will adventure. [_Retires._] PARIS. Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew. O woe, thy canopy is dust and stones, Which with sweet water nightly I will dew, Or wanting that, with tears distill’d by moans. The obsequies that I for thee will keep, Nightly shall be to strew thy grave and weep. [_The Page whistles._] The boy gives warning something doth approach. What cursed foot wanders this way tonight, To cross my obsequies and true love’s rite? What, with a torch! Muffle me, night, awhile. [_Retires._] Enter Romeo and Balthasar with a torch, mattock, &c.
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 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, 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? 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? 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; 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. Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide. Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark. Here’s to my love! [_Drinks._] O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
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. FIRST 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. SECOND WATCH. Here’s Romeo’s man. We found him in the churchyard. FIRST WATCH. Hold him in safety till the Prince come hither. Re-enter others of the Watch with Friar Lawrence. THIRD 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. FIRST 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. 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? FIRST 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. FIRST 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 LAWRENCE. 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 LAWRENCE. 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 he which bore my letter, Friar John, Was stay’d by accident; and yesternight Return’d my letter back. Then all alone At the prefixed 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 awaking, 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. But then a noise did scare me from the tomb; And she, too desperate, would not go with me, But, as it seems, did violence on herself. All this I know; and to the marriage Her Nurse is privy. And if ought in this Miscarried by my fault, let my old life Be sacrific’d, 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? 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 threaten’d 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. Where is the County’s Page that rais’d 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, 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 punish’d.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.