William Shakespeare
-
Tragedies
- Antony and Cleopatra
- Coriolanus
- Hamlet
- Julius Caesar
- King Lear
- Macbeth
- Othello
- Romeo and Juliet
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
-
Histories
- King Henry IV Part 1
- King Henry IV Part 2
- King Henry V
- King Henry VI Part 1
- King Henry VI Part 2
- King Henry VI Part 3
- King Henry VIII
- King John
- Richard II
- Richard III
-
Comedies
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- All's Well That Ends Well
- As You Like It
- Cymbeline
- Love's Labour's Lost
- Measure for Measure
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Pericles, Prince of Tyre
- The Comedy of Errors
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- The Winter's Tale
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
-
Poetry
- A Lover's Complaint
- Sonnets 1 to 50
- Sonnets 50 to 100
- Sonnets 100 to 154
- The Passionate Pilgrim
- The Phoenix and the Turtle
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Venus and Adonis
Romeo and Juliet (c. 1593)
ACT FIVE
SCENE 1. Mantua. A street.
Enter ROMEO
Romeo
- If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep,
- My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:
- My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne;
- And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit
- Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
- I dreamt my lady came and found me dead--
- Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave
- to think!--
- And breathed such life with kisses in my lips,
- That I revived, and was an emperor.
- Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd,
- When but love's shadows are so rich in joy!
Enter BALTHASAR, booted
- News from Verona!--How now, Balthasar!
- Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar?
- How doth my lady? Is my father well?
- How fares my Juliet? that I ask again;
- For nothing can be ill, if she be well.
Balthasar
- Then she is well, and nothing can be ill:
- Her body sleeps in Capel's monument,
- And her immortal part with angels lives.
- I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault,
- And presently took post to tell it you:
- O, pardon me for bringing these ill news,
- Since you did leave it for my office, sir.
Romeo
- Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!
- Thou know'st my lodging: get me ink and paper,
- And hire post-horses; I will hence to-night.
Balthasar
- I do beseech you, sir, have patience:
- Your looks are pale and wild, and do import
- Some misadventure.
Romeo
- Tush, thou art deceived:
- Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do.
- Hast thou no letters to me from the friar?
Balthasar
- No, my good lord.
Romeo
- No matter: get thee gone,
- And hire those horses; I'll be with thee straight.
Exit BALTHASAR
- Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.
- Let's see for means: O mischief, thou art swift
- To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
- I do remember an apothecary,--
- And hereabouts he dwells,--which late I noted
- In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
- Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,
- Sharp misery had worn him to the bones:
- And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
- An alligator stuff'd, and other skins
- Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
- A beggarly account of empty boxes,
- Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
- Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,
- Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show.
- Noting this penury, to myself I said
- 'An if a man did need a poison now,
- Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
- Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.'
- O, this same thought did but forerun my need;
- And this same needy man must sell it me.
- As I remember, this should be the house.
- Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut.
- What, ho! apothecary!
Enter Apothecary
Apothecary
- Who calls so loud?
Romeo
- Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor:
- Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have
- A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear
- As will disperse itself through all the veins
- That the life-weary taker may fall dead
- And that the trunk may be discharged of breath
- As violently as hasty powder fired
- Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.
Apothecary
- Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law
- Is death to any he that utters them.
Romeo
- Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
- And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks,
- Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
- Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back;
- The world is not thy friend nor the world's law;
- The world affords no law to make thee rich;
- Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
Apothecary
- My poverty, but not my will, consents.
Romeo
- I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.
Apothecary
- Put this in any liquid thing you will,
- And drink it off; and, if you had the strength
- Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.
Romeo
- There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
- Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
- Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
- I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none.
- Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh.
- Come, cordial and not poison, go with me
- To Juliet's grave; for there must I use thee.
Exeunt
SCENE 2. Friar Laurence's cell.
Enter FRIAR JOHN
Friar John
- Holy Franciscan friar! brother, ho!
Enter FRIAR Laurence
Friar Laurence
- This same should be the voice of Friar John.
- Welcome from Mantua: what says Romeo?
- Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.
Friar John
- Going to find a bare-foot brother out
- One of our order, to associate me,
- Here in this city visiting the sick,
- And finding him, the searchers of the town,
- Suspecting that we both were in a house
- Where the infectious pestilence did reign,
- Seal'd up the doors, and would not let us forth;
- So that my speed to Mantua there was stay'd.
Friar Laurence
- Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo?
Friar John
- I could not send it,--here it is again,--
- Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
- So fearful were they of infection.
Friar Laurence
- Unhappy fortune! by my brotherhood,
- The letter was not nice but full of charge
- Of dear import, and the neglecting it
- May do much danger. Friar John, go hence;
- Get me an iron crow, and bring it straight
- Unto my cell.
Friar John
- Brother, I'll go and bring it thee.
Exit
Friar Laurence
- Now must I to the monument alone;
- Within three hours will fair Juliet wake:
- She will beshrew me much that Romeo
- Hath had no notice of these accidents;
- But I will write again to Mantua,
- And keep her at my cell till Romeo come;
- Poor living corse, closed in a dead man's tomb!
Exit
SCENE 3. A churchyard; in it a tomb 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-trees lay thee all along,
- Holding thine 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 to-night,
- 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
Romeo
- Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.
- Hold, take this letter; early in the morning
- See thou deliver it to my lord and father.
- Give me the light: upon thy life, I charge thee,
- Whate'er thou hear'st or seest, stand all aloof,
- And do not interrupt me in my course.
- Why I descend into this bed of death,
- Is partly to behold my lady's face;
- But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger
- A precious ring, a ring that I must use
- In dear employment: therefore hence, be gone:
- But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry
- In what I further shall intend to do,
- By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint
- And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs:
- The time and my intents are savage-wild,
- More fierce and more inexorable far
- Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.
Balthasar
- I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.
Romeo
- So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that:
- Live, and be prosperous: and farewell, good fellow.
Balthasar
- Aside For all this same, I'll hide me hereabout:
- His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.
Retires
Romeo
- Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
- Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,
- Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,
- And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food!
Opens the tomb
Paris
- This is that banish'd haughty Montague,
- That murder'd my love's cousin, with which grief,
- It is supposed, the fair creature died;
- And here is come to do some villanous shame
- To the dead bodies: I will apprehend him.
Comes forward
- Stop thy unhallow'd toil, vile Montague!
- Can vengeance be pursued further than death?
- 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;
- 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:
- Stay not, be gone; live, and hereafter say,
- A madman's mercy bade thee run away.
Paris
- I do defy thy conjurations,
- And apprehend thee for a felon here.
Romeo
- Wilt thou provoke me? then have at thee, boy!
They fight
Page
- O Lord, they fight! I will go call the watch.
Exit
Paris
- O, I am slain!
Falls
- If thou be merciful,
- Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet.
Dies
Romeo
- In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face.
- Mercutio's kinsman, noble County Paris!
- 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,
- 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
- This vault a feasting presence full of light.
- Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr'd.
Laying Paris in the tomb
- 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 chamber-maids; 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.
Dies; Enter, at the other end of the churchyard, Friar Laurence, with a lantern, crow, and spade
Friar Laurence
- Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night
- 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
- To grubs and eyeless skulls? as I discern,
- It burneth in the Capel's 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.
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:
- O, much I fear some ill unlucky 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!
Advances
- Alack, alack, what blood is this, which stains
- The stony entrance of this sepulchre?
- What mean these masterless and gory swords
- To lie discolour'd by this place of peace?
Enters the tomb
- Romeo! O, pale! Who else? what, Paris too?
- And steep'd in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour
- Is guilty of this lamentable chance!
- The lady stirs.
Juliet wakes
Juliet
- O comfortable friar! where is my lord?
- I do remember well where I should be,
- And there I am. Where is my Romeo?
Noise within
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;
- 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,
Noise again
- I dare no longer stay.
Juliet
- Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.
Exit Friar Laurence
- What's here? a cup, closed 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,
- To make die with a restorative.
Kisses him
- Thy lips are warm.
First watchman
- 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 rust, 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 watchman
- The ground is bloody; search about the churchyard:
- Go, some of you, whoe'er you find attach.
- Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain,
- And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,
- Who here hath lain these two days buried.
- Go, tell the prince: run to the Capulets:
- Raise up the Montagues: some others search:
- 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 watchman
- Here's Romeo's man; we found him in the churchyard.
First watchman
- Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither.
Re-enter others of the Watch, 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 side.
First 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'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?
First watchman
- 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 watchman
- Here is a friar, and slaughter'd 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-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 to-night;
- 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 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 dooms-day, whose untimely death
- Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from the city,
- For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
- 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
- To rid her from this second marriage,
- Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
- Then gave I her, so tutor'd 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 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 in 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 threatened me with death, going in the vault,
- I departed not and left him there.
Prince
- Give me the letter; I will look on it.
- 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!
- 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.
Capulet
- O brother Montague, give me thy hand:
- 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 while Verona by that name is known,
- There shall no figure at such rate be set
- 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:
- Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
- Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
- For never was a story of more woe
- Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Exeunt