Complete Plays, The Read online

Indeed, I should have ask’d you that before.

  Servant

  Now I’ll tell you without asking: my master is the great rich Capulet; and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray, come and crush a cup of wine. Rest you merry!

  Exit

  Benvolio

  At this same ancient feast of Capulet’s

  Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lovest,

  With all the admired beauties of Verona:

  Go thither; and, with unattainted eye,

  Compare her face with some that I shall show,

  And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

  Romeo

  When the devout religion of mine eye

  Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;

  And these, who often drown’d could never die,

  Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!

  One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun

  Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.

  Benvolio

  Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by,

  Herself poised with herself in either eye:

  But in that crystal scales let there be weigh’d

  Your lady’s love against some other maid

  That I will show you shining at this feast,

  And she shall scant show well that now shows best.

  Romeo

  I’ll go along, no such sight to be shown,

  But to rejoice in splendor of mine own.

  Exeunt

  SCENE III. A ROOM IN CAPULET’S HOUSE.

  Enter Lady Capulet and Nurse

  Lady Capulet

  Nurse, where’s my daughter? call her forth to me.

  Nurse

  Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old,

  I bade her come. What, lamb! what, ladybird!

  God forbid! Where’s this girl? What, Juliet!

  Enter Juliet

  Juliet

  How now! who calls?

  Nurse

  Your mother.

  Juliet

  Madam, I am here.

  What is your will?

  Lady Capulet

  This is the matter:— Nurse, give leave awhile,

  We must talk in secret:— nurse, come back again;

  I have remember’d me, thou’s hear our counsel.

  Thou know’st my daughter’s of a pretty age.

  Nurse

  Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.

  Lady Capulet

  She’s not fourteen.

  Nurse

  I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth,—

  And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four —

  She is not fourteen. How long is it now

  To Lammas-tide?

  Lady Capulet

  A fortnight and odd days.

  Nurse

  Even or odd, of all days in the year,

  Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.

  Susan and she — God rest all Christian souls!—

  Were of an age: well, Susan is with God;

  She was too good for me: but, as I said,

  On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;

  That shall she, marry; I remember it well.

  ’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;

  And she was wean’d,— I never shall forget it,—

  Of all the days of the year, upon that day:

  For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,

  Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall;

  My lord and you were then at Mantua:—

  Nay, I do bear a brain:— but, as I said,

  When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple

  Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,

  To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!

  Shake quoth the dove-house: ’twas no need, I trow,

  To bid me trudge:

  And since that time it is eleven years;

  For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,

  She could have run and waddled all about;

  For even the day before, she broke her brow:

  And then my husband — God be with his soul!

  A’ was a merry man — took up the child:

  ‘Yea,’ quoth he, ‘dost thou fall upon thy face?

  Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;

  Wilt thou not, Jule?’ and, by my holidame,

  The pretty wretch left crying and said ‘Ay.’

  To see, now, how a jest shall come about!

  I warrant, an I should live a thousand years,

  I never should forget it: ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ quoth he;

  And, pretty fool, it stinted and said ‘Ay.’

  Lady Capulet

  Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy peace.

  Nurse

  Yes, madam: yet I cannot choose but laugh,

  To think it should leave crying and say ‘Ay.’

  And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow

  A bump as big as a young cockerel’s stone;

  A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly:

  ‘Yea,’ quoth my husband,’fall’st upon thy face?

  Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;

  Wilt thou not, Jule?’ it stinted and said ‘Ay.’

  Juliet

  And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I.

  Nurse

  Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace!

  Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nursed:

  An I might live to see thee married once,

  I have my wish.

  Lady Capulet

  Marry, that ‘marry’ is the very theme

  I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,

  How stands your disposition to be married?

  Juliet

  It is an honour that I dream not of.

  Nurse

  An honour! were not I thine only nurse,

  I would say thou hadst suck’d wisdom from thy teat.

  Lady Capulet

  Well, think of marriage now; younger than you,

  Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,

  Are made already mothers: by my count,

  I was your mother much upon these years

  That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief:

  The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.

  Nurse

  A man, young lady! lady, such a man

  As all the world — why, he’s a man of wax.

  Lady Capulet

  Verona’s summer hath not such a flower.

  Nurse

  Nay, he’s a flower; in faith, a very flower.

  Lady Capulet

  What say you? can you love the gentleman?

  This night you shall behold him at our feast;

  Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face,

  And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen;

  Examine every married lineament,

  And see how one another lends content

  And what obscured in this fair volume lies

  Find written in the margent of his eyes.

  This precious book of love, this unbound lover,

  To beautify him, only lacks a cover:

  The fish lives in the sea, and ’tis much pride

  For fair without the fair within to hide:

  That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory,

  That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;

  So shall you share all that he doth possess,

  By having him, making yourself no less.

  Nurse

  No less! nay, bigger; women grow by men.

  Lady Capulet

  Speak briefly, can you like of Paris’ love?

  Juliet

  I’ll look to like, if looking liking move:

  But no more deep will I endart mine eye

  Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.

  Enter a Servant

  Servant

  Madam, t
he guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity. I must hence to wait; I beseech you, follow straight.

  Lady Capulet

  We follow thee.

  Exit Servant

  Juliet, the county stays.

  Nurse

  Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.

  Exeunt

  SCENE IV. A STREET.

  Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six Maskers, Torch-bearers, and others

  Romeo

  What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?

  Or shall we on without a apology?

  Benvolio

  The date is out of such prolixity:

  We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,

  Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,

  Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;

  Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke

  After the prompter, for our entrance:

  But let them measure us by what they will;

  We’ll measure them a measure, and be gone.

  Romeo

  Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling;

  Being but heavy, I will bear the light.

  Mercutio

  Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.

  Romeo

  Not I, believe me: you have dancing shoes

  With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead

  So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.

  Mercutio

  You are a lover; borrow Cupid’s wings,

  And soar with them above a common bound.

  Romeo

  I am too sore enpierced with his shaft

  To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,

  I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe:

  Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.

  Mercutio

  And, to sink in it, should you burden love;

  Too great oppression for a tender thing.

  Romeo

  Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,

  Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

  Mercutio

  If love be rough with you, be rough with love;

  Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.

  Give me a case to put my visage in:

  A visor for a visor! what care I

  What curious eye doth quote deformities?

  Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.

  Benvolio

  Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in,

  But every man betake him to his legs.

  Romeo

  A torch for me: let wantons light of heart

  Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels,

  For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase;

  I’ll be a candle-holder, and look on.

  The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done.

  Mercutio

  Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word:

  If thou art dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire

  Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick’st

  Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!

  Romeo

  Nay, that’s not so.

  Mercutio

  I mean, sir, in delay

  We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.

  Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits

  Five times in that ere once in our five wits.

  Romeo

  And we mean well in going to this mask;

  But ’tis no wit to go.

  Mercutio

  Why, may one ask?

  Romeo

  I dream’d a dream to-night.

  Mercutio

  And so did I.

  Romeo

  Well, what was yours?

  Mercutio

  That dreamers often lie.

  Romeo

  In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.

  Mercutio

  O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

  She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes

  In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

  On the fore-finger of an alderman,

  Drawn with a team of little atomies

  Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep;

  Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders’ legs,

  The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,

  The traces of the smallest spider’s web,

  The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,

  Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,

  Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,

  Not so big as a round little worm

  Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;

  Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut

  Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,

  Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.

  And in this state she gallops night by night

  Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;

  O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies straight,

  O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,

  O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,

  Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,

  Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:

  Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,

  And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;

  And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail

  Tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep,

  Then dreams, he of another benefice:

  Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,

  And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

  Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

  Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon

  Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,

  And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two

  And sleeps again. This is that very Mab

  That plats the manes of horses in the night,

  And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,

  Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:

  This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,

  That presses them and learns them first to bear,

  Making them women of good carriage:

  This is she —

  Romeo

  Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!

  Thou talk’st of nothing.

  Mercutio

  True, I talk of dreams,

  Which are the children of an idle brain,

  Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,

  Which is as thin of substance as the air

  And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes

  Even now the frozen bosom of the north,

  And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,

  Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

  Benvolio

  This wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves;

  Supper is done, and we shall come too late.

  Romeo

  I fear, too early: for my mind misgives

  Some consequence yet hanging in the stars

  Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

  With this night’s revels and expire the term

  Of a despised life closed in my breast

  By some vile forfeit of untimely death.

  But He, that hath the steerage of my course,

  Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.

  Benvolio

  Strike, drum.

  Exeunt

  SCENE V. A HALL IN CAPULET’S HOUSE.

  Musicians waiting. Enter Servingmen with napkins

  First Servant

  Where’s Potpan, that he helps not to take away? He shift a trencher? he scrape a trencher!

  Second Servant

  When good manners shall lie all in one or two men’s hands and they unwashed t
oo, ’tis a foul thing.

  First Servant

  Away with the joint-stools, remove the court-cupboard, look to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane; and, as thou lovest me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell. Antony, and Potpan!

  Second Servant

  Ay, boy, ready.

  First Servant

  You are looked for and called for, asked for and sought for, in the great chamber.

  Second Servant

  We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys; be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all.

  Enter Capulet, with Juliet and others of his house, meeting the Guests and Maskers

  Capulet

  Welcome, gentlemen! ladies that have their toes

  Unplagued with corns will have a bout with you.

  Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all

  Will now deny to dance? she that makes dainty,

  She, I’ll swear, hath corns; am I come near ye now?

  Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day

  That I have worn a visor and could tell

  A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear,

  Such as would please: ’tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone:

  You are welcome, gentlemen! come, musicians, play.

  A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls.

  Music plays, and they dance

  More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up,

  And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.

  Ah, sirrah, this unlook’d-for sport comes well.

  Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet;

  For you and I are past our dancing days:

  How long is’t now since last yourself and I

  Were in a mask?

  Second Capulet

  By’r lady, thirty years.

  Capulet

  What, man! ’tis not so much, ’tis not so much:

  ’Tis since the nuptials of Lucentio,

  Come pentecost as quickly as it will,

  Some five and twenty years; and then we mask’d.

  Second Capulet

  ’Tis more, ’tis more, his son is elder, sir;

  His son is thirty.

  Capulet

  Will you tell me that?

  His son was but a ward two years ago.

  Romeo

  [To a Servingman] What lady is that, which doth enrich the hand Of yonder knight?

  Servant

  I know not, sir.

  Romeo

  O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

  It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

  Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear;

  Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!

  So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,

  As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.

  The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,

  And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.

  Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!

  For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.