Romeo and Juliet
ACT V SCENE I | 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, | 10 | |
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, | 20 | |
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. | 30 | |
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, | 40 | |
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, | 50 | |
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 | 60 | |
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, | 70 | |
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, | 80 |
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] |
Next: Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 2