Romeo and Juliet
| ACT III SCENE III | Friar Laurence’s cell. | |
| [Enter FRIAR LAURENCE] | ||
| FRIAR LAURENCE | Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man: | |
| Affliction is enamour’d of thy parts, | ||
| And thou art wedded to calamity. | ||
| [Enter ROMEO] | ||
| ROMEO | Father, what news? what is the prince’s doom? | |
| What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand, | ||
| That I yet know not? | ||
| FRIAR LAURENCE | Too familiar | |
| Is my dear son with such sour company: | ||
| I bring thee tidings of the prince’s doom. | ||
| ROMEO | What less than dooms-day is the prince’s doom? | |
| FRIAR LAURENCE | A gentler judgment vanish’d from his lips, | 10 |
| Not body’s death, but body’s banishment. | ||
| ROMEO | Ha, banishment! be merciful, say ‘death;’ | |
| For exile hath more terror in his look, | ||
| Much more than death: do not say ‘banishment.’ | ||
| FRIAR LAURENCE | Hence from Verona art thou banished: | |
| Be patient, for the world is broad and wide. | ||
| ROMEO | There is no world without Verona walls, | |
| But purgatory, torture, hell itself. | ||
| Hence-banished is banish’d from the world, | ||
| And world’s exile is death: then banished, | 20 | |
| Is death mis-term’d: calling death banishment, | ||
| Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden axe, | ||
| And smilest upon the stroke that murders me. | ||
| FRIAR LAURENCE | O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness! | |
| Thy fault our law calls death; but the kind prince, | ||
| Taking thy part, hath rush’d aside the law, | ||
| And turn’d that black word death to banishment: | ||
| This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not. | ||
| ROMEO | ‘Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven is here, | |
| Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog | 30 | |
| And little mouse, every unworthy thing, | ||
| Live here in heaven and may look on her; | ||
| But Romeo may not: more validity, | ||
| More honourable state, more courtship lives | ||
| In carrion-flies than Romeo: they my seize | ||
| On the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand | ||
| And steal immortal blessing from her lips, | ||
| Who even in pure and vestal modesty, | ||
| Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin; | ||
| But Romeo may not; he is banished: | 40 | |
| Flies may do this, but I from this must fly: | ||
| They are free men, but I am banished. | ||
| And say’st thou yet that exile is not death? | ||
| Hadst thou no poison mix’d, no sharp-ground knife, | ||
| No sudden mean of death, though ne’er so mean, | ||
| But ‘banished’ to kill me?–‘banished’? | ||
| O friar, the damned use that word in hell; | ||
| Howlings attend it: how hast thou the heart, | ||
| Being a divine, a ghostly confessor, | ||
| A sin-absolver, and my friend profess’d, | 50 | |
| To mangle me with that word ‘banished’? | ||
| FRIAR LAURENCE | Thou fond mad man, hear me but speak a word. | |
| ROMEO | O, thou wilt speak again of banishment. | |
| FRIAR LAURENCE | I’ll give thee armour to keep off that word: | |
| Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy, | ||
| To comfort thee, though thou art banished. | ||
| ROMEO | Yet ‘banished’? Hang up philosophy! | |
| Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, | ||
| Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom, | ||
| It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more. | 60 | |
| FRIAR LAURENCE | O, then I see that madmen have no ears. | |
| ROMEO | How should they, when that wise men have no eyes? | |
| FRIAR LAURENCE | Let me dispute with thee of thy estate. | |
| ROMEO | Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel: | |
| Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love, | ||
| An hour but married, Tybalt murdered, | ||
| Doting like me and like me banished, | ||
| Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair, | ||
| And fall upon the ground, as I do now, | 69 | |
| Taking the measure of an unmade grave. | ||
| [Knocking within] | ||
| FRIAR LAURENCE | Arise; one knocks; good Romeo, hide thyself. | |
| ROMEO | Not I; unless the breath of heartsick groans, | |
| Mist-like, infold me from the search of eyes. | ||
| [Knocking] | ||
| FRIAR LAURENCE | Hark, how they knock! Who’s there? Romeo, arise; | |
| Thou wilt be taken. Stay awhile! Stand up; | ||
| [Knocking] | ||
| Run to my study. By and by! God’s will, | ||
| What simpleness is this! I come, I come! | ||
| [Knocking] | ||
| Who knocks so hard? whence come you? what’s your will? | ||
| Nurse | [Within] Let me come in, and you shall know | |
| my errand; | ||
| I come from Lady Juliet. | ||
| FRIAR LAURENCE | Welcome, then. | 80 |
| [Enter Nurse] | ||
| Nurse | O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar, | |
| Where is my lady’s lord, where’s Romeo? | ||
| FRIAR LAURENCE | There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk. | |
| Nurse | O, he is even in my mistress’ case, | |
| Just in her case! O woful sympathy! | ||
| Piteous predicament! Even so lies she, | ||
| Blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering. | ||
| Stand up, stand up; stand, and you be a man: | ||
| For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand; | ||
| Why should you fall into so deep an O? | 90 | |
| ROMEO | Nurse! | |
| Nurse | Ah sir! ah sir! Well, death’s the end of all. | |
| ROMEO | Spakest thou of Juliet? how is it with her? | |
| Doth she not think me an old murderer, | ||
| Now I have stain’d the childhood of our joy | ||
| With blood removed but little from her own? | ||
| Where is she? and how doth she? and what says | ||
| My conceal’d lady to our cancell’d love? | ||
| Nurse | O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps; | |
| And now falls on her bed; and then starts up, | 100 | |
| And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries, | ||
| And then down falls again. | ||
| ROMEO | As if that name, | |
| Shot from the deadly level of a gun, | ||
| Did murder her; as that name’s cursed hand | ||
| Murder’d her kinsman. O, tell me, friar, tell me, | ||
| In what vile part of this anatomy | ||
| Doth my name lodge? tell me, that I may sack | ||
| The hateful mansion. | ||
| [Drawing his sword] | ||
| FRIAR LAURENCE | Hold thy desperate hand: | |
| Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art: | ||
| Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote | 110 | |
| The unreasonable fury of a beast: | ||
| Unseemly woman in a seeming man! | ||
| Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! | ||
| Thou hast amazed me: by my holy order, | ||
| I thought thy disposition better temper’d. | ||
| Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself? | ||
| And stay thy lady too that lives in thee, | ||
| By doing damned hate upon thyself? | ||
| Why rail’st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth? | ||
| Since birth, and heaven, and earth, all three do meet | 120 | |
| In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose. | ||
| Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit; | ||
| Which, like a usurer, abound’st in all, | ||
| And usest none in that true use indeed | ||
| Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit: | ||
| Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, | ||
| Digressing from the valour of a man; | ||
| Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury, | ||
| Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish; | ||
| Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, | 130 | |
| Misshapen in the conduct of them both, | ||
| Like powder in a skitless soldier’s flask, | ||
| Is set afire by thine own ignorance, | ||
| And thou dismember’d with thine own defence. | ||
| What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive, | ||
| For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead; | ||
| There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee, | ||
| But thou slew’st Tybalt; there are thou happy too: | ||
| The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend | ||
| And turns it to exile; there art thou happy: | 140 | |
| A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back; | ||
| Happiness courts thee in her best array; | ||
| But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench, | ||
| Thou pout’st upon thy fortune and thy love: | ||
| Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable. | ||
| Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed, | ||
| Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her: | ||
| But look thou stay not till the watch be set, | ||
| For then thou canst not pass to Mantua; | ||
| Where thou shalt live, till we can find a time | 150 | |
| To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, | ||
| Beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back | ||
| With twenty hundred thousand times more joy | ||
| Than thou went’st forth in lamentation. | ||
| Go before, nurse: commend me to thy lady; | ||
| And bid her hasten all the house to bed, | ||
| Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto: | ||
| Romeo is coming. | ||
| Nurse | O Lord, I could have stay’d here all the night | |
| To hear good counsel: O, what learning is! | 160 | |
| My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come. | ||
| ROMEO | Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide. | |
| Nurse | Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir: | |
| Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late. | ||
| [Exit] | ||
| ROMEO | How well my comfort is revived by this! | |
| FRIAR LAURENCE | Go hence; good night; and here stands all your state: | |
| Either be gone before the watch be set, | ||
| Or by the break of day disguised from hence: | ||
| Sojourn in Mantua; I’ll find out your man, | ||
| And he shall signify from time to time | 170 | |
| Every good hap to you that chances here: | ||
| Give me thy hand; ’tis late: farewell; good night. | ||
| ROMEO | But that a joy past joy calls out on me, | |
| It were a grief, so brief to part with thee: Farewell. | ||
| [Exeunt] | ||
Next: Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 4