SCENE III.
Juliet's Chamber.
Enter Juliet and Nurse3 note
.
Jul.
Ay, those attires are best:—But, gentle nurse,
I pray thee, leave me to myself to-night;
For I have need of many orisons4 note
-- 194 --
To move the heavens to smile upon my state,
Which, well thou know'st, is cross and full of sin.
Enter Lady Capulet5 note
.
La. Cap.
What, are you busy? do you need my help?
Jul.
No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries
As are behoveful for our state to-morrow:
So please you, let me now be left alone,
And let the nurse this night sit up with you;
For, I am sure, you have your hands full all,
In this so sudden business.
La. Cap.
Good night!
Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.
[Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.
Jul.
Farewell6 note!—God knows, when we shall meet again* note.
-- 195 --
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life7 note
:
I'll call them back again to comfort me;—
Nurse!—What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.—
Come, phial.—
What if this mixture do not work at all8 note
?
-- 196 --
Must I of force be married to the county9 note
?—
No, no;—this shall forbid it:—lie thou there.—
[Laying down a Dagger1 note
.
-- 197 --
What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead;
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear, it is: and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man:
I will not entertain so bad a thought2 note.—
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,—
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle3 note,
-- 198 --
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth4 note
,
Lies fest'ring5 note
in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;—
Alack, alack! is it not like, that I6 note,
So early waking,—what with loathsome smells;
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad7 note
;—
-- 199 --
O! if I wake, shall I not be distraught8 note
,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefathers' joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
O, look! methinks, I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point:—Stay, Tybalt, stay!—
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee9 note
.
[She throws herself on the Bed.
-- 200 --
James Boswell [1821], The plays and poems of William Shakspeare, with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators: comprehending A Life of the Poet, and an enlarged history of the stage, by the late Edmond Malone. With a new glossarial index (J. Deighton and Sons, Cambridge) [word count] [S10201].
