Jul.
Ay, those attires are best; but, gentle nurse,
I pray thee, leave me to my self to night:
For I have need of many Orisons
To move the heav'ns to smile upon my State,
Which, well thou know'st, is cross, and full of Sin. Enter lady Capulet.

La. Cap.
What, are you busie, 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.

Jul.
Farewel—God knows, when we shall meet again!
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life.
I'll call them back again to comfort me.
Nurse—what should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone:
Come, vial—What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I of force be marry'd to the Count?
No, no, this shall forbid it; lye thou there— [Pointing to a dagger.
What if it be a poison, which the Friar
Subtly hath ministred, 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.—
How, if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Comes 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 be 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 antient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried Ancestors are packt;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festring in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort—)
Alas, alas! is it not like, that I
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks, like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.—
Or if I wake, shall I not be distraught,

(Invironed with all these hideous fears,)
And madly play with my fore-fathers 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 desp'rate brains?
O look! methinks, I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking our Romeo, that did spit his Body
Upon a Rapier's Point.—Stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee. [She throws herself on the bed.

Previous section

Next section