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;
-- 129 --
4 noteFor I have need of many orisons 9Q1138
To move the heavens to smile upon my state,
Which, well thou know'st, is cross and full of sin.
Enter Lady Capulet.
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, and Nurse.
Jul.
5 noteFarewel!—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, phial.—
What if this mixture do not work at all6 note?
-- 130 --
7 note
Shall I of force be married to the count?—
No, no;—this shall forbid it:—lie thou there8 note
.—
[Laying down a dagger.
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:
9 noteI will not entertain so bad a thought.—
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,
-- 131 --
Together with the terror of the place,—
1 noteAs in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth2 note
,
Lies festring3 note
in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;—
Alack, alack! 4 noteis 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 them5 note
, run mad—
-- 132 --
O! if I wake, shall I not be distraught6 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 thee.
[She throws herself on the bed.
Samuel Johnson [1778], The plays of William Shakspeare. In ten volumes. With the corrections and illustrations of various commentators; to which are added notes by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. The second edition, Revised and Augmented (Printed for C. Bathurst [and] W. Strahan [etc.], London) [word count] [S10901].
