The Best of Shakespeare:. William Shakespeare
mattock and this spade from him
As he was coming from this churchyard side.
1 Watch. A great suspicion: stay the friar too.
[Enter the Prince and Attendants.]
Prince.
What misadventure is so early up,
That calls our person from our morning’s rest?
[Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, and others.]
Capulet.
What should it be, that they so shriek abroad?
Lady Capulet.
The people in the street cry Romeo,
Some Juliet, and some Paris; and all run,
With open outcry, toward our monument.
Prince.
What fear is this which startles in our ears?
1 Watch.
Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain;
And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,
Warm and new kill’d.
Prince.
Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.
1 Watch.
Here is a friar, and slaughter’d Romeo’s man,
With instruments upon them fit to open
These dead men’s tombs.
Capulet.
O heaven!—O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!
This dagger hath mista’en,—for, lo, his house
Is empty on the back of Montague,—
And it mis-sheathed in my daughter’s bosom!
Lady Capulet.
O me! this sight of death is as a bell
That warns my old age to a sepulchre.
[Enter Montague and others.]
Prince.
Come, Montague; for thou art early up,
To see thy son and heir more early down.
Montague.
Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight;
Grief of my son’s exile hath stopp’d her breath:
What further woe conspires against mine age?
Prince.
Look, and thou shalt see.
Montague.
O thou untaught! what manners is in this,
To press before thy father to a grave?
Prince.
Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,
Till we can clear these ambiguities,
And know their spring, their head, their true descent;
And then will I be general of your woes,
And lead you even to death: meantime forbear,
And let mischance be slave to patience.—
Bring forth the parties of suspicion.
Friar.
I am the greatest, able to do least,
Yet most suspected, as the time and place
Doth make against me, of this direful murder;
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge
Myself condemned and myself excus’d.
Prince.
Then say at once what thou dost know in this.
Friar.
I will be brief, for my short date of breath
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;
And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife:
I married them; and their stol’n marriage day
Was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death
Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from this city;
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin’d.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth’d, and would have married her perforce,
To County Paris:—then comes she to me,
And with wild looks, bid me devise some means
To rid her from this second marriage,
Or in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutored by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow’d grave,
Being the time the potion’s force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay’d by accident; and yesternight
Return’d my letter back. Then all alone
At the prefixed hour of her waking
Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault;
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo:
But when I came,—some minute ere the time
Of her awaking,—here untimely lay
The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth
And bear this work of heaven with patience:
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;
And she, too desperate, would not go with me,
But, as it seems, did violence on herself.
All this I know; and to the marriage
Her nurse is privy: and if ought in this
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life
Be sacrific’d, some hour before his time,
Unto the rigour of severest law.
Prince.
We still have known thee for a holy man.—
Where’s Romeo’s man? what can he say in this?
Balthasar.
I brought my master news of Juliet’s death;
And then in post he came from Mantua
To this same place, to this same monument.
This letter he early bid me give his father;
And threaten’d me with death, going in the vault,
If I departed not, and left him there.
Prince.
Give me the letter,—I will look on it.—
Where is the county’s page that rais’d the watch?—
Sirrah, what made your master in this place?
Boy.
He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave;
And bid me stand aloof, and so I did:
Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb;
And by-and-by my master drew on him;
And then I