Ben. Have you importun'd him by any means? Mon. Both by myself, and many other friends:

But he, his own affections' counsellor,
Is to himself-I will not say, how true-
But to himself so secret and so close,
So far from sounding and discovery,
As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun. [grow,
Could we but learn from whence his sorrows
We would as willingly give cure, as know.

Enter ROMEO, at a distance.

Ben. See, where he comes: So please you, step aside;

I'll know his grievance, or be much denied. Mon. I would, thou wert so happy by thy

stay,

To hear true shrift,-Come, madam, let's away. [Exeunt MONTAGUE, and LADY.

Ben. Good morrow, cousin. Rom. Is the day so young? Ben. But new struck nine. Rom. Ah me! sad hours seem long. Was that my father that went hence so fast? Ben. It was:-What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?

Rom. Not having that, which having, makes

them short.

Ben. In love?
Rom. Out-
Ben. Of love?

Rom. Out of her favour, where I am in love. Ben. Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof! Rom. Alas, that love, whose view is muilled still,

Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will! Where shall we dine?-O me!-What fray

was here ?

Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here's much to do with hate, but more with

love:

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick
health!

Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!-
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?

Ben. No, coz, I rather weep.

Rom. Good heart, at what?

Ben. At thy good heart's oppression.

Rom. Why, such is love's transgression.Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast; Which thou wilt propagate, to have it press'd With more of thine: this love, that thou hast shown,

Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.
Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs;
Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in a lover's eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
Farewell, my coz.

[Going.

Ben. Soft, I will go along; And if you leave me so, you do me wrong. Rom. Tut, I have lost myself; I am not

here;

This is not Romeo, he's some other where. Ben. Tell me in sadness, who she is you love.

In seriousness

Rom. What, shall I groan, and tell thee? Ben. Groan? why, no; But sadly tell me, who.

Rom. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will:

Ah, word ill urg'd to one that is so ill!-
In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.
Ben. I aim'd so near, when I suppos'd you
lov'd.

Rom. A right good marksman!-And she's fair I love.

Ben. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.

harm'd.

Rom. Well, in that Kit, you miss: she'll not With Cupid's arrow, she hath Dian's wit; be hit And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd, From love's weak childish bow she lives unNor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes, She will not stay the siege of loving terms, Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold: O, she is rich in beauty; only poor, [store. That, when she dies, with beauty dies her Ben. Then she hath sworn, that she will still live chaste?

Rom. She hath, and in that sparing makes
huge waste;

For beauty, starv'd with her severity,
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
She is too fair, too wise; wisely too fair,
To merit bliss by making me despair:
She hath forsworn to love; and, in that vow,
Do I live dead, that live to tell it now.

Ben. Be rul'd by me, forget to think of her. Rom. O, teach me how I should forget to think.

Ben. By giving liberty unto thine eyes;
Examine other beauties.

To call hers, exquisite, in question more:
Rom. "Tis the way
These happy masks, that kiss fair ladies'
Being black, put us in mind they hide the fair;
brows,
He, that is strucken blind, cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight fost:
Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
What doth her beauty serve, but as a note
Where I may read, who pass'd that passing
fair?

Farewell; thou canst not teach me to forget.
Ben. I'll pay that doctrine, or else die in
debt.
[Exeunt.

La. Cap. A fortnight, and odd days. Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year, Come Lammas-eve at night, shall she be four

teen.

Susan and she,-God rest all Christian souls!-
Were of an age.-Well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me: But, as I said,
On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
"Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
And she was wean'd,-I never shall forget
it,-

Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall,
My lord and you were then at Mantua :-
Nay, I do bear a brain :*-but, as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool!
To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug.
Shake, quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need,
I trow,

To bid me trudge.

And since that time it is eleven years:
For then she could stand alone; nay, by the
rood,t

She could have run and waddled all about.
For even the day before, she broke her brow:
And then my husband-God be with his soul!
'A was a merry man;-took up the child:
Yea, quoth he, dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward, when thou hast more wit;
Will thou not, Jule? and by my holy-dam,
The pretty wretch left crying, and said—Ây:
To see now, how a jest shall come about!
I warrant, an I should live a thousand years,
I never should forget it; Wilt thou not, Jule?
quoth he:

And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said-Ay.
La. Cap. Enough of this; I pray thee, hold
thy peace.

Nurse. Yes, madam; Yet I cannot choose but laugh,

To think it should leave crying, and say-Ay:
And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow
A bump as big as a young cockrel's stone;
A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly.
Yea, quoth my husband, fall'st upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward, when thou com'st to age;
Wilt thou not, Jule? it stinted, and said-ly.
Jul. And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse,
say 1.

Nurse. Peace, I have done. God mark thee

to his grace!

Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nurs'd:
An I might live to see thee married once,
I have my wish.

La. Cap. Marry, that marry is the very

theme

Nurse. A man, young lady! lady, such a man,

As all the world-Why, he's a man of wax. La. Cap. Verona's summer hath not such a flower.

Nurse. Nay, he's a flower; in faith, a very flower.

La. Cap. What say you? can you love the gentleman?

This night you shall behold him at our feast:
Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every married lineament,

And see how one another lends content;
And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies,
Find written in the margin of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover:
The fish lives in the sea; and 'tis much pride,
For fair without the fair within to hide :
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him, making yourself no less.

Nurse. No less? nay, bigger; women grow by men.

La. Cap. Speak briefly, can you like of Paris' love?

Jul. I'll look to like, if looking liking move: But no more deep will I endart mine eye, Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.

Enter a SERVANT.

Serv. Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity. I must hence to wait; I beseech you, follow straight.

La. Cap. We follow thee.-Juliet, the county stays.

Nurse. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV-A Street.

Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with fire or six Maskers, Torch-bearers, and others. Rom. What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse? Or shall we on without apology?

Ben. The date is out of such prolixity: We'll have no Cupid hood-wink'd with a scarf, Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath, Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper ;|| After the prompter, for our entrance: We'll measure them a measure, and be gone. But, let them measure us by what they will, Rom. Give me a torch,**-1 am not for this

ambling;

Being but heavy, I will bear the light. Mer. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.

Rom. Not I, believe me: you have dancing shoes,

With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead, So stakes me to the ground, I cannot move.

* Well made, as if he had been modelled in wax.

+ The comments on ancient books were always printed in the margin.

† 1. e. Is not yet caught, whose skin was wanted to band him.

1. c. Long speeches are out of fashion.

A scare-crow, a figure made up to frighten crows.
A dance.

** A torch-bearer was a constant appendage to every troop of maskers

wings,

And soar with them above a common bound. Rom. I am too sore enpierced with his shaft, To soar with his light feathers; and so bound, I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe: Under love's heavy burden do I sink.

Mer. And, to sink in it, should you burden
love;

Too great oppression for a tender thing.
Rom. Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,
Too rude, too boist'rous; and it pricks like
thorn.

Mer. If love be rough with you, be rough with love; [down. Prick love for pricking, and you beat love Give me a case to put my visage in: [Putting on a Mask. A visor for a visor!-what care I, What curious eye doth quote deformities? Here are the beetle-brows, shall blush for me. Ben. Come, knock, and enter; and no sooner But every man betake him to his legs. [in, Rom. A torch for me: let wantons, light of heart,

Tickle the senseless rushest with their heels;
For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase,-
I'll be a candle-holder, and look on,-
The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done.‡
Mer. Tut! dun's the mouse, the constable's
own word:

If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire Of this (save reverence) love, wherein thou stick'st

Up to the ears.-Come, we burn day-light, ho. Rom. Nay, that's not so.

Mer. I mean, Sir, in delay

We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. Take our good meaning; for our judgement sits Five times in that, ere once in our five wits. Rom. And we mean well, in going to this But 'tis no wit to go.

Mer. Why, may one ask?

Rom. I dreamt a dream to-night.
Mer. And so did I.

Rom. Well, what was yours?
Mer. That dreamers often lie.

[mask;

Rom. In bed, asleep, while they do dream things true.

Mer. O, then, I see, queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners'
legs;

The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams:
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash of film:
Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid :
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream
of love:
[straight:
On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies

* Observe.

It was anciently the custom to strew rooms with rushes. This is equivalent to phrases in common use-I am done for, it is over with me.

Atoms.

fees:

Q'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream; Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted

are.

Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit:*
And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's
tail,
Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear; at which he starts, and
wakes;
[two,
And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab,
That plats the manes of horses in the night;
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluggish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune
bodes.

This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them, and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage.
This, this is she-

Rom. Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace;
Thou talk'st of nothing.

Mer. True, I talk of dreams; Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy; Which is as thin of substance as the air; And more inconstant than the wind, who

SCENE V.-A Hall in CAPULET'S House. Musicians waiting. Enter SERVANTS.

1 Serv. Where's Potpan, that he helps not to take away? he shift a trencher! he scrape a trencher!

2 Serv. When good manners shall lie all in one or two men's hands, and they unwashed too, 'tis a foul thing.

1 Serv. Away with the joint-stools, remove the court-cupboard, look to the plate:-good thou, save me a piece of marchpane ; and, as thou lovest me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone, and Nell.-Antony! and Potpan! 2 Serv. Ay, boy; ready.

1 Serv. You are looked for, and called for, asked for, and sought for, in the great chamber. 2 Serv. We cannot be here and there too.Cheerly, boys; be brisk a while, and the longer liver take all.' [They retire behind.