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Shakespeare on Stage
American Shakespeare Center, Return to the Forbidden Planet. To Dec. 1, 2013.
American Shakespeare Center, Twelfth Night. To Jun. 16, 2013.
American Shakespeare Center, The Duchess of Malfi. To Jun. 15, 2013.
American Shakespeare Center, Love's Labour's Lost. To Jun. 15, 2013.
Folger Shakespeare Library, Twelfth Night. To Jun. 9, 2013.
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Romeo and Juliet (Quarto 2, 1599)

Author: William Shakespeare
Editor: Roger Apfelbaum
Peer Reviewed
of Romeo and Iuliet.
She would be as swift in motion as a ball,
My words would bandie her to my sweete loue.
1325M. And his to me, but old folks, many fain as they wer dead,
Vnwieldie, slowe, heauie, and pale as lead.
Enter Nurse.
O God she comes, ô hony Nurse what newes?
1330Hast thou met with him? send thy man away.
Nur. Peter stay at the gate.
Iu. Now good sweete Nurse, O Lord, why lookest thou sad?
Though newes be sad, yet tell them merily.
1335If good, thou shamest the musicke of sweete newes,
By playing it to me, with so sower a face.
Nur. I am a wearie, giue me leaue a while,
Fie how my bones ake, what a iaunce haue I?
Iu. I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy newes:
1340Nay come I pray thee speake, good good Nurse speake.
Nur. Iesu what haste, can you not stay a while?
Do you not see that I am out of breath?
Iu. How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath
To say to me, that thou art out of breath?
1345The excuse that thou doest make in this delay,
Is longer then the tale thou doest excuse.
Is thy newes good or bad? answere to that,
Say either, and ile stay the circumstance:
Let me be satisfied, ist good or bad?
1350 Nur. Well, you haue made a simple choyse, you know not
how to chuse a man: Romeo, no not he though his face be bet-
ter then any mans, yet his leg excels all mens, and for a hand
and a foote and a body, though they be not to be talkt on, yet
they are past compare: he is not the flower of curtesie, but ile
1355warrant him, as gentle as a lamme: go thy wayes wench, serue
God. What haue you dinde at home?
Iu. No, no. But all this did I know before.
What sayes he of our marriage, what of that?
Nur. Lord how my head akes, what a head haue I?
1360It beates as it would fall in twentie peeces.
F
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