Internet Shakespeare Editions

Author: William Shakespeare
Editor: Roger Apfelbaum
Peer Reviewed

Romeo and Juliet (Quarto 2, 1599)

of Romeo and Iuliet.
Iu. Farewell, God knowes when we shall meete againe,
I haue a faint cold feare thrills through my veines,
That almost freezes vp the heate of life:
Ile call them backe againe to comfort me.
Nurse, what should she do here?
2500My dismall sceane I needs must act alone.
Come Violl, what if this mixture do not worke at all?
Shall I be married then to morrow morning?
No, no, this shall forbid it, lie thou there,
What if it be a poyson which the Frier
2505Subtilly hath ministred to haue me dead,
Least in this marriage he should be dishonourd,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I feare it is, and yet me thinks it should not,
For he hath still bene tried a holy man.
2510How if when I am laid into the Tombe,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeeme me, theres a fearfull poynt:
Shall I not then be stiffled in the Vault?
To whose foule mouth no healthsome ayre breaths in,
2515And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes.
Or if I liue, is it not very like,
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Togither with the terror of the place,
As in a Vaulte, an auncient receptacle,
2520Where for this many hundred yeares the bones
Of all my buried auncestors are packt,
Where bloudie Tybalt yet but greene in earth,
Lies festring in his shroude, where as they say,
At some houres in the night, spirits resort:
2525Alack, alack, is it not like that I
So early waking, what with loathsome smels,
And shrikes like mandrakes torne out of the earth,
That liuing mortalls hearing them run mad:
O if I walke, shall I not be distraught,
2530Inuironed with all these hidious feares,
And madly play with my forefathers ioynts?
K And