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  • Title: Romeo and Juliet (Quarto 2, 1599)
  • Editor: Roger Apfelbaum

    • ISBN: 1-55058-299-2

    Copyright Internet Shakespeare Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-proift purposes; for all other uses contact the Coordinating Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Roger Apfelbaum
    Peer Reviewed

    Romeo and Juliet (Quarto 2, 1599)

    Enter Iuliet and Nurse.
    Iu. I those attires are best, but gentle Nurse
    2480I pray thee leaue me to my selfe to night:
    For I haue need of many orysons,
    To moue the heauens to smile vpon my state,
    Which well thou knowest, is crosse and full of sin.
    Enter Mother.
    2485Mo. What are you busie ho? need you my helpe?
    Iu. No Madam, we haue culd such necessaries
    As are behoofefull for our state to morrow:
    So please you, let me now be left alone,
    And let the Nurse this night sit vp with you,
    2490For I am sure you haue your hands full all,
    In this so sudden businesse.
    Mo. Good night.
    Get thee to bed and rest, for thou hast need.
    Exeunt.
    Iu. Farewell ,
    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
    The most lamentable Tragedie
    And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shrowde,
    And in this rage with some great kinsmans bone,
    As with a club dash out my desprate braines.
    2535O looke, me thinks I see my Cozins Ghost,
    Seeking out Romeo that did spit his body
    Vpon a Rapiers poynt: stay Tybalt, stay?
    Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, heeres drinke, I drinke to thee.
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