So as thou liv’st in peace, die free from strife.

For though mine enemy thou hast ever been,

High sparks of honour in thee have I seen.

Enter Exton with ⌈his men bearing⌉ the coffin

EXTON

Great King, within this coffin I present

Thy buried fear. Herein all breathless lies

The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,

Richard of Bordeaux, by me hither brought.

KING HENRY

Exton, I thank thee not, for thou hast wrought

A deed of slander with thy fatal hand

Upon my head and all this famous land.

EXTON

From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed.

KING HENRY

They love not poison that do poison need;

Nor do I thee. Though I did wish him dead,

I hate the murderer, love him murdered.

The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,

But neither my good word nor princely favour.

With Cain go wander through the shades of night,

And never show thy head by day nor light.

⌈Exeunt Exton and his men⌉

Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe

That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.

Come mourn with me for what I do lament,

And put on sullen black incontinent.

I’ll make a voyage to the Holy Land

To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.

March sadly after. Grace my mournings here

In weeping after this untimely bier.

Exeunt ⌈With the coffin⌉

ADDITIONAL PASSAGES

The following passages of four lines or more appear in the 1597 Quarto but not the Folio; Shakespeare probably deleted them as part of his limited revisions to the text.

a. . AFTER 1.3.127

And for we think the eagle-winged pride

Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts

With rival-hating envy set on you

To wake our peace, which in our country’s cradle

Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep,

b. AFTER 1.3.235

O, had’t been a stranger, not my child,

To smooth his fault I should have been more mild.

A partial slander sought I to avoid,

And in the sentence my own life destroyed.

c. AFTER 1.3.256

BOLINGBROKE

Nay, rather every tedious stride I make

Will but remember what a deal of world

I wander from the jewels that I love.

Must I not serve a long apprenticehood

To foreign passages, and in the end,

Having my freedom, boast of nothing else

But that I was a journeyman to grief?

JOHN OF GAUNT

All places that the eye of heaven visits

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.

Teach thy necessity to reason thus:

There is no virtue like necessity.

Think not the King did banish thee,

But thou the King. Woe doth the heavier sit

Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.

Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour,

And not the King exiled thee; or suppose

Devouring pestilence hangs in our air

And thou art flying to a fresher clime.

Look what thy soul holds dear, imagine it

To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou com’st.

Suppose the singing birds musicians,

The grass whereon thou tread’st the presence strewed,

The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more

Than a delightful measure or a dance;

For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite

The man that mocks at it and sets it light.

d. AFTER 3.2.28

The means that heavens yield must be embraced

And not neglected; else heaven would,

And we will not: heaven’s offer we refuse,

The proffered means of succour and redress.

e. AFTER 4.1.50

ANOTHER LORD

I task the earth to the like, forsworn Aumerle, And spur thee on with full as many lies As may be hollowed in thy treacherous ear From sun to sun. There is my honour’s pawn. Engage it to the trial if thou darest.

He throws down his gage

AUMERLE

Who sets me else? By heaven, I’ll throw at all. I have a thousand spirits in one breast To answer twenty thousand such as you.

ROMEO AND JULIET

ON its first appearance in print, in 1597, Romeo and Juliet was described as ‘An excellent conceited tragedy’ that had ‘been often (with great applause) played publicly’; its popularity is witnessed by the fact that this is a pirated version, put together from actors’ memories as a way of cashing in on its success. A second printing, two years later, offered a greatly superior text apparently printed from Shakespeare’s working papers. Probably he wrote it in 1594 or 1595.

The story was already well known, in Italian, French, and English. Shakespeare owes most to Arthur Brooke’s long poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562), which had already supplied hints for The Two Gentlemen of Verona; he may also have looked at some of the other versions. In his address ‘To the Reader’, Brooke says that he has seen ‘the same argument lately set forth on stage with more commendation than I can look for’, but no earlier play survives.

Shakespeare’s Prologue neatly sketches the plot of the two star-crossed lovers born of feuding families whose deaths ‘bury their parents’ strife’; and the formal verse structure of the Prologue—a sonnet—is matched by the carefully patterned layout of the action. At the climax of the first scene, Prince Escalus stills a brawl between representatives of the houses of Montague (Romeo’s family) and Capulet (Juliet’s); at the end of Act 3, Scene 1, he passes judgement on another, more serious brawl, banishing Romeo for killing Juliet’s cousin Tybalt after Tybalt had killed Romeo’s friend and the Prince’s kinsman, Mercutio; and at the end of Act 5, the Prince presides over the reconciliation of Montagues and Capulets. Within this framework of public life Romeo and Juliet act out their brief tragedy: in the first act, they meet and declare their love—in another sonnet; in the second, they arrange to marry in secret; in the third, after Romeo’s banishment, they consummate their marriage and part; in the fourth, Juliet drinks a sleeping draught prepared by Friar Laurence so that she may escape marriage to Paris and, after waking in the family tomb, run off with Romeo; in the fifth, after Romeo, believing her to be dead, has taken poison, she stabs herself to death.