Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,

Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom,

It helps not, it prevails not. Talk no more.

FRIAR LAURENCE

O, then I see that madmen have no ears.

ROMEO

How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?

FRIAR LAURENCE

Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.

ROMEO

Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.

Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,

An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,

Doting like me, and like me banished,

Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy

hair,

And fall upon the ground, as I do now,

He falls upon the ground

Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

Knock within

FRIAR LAURENCE

Arise, one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.

ROMEO

Not I, unless the breath of heartsick groans

Mist-like enfold me from the search of eyes.

Knocking within

FRIAR LAURENCE

Hark, how they knock!—Who’s there?—Romeo, arise.

Thou wilt be taken.—Stay a white.—Stand up.

Still knock within

Run to my study.—By and by!—God’s will,

What simpleness is this?

Knock within

I come, I come.

Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? What’s your

will?

NURSE (within)

Let me come in, and you shall know my errand.

I come from Lady Juliet.

FRIAR LAURENCE ⌈opening the door⌉ Welcome then.

Enter the Nurse

NURSE

O holy friar, O tell me, holy friar,

Where is my lady’s lord? Where’s Romeo?

FRIAR LAURENCE

There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.

NURSE

O, he is even in my mistress’ case,

Just in her case! O woeful sympathy,

Piteous predicament! Even so lies she,

Blubb’ring and weeping, weeping and blubb’ring.

(To Romeo) Stand up, stand up, stand an you be a man,

For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand.

Why should you fall into so deep an O?

ROMEO (rising)

Nurse.

NURSE Ah sir, ah sir, death’s the end of all.

ROMEO

Spak’st thou of Juliet? How is it with her?

Doth not she think me an old murderer,

Now I have stained the childhood of our joy

With blood removed but little from her own?

Where is she, and how doth she, and what says

My concealed lady to our cancelled love?

NURSE

O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps,

And now falls on her bed, and then starts up,

And ’Tybalt’ calls, and then on Romeo cries,

And then down falls again.

ROMEO As if that name

Shot from the deadly level of a gun

Did murder her as that name’s cursed hand

Murdered her kinsman. O tell me, friar, tell me,

In what vile part of this anatomy

Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack

The hateful mansion.

⌈He offers to stab himself, and the Nurse snatches the dagger away⌉

FRIAR LAURENCE Hold thy desperate hand.

Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art.

Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote

The unreasonable fury of a beast.

Unseemly woman in a seeming man,

And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!

Thou hast amazed me. By my holy order,

I thought thy disposition better tempered.

Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself,

And slay thy lady that in thy life lives

By doing damned hate upon thyself?

Why rail‘st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth,

Since birth and heaven and earth, all three, do meet

In thee at once, which thou at once wouldst lose?

Fie, fie, thou sham’st thy shape, thy love, thy wit,

Which like a usurer abound‘st in all,

And usest none in that true use indeed

Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.

Thy noble shape is but a form of wax,

Digressing from the valour of a man;

Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,

Killing that love which thou hast vowed to cherish;

Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,

Misshapen in the conduct of them both,

Like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask

Is set afire by thine own ignorance,

And thou dismembered with thine own defence.

What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive,

For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead:

There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,

But thou slewest Tybalt: there art thou happy.

The law that threatened death becomes thy friend,

And turns it to exile: there art thou happy.

A pack of blessings light upon thy back,

Happiness courts thee in her best array,

But, like a mishavèd and sullen wench,

Thou pout’st upon thy fortune and thy love.

Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.

Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed.

Ascend her chamber; hence and comfort her.

But look thou stay not till the watch be set,

For then thou canst not pass to Mantua,

Where thou shalt live till we can find a time

To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,

Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back