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This is the place, there where the torch doth burn. 170

CHIEF WATCHMAN

The ground is bloody. Search about the churchyard.

Go, some of you. Whoe’er you find, attach.

Exeunt some Watchmen

Pitiful sight! Here lies the County slain,

And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,

Who here hath lain this two days buried.

Go tell the Prince. Run to the Capulets,

Raise up the Montagues. Some others search.

Exeunt other Watchmen ⌈severally⌉

We see the ground whereon these woes do lie,

But the true ground of all these piteous woes

We cannot without circumstance descry.

Enter ⌈Watchmen⌉ with Balthasar

⌈SECOND⌉ WATCHMAN

Here’s Romeo’s man. We found him in the churchyard.

CHIEF WATCHMAN

Hold him in safety till the Prince come hither.

Enter another Watchman with Friar Laurence

THIRD WATCHMAN

Here is a friar that trembles, sighs, and weeps.

We took this mattock and this spade from him

As he was coming from this churchyard’s side.

CHIEF WATCHMAN

A great suspicion. Stay the friar, too.

Enter the Prince ⌈with others⌉

PRINCE

What misadventure is so early up,

That calls our person from our morning rest?

Enter Capulet and his Wife

CAPULET

What should it be that is so shrieked abroad?

CAPULET’S WIFE

O, the people in the street cry ‘Romeo’,

Some ‘Juliet’, and some ‘Paris’, and all run

With open outcry toward our monument.

PRINCE

What fear is this which startles in our ears?

CHIEF WATCHMAN

Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain,

And Romeo dead, and Juliet, dead before,

Warm, and new killed.

PRINCE

Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.

CHIEF WATCHMAN

Here is a friar, and slaughtered Romeo’s man,

With instruments upon them fit to open

These dead men’s tombs.

CAPULET

O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!

This dagger hath mista’en, for lo, his house

Is empty on the back of Montague,

And it mis-sheathèd in my daughter’s bosom.

CAPULET’S WIFE

O me, this sight of death is as a bell 205

That warns my old age to a sepulchre.

Enter Montague

PRINCE

Come, Montague, for thou art early up

To see thy son and heir more early down.

MONTAGUE

Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight.

Grief of my son’s exile hath stopped her breath. 210

What further woe conspires against mine age?

PRINCE Look, and thou shalt see.

MONTAGUE (seeing Romeo’s body)

O thou untaught! What manners is in this,

To press before thy father to a grave?

PRINCE

Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, 215

Till we can clear these ambiguities

And know their spring, their head, their true descent;

And then will I be general of your woes,

And lead you even to death. Meantime, forbear,

And let mischance be slave to patience. 220

Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

FRIAR LAURENCE

I am the greatest, able to do least,

Yet most suspected, as the time and place

Doth make against me, of this direful murder;

And here I stand, both to impeach and purge

Myself condemned and myself excused.

PRINCE

Then say at once what thou dost know in this.

FRIAR LAURENCE

I will be brief, for my short date of breath

Is not so long as is a tedious tale.

Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet,

And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife.

I married them, and their stol’n marriage day

Was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death

Banished the new-made bridegroom from this city,

For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.

You, to remove that siege of grief from her,

Betrothed and would have married her perforce

To County Paris. Then comes she to me,

And with wild looks bid me devise some mean

To rid her from this second marriage,

Or in my cell there would she kill herself.

Then gave I her—so tutored by my art—

A sleeping potion, which so took effect

As I intended, for it wrought on her

The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo

That he should hither come as this dire night

To help to take her from her borrowed grave,

Being the time the potion’s force should cease.

But he which bore my letter, Friar John,

Was stayed by accident, and yesternight 250

Returned my letter back. Then all alone,

At the prefixèd hour of her waking,

Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault,

Meaning to keep her closely at my cell

Till I conveniently could send to Romeo.

But when I came, some minute ere the time

Of her awakening, here untimely lay

The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.

She wakes, and I entreated her come forth

And bear this work of heaven with patience. 260

But then a noise did scare me from the tomb,

And she, too desperate, would not go with me,

But, as it seems, did violence on herself.

All this I know, and to the marriage

Her nurse is privy; and if aught in this

Miscarried by my fault, let my old life

Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,