Signior Placentio and his lovely nieces;
Mercutio and his brother Valentine;
Mine uncle Capulet, his wife, and daughters;
My fair niece Rosaline and Livia;
Signior Valentio and his cousin Tybalt;
Lucio and the lively Helena.
A fair assembly. [Gives back the paper] Whither should they come?
Servant
Up.
Romeo
Whither to supper?
Servant
To our house.
Romeo
Whose house?
Servant
My masters.
Romeo
Indeed I should have askd you that before.
Servant
Now Ill tell you without asking. My master is the great rich Capulet, and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come and crush a cup of wine. Rest you merry.
[Exit.]
Benvolio
At this same ancient feast of Capulets
Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lovst;
With all the admired beauties of Verona.
Go thither and with unattainted eye,
Compare her face with some that I shall show,
And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.
Romeo
When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fire;
And these who, often drownd, could never die,
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars.
One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun
Neer saw her match since first the world begun.
Benvolio
Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by,
Herself poisd with herself in either eye:
But in that crystal scales let there be weighd
Your ladys love against some other maid
That I will show you shining at this feast,
And she shall scant show well that now shows best.
Romeo
Ill go along, no such sight to be shown,
But to rejoice in splendour of my own.
[Exeunt.]
Scene III
Room in Capulets House. Enter Lady Capulet
and Nurse.
Lady Capulet
Nurse, wheres my daughter? Call her forth to me.
Nurse
Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old,
I bade her come. What, lamb! What ladybird!
God forbid! Wheres this girl? What, Juliet!
Enter Juliet.
Juliet
How now, who calls?
Nurse
Your mother.
Juliet
Madam, I am here. What is your will?
Lady Capulet
This is the matter. Nurse, give leave awhile,
We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again,
I have rememberd me, thous hear our counsel.
Thou knowest my daughters of a pretty age.
Nurse
Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
Lady Capulet
Shes not fourteen.
Nurse
Ill lay fourteen of my teeth,
And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four,
She is not fourteen. How long is it now
To Lammas-tide?
Lady Capulet
A fortnight and odd days.
Nurse
Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she, God rest all Christian souls!-
Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me. But as I said,
On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen;
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
And she was weand, I never shall forget it-,
Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall;
My lord and you were then at Mantua:
Nay, I do bear a brain. But as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug!
Shake, quoth the dovehouse: twas no need, I trow,
To bid me trudge.
And since that time it is eleven years;
For then she could stand alone; nay, by throod
She could have run and waddled all about;
For even the day before she broke her brow,
And then my husband, God be with his soul!
A was a merry man, took up the child:
Yea, quoth he, dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;
Wilt thou not, Jule? and, by my holidame,
The pretty wretch left crying, and said Ay.
To see now how a jest shall come about.
I warrant, and I should live a thousand years,
I never should forget it. Wilt thou not, Jule? quoth he;
And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said Ay.
Lady Capulet
Enough of this; I pray thee hold thy peace.
Nurse
Yes, madam, yet I cannot choose but laugh,
To think it should leave crying, and say Ay;
And yet I warrant it had upon it brow
A bump as big as a young cockerels stone;
A perilous knock, and it cried bitterly.
Yea, quoth my husband, fallst upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;
Wilt thou not, Jule? it stinted, and said Ay.
Juliet
And stint thou too, I pray thee, Nurse, say I.
Nurse
Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace
Thou wast the prettiest babe that eer I nursd:
And I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish.
Lady Capulet
Marry, that marry is the very theme
I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,
How stands your disposition to be married?
Juliet
It is an honour that I dream not of.
Nurse
An honour! Were not I thine only Nurse,
I would say thou hadst suckd wisdom from thy teat.
Lady Capulet
Well, think of marriage now: younger than you,
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are made already mothers. By my count
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid. Thus, then, in brief;
The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.
Nurse
A man, young lady! Lady, such a man
As all the world-why hes a man of wax.
Lady Capulet
Veronas summer hath not such a flower.
Nurse
Nay, hes a flower, in faith a very flower.
Lady Capulet
What say you, can you love the gentleman?
This night you shall behold him at our feast;
Read oer the volume of young Paris face,
And find delight writ there with beautys pen.
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content;
And what obscurd in this fair volume lies,
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover:
The fish lives in the sea; and tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in manys eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him, making yourself no less.
Nurse
No less, nay bigger. Women grow by men.
Lady Capulet
Speak briefly, can you like of Paris love?
Juliet
Ill look to like, if looking liking move:
But no more deep will I endart mine eye
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
Enter a Servant.
Servant
Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the Nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in extremity. I must hence to wait, I beseech you follow straight.
Lady Capulet
We follow thee.
[Exit Servant]
Juliet, the County stays.
Nurse
Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.
[Exeunt.]
Scene IV
A Street. Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six Maskers; Torch-bearers and others.
Romeo
What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
Or shall we on without apology?
Benvolio
The date is out of such prolixity:
Well have no Cupid hoodwinkd with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartars painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
After the prompter, for our entrance:
But let them measure us by what they will,
Well measure them a measure, and be gone.
Romeo
Give me a torch, I am not for this ambling;
Being but heavy I will bear the light.
Mercutio
Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.
Romeo
Not I, believe me, you have dancing shoes,
With nimble soles, I have a soul of lead
So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
Mercutio
You are a lover, borrow Cupids wings,
And soar with them above a common bound.
Romeo
I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,
I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.
Under loves heavy burden do I sink.
Mercutio
And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
Too great oppression for a tender thing.
Romeo
Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.
Mercutio
If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
Give me a case to put my visage in: [Putting on a mask.]
A visor for a visor. What care I
What curious eye doth quote deformities?
Here are the beetle-brows shall blush for me.
Benvolio
Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in
But every man betake him to his legs.
Romeo
A torch for me: let wantons, light of heart,
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;
For I am proverbd with a grandsire phrase,
Ill be a candle-holder and look on,
The game was neer so fair, and I am done.
Mercutio
Tut, duns the mouse, the constables own word:
If thou art dun, well draw thee from the mire
Or save your reverence love, wherein thou stickest
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho.
Romeo
Nay, thats not so.
Mercutio
I mean sir, in delay
We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day.
Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits
Five times in that ere once in our five wits.
Romeo
And we mean well in going to this mask;
But tis no wit to go.
Mercutio
Why, may one ask?
Romeo
I dreamt a dream tonight.
Mercutio
And so did I.
Romeo
Well what was yours?
Mercutio
That dreamers often lie.
Romeo
In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
Mercutio
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Over mens noses as they lie asleep:
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
Her traces, of the smallest spiders web;
The collars, of the moonshines watery beams;
Her whip of crickets bone; the lash, of film;
Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prickd from the lazy finger of a maid:
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o mind the fairies coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers brains, and then they dream of love;
Oer courtiers knees, that dream on curtsies straight;
Oer lawyers fingers, who straight dream on fees;
Oer ladies lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops oer a courtiers nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pigs tail,
Tickling a parsons nose as a lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth oer a soldiers neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes;
And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night;
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them, and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she,-
Romeo
Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace,
Thou talkst of nothing.
Mercutio
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being angerd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.
Benvolio
This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves:
Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
Romeo
I fear too early: for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this nights revels; and expire the term
Of a despised life, closd in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But he that hath the steerage of my course
Direct my suit. On, lusty gentlemen!
Benvolio
Strike, drum.
[Exeunt.]
Scene V
A Hall in Capulets House. Musicians waiting. Enter Servants.
First servant
Wheres Potpan, that he helps not to take away?
He shift a trencher! He scrape a trencher!
Second servant
When good manners shall lie all in one or two mens hands, and they unwashd too, tis a foul thing.
First servant
Away with the join-stools, remove the court-cupboard, look to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane; and as thou loves me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell. Antony and Potpan!
Second servant
Ay, boy, ready.
First servant
You are looked for and called for, asked for and sought for, in the great chamber.
Second servant
We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys. Be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all.
[Exeunt.]
Enter Capulet, amp;c. with the Guests
and Gentlewomen to the Maskers.
Capulet
Welcome, gentlemen, ladies that have their toes
Unplagud with corns will have a bout with you.
Ah my mistresses, which of you all
Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty,
She Ill swear hath corns. Am I come near ye now?
Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day
That I have worn a visor, and could tell
A whispering tale in a fair ladys ear,
Such as would please; tis gone, tis gone, tis gone,
You are welcome, gentlemen! Come, musicians, play.
A hall, a hall, give room! And foot it, girls.
[Music plays, and they dance.]
More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up,
And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.
Ah sirrah, this unlookd-for sport comes well.
Nay sit, nay sit, good cousin Capulet,
For you and I are past our dancing days;
How long ist now since last yourself and I
Were in a mask?
Capulets Cousin
Byr Lady, thirty years.
Capulet
What, man, tis not so much, tis not so much:
Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,
Come Pentecost as quickly as it will,
Some five and twenty years; and then we maskd.
Capulets Cousin
Tis more, tis more, his son is elder, sir;
His son is thirty.
Capulet
Will you tell me that?
His son was but a ward two years ago.
Romeo
What lady is that, which doth enrich the hand
Of yonder knight?
Servant
I know not, sir.
Romeo
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiops ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows
As yonder lady oer her fellows shows.
The measure done, Ill watch her place of stand,
And touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I neer saw true beauty till this night.
Tybalt
This by his voice, should be a Montague
Fetch me my rapier, boy. What, dares the slave
Come hither, coverd with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?
Now by the stock and honour of my kin,
To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.
Capulet
Why how now, kinsman!
Wherefore storm you so?
Tybalt
Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe;
A villain that is hither come in spite,
To scorn at our solemnity this night.
Capulet
Young Romeo, is it?
Tybalt
Tis he, that villain Romeo.
Capulet
Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone,
A bears him like a portly gentleman;
And, to say truth, Verona brags of him
To be a virtuous and well-governd youth.
I would not for the wealth of all the town
Here in my house do him disparagement.
Therefore be patient, take no note of him,
It is my will; the which if thou respect,
Show a fair presence and put off these frowns,
An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.
Tybalt
It fits when such a villain is a guest:
Ill not endure him.
Capulet
He shall be endurd.
What, goodman boy! I say he shall, go to;
Am I the master here, or you? Go to.
Youll not endure him! God shall mend my soul,
Youll make a mutiny among my guests!
You will set cock-a-hoop, youll be the man!
Tybalt
Why, uncle, tis a shame.
Capulet
Go to, go to!
You are a saucy boy. Ist so, indeed?
This trick may chance to scathe you, I know what.
You must contrary me! Marry, tis time.
Well said, my hearts! You are a princox; go:
Be quiet, or-More light, more light! For shame!