Romeo and Juliet

Ay, those attires are best. But, gentle Nurse,

I pray thee, leave me to myself tonight,

For I have need of many orisons

To move the heavens to smile upon my state,

Which, well thou know’st, is cross and full of sin.

What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help?

No, madam. We have culled such necessaries

As are behooveful for our state tomorrow.

So please you, let me now be left alone,

And let the Nurse this night sit up with you.

For, I am sure, you have your hands full all

In this so sudden business.

Good night.

Get thee to bed and rest, for thou hast need.

Farewell!—God knows when we shall meet again.

I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins

That almost freezes up the heat of life.

I’ll call them back again to comfort me.—

Nurse!—What should she do here?

My dismal scene I needs must act alone.

Come, vial. (holds out the vial)

What if this mixture do not work at all?

Shall I be married then tomorrow morning?

No, no. This shall forbid it. Lie thou there.

(lays her knife down)

What if it be a poison, which the friar

Subtly hath ministered to have me dead,

Lest in this marriage he should be dishonored

Because he married me before to Romeo?

I fear it is. And yet, methinks, it should not,

For he hath still been tried a holy man.

How if, when I am laid into the tomb,

I wake before the time that Romeo

Come to redeem me? There’s a fearful point.

Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?

Or, if I live, is it not very like

The horrible conceit of death and night,

Together with the terror of the place—

As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,

Where for these many hundred years the bones

Of all my buried ancestors are packed;

Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,

Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,

At some hours in the night spirits resort—?

Alack, alack, is it not like that I,

So early waking, what with loathsome smells,

And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,

That living mortals, hearing them, run mad—?

Oh, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,

Environèd with all these hideous fears,

And madly play with my forefather’s joints,

And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud,

And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone,

As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?

Oh, look! Methinks I see my cousin’s ghost

Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body

Upon a rapier’s point. Stay, Tybalt, stay!

Romeo, Romeo, Romeo! Here’s drink. I drink to thee.