A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark!
Here’s to my love!
Drinks
O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
Dies
Enter, at the other end of the churchyard, FRIAR LAURENCE, with a lantern, crow, and spade
FRIAR LAURENCE Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night
Have my old feet stumbled at graves! Who’s there?
BALTHASAR Here’s one, a friend, and one that knows you well.
FRIAR LAURENCE Bliss be upon you! Tell me, good my friend,
What torch is yond, that vainly lends his light
To grubs and eyeless skulls? as I discern,
It burneth in the Capel’s monument.
BALTHASAR It doth so, holy sir; and there’s my master,
One that you love.
FRIAR LAURENCE Who is it?
BALTHASAR Romeo.
FRIAR LAURENCE How long hath he been there?
BALTHASAR Full half an hour.
FRIAR LAURENCE Go with me to the vault.
BALTHASAR I dare not, sir
My master knows not but I am gone hence;
And fearfully did menace me with death,
If I did stay to look on his intents.
FRIAR LAURENCE Stay, then; I’ll go alone. Fear comes upon me:
O, much I fear some ill unlucky thing.
BALTHASAR As I did sleep under this yew-tree here,
I dreamt my master and another fought,
And that my master slew him.
FRIAR LAURENCE Romeo!
Advances
Alack, alack, what blood is this, which stains
The stony entrance of this sepulchre?
What mean these masterless and gory swords
To lie discolour’d by this place of peace?
Enters the tomb
Romeo! O, pale! Who else? what, Paris too?
And steep’d in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour
Is guilty of this lamentable chance!
The lady stirs.
JULIET wakes
JULIET O comfortable friar! where is my lord?
I do remember well where I should be,
And there I am. Where is my Romeo?
Noise within
FRIAR LAURENCE I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest
Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep:
A greater power than we can contradict
Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away.
Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead;
And Paris too. Come, I’ll dispose of thee
Among a sisterhood of holy nuns:
Stay not to question, for the watch is coming;
Come, go, good Juliet,
Noise again
I dare no longer stay.
JULIET Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.
Exit FRIAR LAURENCE
What’s here? a cup, closed in my true love’s hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:
O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips;
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make die with a restorative.
Kisses him
Thy lips are warm.
First Watchman [Within]
Lead, boy: which way?
JULIET Yea, noise? then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger!
Snatching ROMEO’s dagger
This is thy sheath;
Stabs herself
there rust, and let me die.
Falls on ROMEO’s body, and dies
Enter Watch, with the Page of PARIS
PAGE This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn.
First Watchman The ground is bloody; search about the churchyard:
Go, some of you, whoe’er you find attach.
Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain,
And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,
Who here hath lain these two days buried.
Go, tell the prince: run to the Capulets:
Raise up the Montagues: some others search:
We see the ground whereon these woes do lie;
But the true ground of all these piteous woes
We cannot without circumstance descry.
Re-enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR
Second Watchman Here’s Romeo’s man; we found him in the churchyard.
First Watchman Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither.
Re-enter others of the Watch, 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 side.
First Watchman A great suspicion: stay the friar too.
Enter the PRINCE and Attendants
PRINCE What misadventure is so early up,
That calls our person from our morning’s rest?
Enter CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, and others
CAPULET What should it be, that they so shriek abroad?
LADY CAPULET 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?
First Watchman Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain;
And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,
Warm and new kill’d.
PRINCE Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.
First Watchman Here is a friar, and slaughter’d 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-sheathed in my daughter’s bosom!
LADY CAPULET O me! this sight of death is as a bell,
That warns my old age to a sepulchre.
Enter MONTAGUE and others
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 to-night;
Grief of my son’s exile hath stopp’d her breath:
What further woe conspires against mine age?
PRINCE Look, and thou shalt see.
MONTAGUE 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,
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.
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 dooms-day, whose untimely death
Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from the city,
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You, to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth’d 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 tutor’d 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 borrow’d grave,
Being the time the potion’s force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay’d by accident, and yesternight
Return’d my letter back. Then all alone
At the prefixed 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 awaking, 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:
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,
Unto the rigour of severest law.
PRINCE We still have known thee for a holy man.
Where’s Romeo’s man? what can he say in this?
BALTHASAR I brought my master news of Juliet’s death;
And then in post he came from Mantua
To this same place, to this same monument.
This letter he early bid me give his father,
And threatened me with death, going in the vault,
I departed not and left him there.
PRINCE Give me the letter; I will look on it.
Where is the county’s page, that raised the watch?
Sirrah, what made your master in this place?
PAGE He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave;
And bid me stand aloof, and so I did:
Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb;
And by and by my master drew on him;
And then I ran away to call the watch.
PRINCE This letter doth make good the friar’s words,