We would as willingly give cure as know.
Enter ROMEO
BENVOLIO See, where he comes: so please you, step aside;
I’ll know his grievance, or be much denied.
MONTAGUE I would thou wert so happy by thy stay,
To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let’s away.
Exeunt MONTAGUE and LADY MONTAGUE
BENVOLIO Good-morrow, cousin.
ROMEO Is the day so young?
BENVOLIO But new struck nine.
ROMEO Ay me! sad hours seem long.
Was that my father that went hence so fast?
BENVOLIO It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo’s hours?
ROMEO Not having that, which, having, makes them short.
BENVOLIO In love?
ROMEO Out–
BENVOLIO Of love?
ROMEO Out of her favour, where I am in love.
BENVOLIO Alas, that love, so gentle in his view,
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!
ROMEO Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,
Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?
BENVOLIO No, coz, I rather weep.
ROMEO Good heart, at what?
BENVOLIO At thy good heart’s oppression.
ROMEO Why, such is love’s transgression.
Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,
Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest
With more of thine: this love that thou hast shown
Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.
Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;
Being vex’d a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
Farewell, my coz.
BENVOLIO Soft! I will go along;
An if you leave me so, you do me wrong.
ROMEO Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here;
This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.
BENVOLIO Tell me in sadness, who is that you love.
ROMEO What, shall I groan and tell thee?
BENVOLIO Groan! why, no.
But sadly tell me who.
ROMEO Bid a sick man in sadness make his will:
Ah, word ill urged to one that is so ill!
In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.
BENVOLIO I aim’d so near, when I supposed you loved.
ROMEO A right good mark-man! And she’s fair I love.
BENVOLIO A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
ROMEO Well, in that hit you miss: she’ll not be hit
With Cupid’s arrow; she hath Dian’s wit;
And, in strong proof of chastity well arm’d,
From love’s weak childish bow she lives unharm’d.
She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold:
O, she is rich in beauty, only poor,
That when she dies with beauty dies her store.
BENVOLIO Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?
ROMEO She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste,
For beauty starved with her severity
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.
She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,
To merit bliss by making me despair:
She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
Do I live dead that live to tell it now.
BENVOLIO Be ruled by me, forget to think of her.
ROMEO O, teach me how I should forget to think.
BENVOLIO By giving liberty unto thine eyes;
Examine other beauties.
ROMEO ’Tis the way
To call hers exquisite, in question more:
These happy masks that kiss fair ladies’ brows
Being black put us in mind they hide the fair;
He that is strucken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost:
Show me a mistress that is passing fair,
What doth her beauty serve, but as a note
Where I may read who pass’d that passing fair?
Farewell: thou canst not teach me to forget.
BENVOLIO I’ll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.
Exeunt
Scene 2
A street.
Enter CAPULET, PARIS, and Servant
CAPULET But Montague is bound as well as I,
In penalty alike; and ’tis not hard, I think,
For men so old as we to keep the peace.
PARIS Of honourable reckoning are you both;
And pity ’tis you lived at odds so long.
But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?
CAPULET But saying o’er what I have said before:
My child is yet a stranger in the world;
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years,
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
PARIS Younger than she are happy mothers made.
CAPULET And too soon marr’d are those so early made.
The earth hath swallow’d all my hopes but she,
She is the hopeful lady of my earth:
But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart,
My will to her consent is but a part;
An she agree, within her scope of choice
Lies my consent and fair according voice.
This night I hold an old accustom’d feast,
Whereto I have invited many a guest,
Such as I love; and you, among the store,
One more, most welcome, makes my number more.
At my poor house look to behold this night
Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light:
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel
When well-apparell’d April on the heel
Of limping winter treads, even such delight
Among fresh female buds shall you this night
Inherit at my house; hear all, all see,
And like her most whose merit most shall be:
Which on more view, of many mine being one
May stand in number, though in reckoning none,
Come, go with me.
To Servant, giving a paper
Go, sirrah, trudge about
Through fair Verona; find those persons out
Whose names are written there, and to them say,
My house and welcome on their pleasure stay.
Exeunt CAPULET and PARIS
Servant Find them out whose names are written here! It is
written, that the shoemaker should meddle with his
yard, and the tailor with his last, the fisher with
his pencil, and the painter with his nets; but I am
sent to find those persons whose names are here
writ, and can never find what names the writing
person hath here writ. I must to the learned.–In good time.
Enter BENVOLIO and ROMEO
BENVOLIO Tut, man, one fire burns out another’s burning,
One pain is lessen’d by another’s anguish;
Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;
One desperate grief cures with another’s languish:
Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.
ROMEO Your plaintain-leaf is excellent for that.
BENVOLIO For what, I pray thee?
ROMEO For your broken shin.
BENVOLIO Why, Romeo, art thou mad?
ROMEO Not mad, but bound more than a mad-man is;
Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
Whipp’d and tormented and–God-den, good fellow.
Servant God gi’ god-den. I pray, sir, can you read?
ROMEO Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.
Servant Perhaps you have learned it without book: but, I
pray, can you read any thing you see?
ROMEO Ay, if I know the letters and the language.
Servant Ye say honestly: rest you merry!
ROMEO Stay, fellow; I can read.
Reads
’Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;
County Anselme and his beauteous sisters; the lady
widow of Vitravio; Signior Placentio and his lovely
nieces; Mercutio and his brother Valentine; mine
uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters; my fair niece
Rosaline; Livia; Signior Valentio and his cousin
Tybalt, Lucio and the lively Helena.’ A fair
assembly: whither should they come?
Servant Up.
ROMEO Whither?
Servant To supper; to our house.
ROMEO Whose house?
Servant My master’s.
ROMEO Indeed, I should have ask’d you that before.
Servant Now I’ll 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 Capulet’s
Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lovest,
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 fires;
And these, who often drown’d could never die,
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!
One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun
Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.
BENVOLIO Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by,