Cap.

Tush! I will stir about,

And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife:
Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her;

I'll not to bed to-night;—let me alone;
I'll play the housewife for this once.—What, ho!
They are all forth: Well, I will walk myself
To county Paris, to prepare him up

Against to-morrow: my heart is wondrous light,
Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim'd.

SCENE III. Juliet's Chamber.

Enter JULIET and Nurse.

[Exeunt.

Jul. Ay, those attires are best:-But, gentle nurse, I pray thee, leave me to myself to-night;

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.

Enter LADY CAPULET.

La. Cap. What, are you busy? do you need my help?

Jul. No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries As are behoveful for our state to-morrow;

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.

La. Cap.

Good night!

Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need. [Exeunt LADY CAPULET and Nurse. Jul. Farewell1!—God knows, when we shall meet again.

This speech received considerable additions after the first copy was published.

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, phial.-

What if this mixture do not work at all?

Must I of force be married to the county?-
No, no;-this shall forbid it :-lie thou there.-
[Laying down a Dagger2.
What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead;
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
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:
I will not entertain so bad a thought.-
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,
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd";

the bones

2 This stage direction has been supplied by the modern ediThe quarto of 1597 reads:- Knife, lie thou there.'

tors.

་

Daggers, or, as they were more commonly called, knives (says Mr. Gifford), were worn at all times by every woman in England; whether they were so worn in Italy, Shakspeare, I believe, never inquired, and I cannot tell.'-Works of Ben Jonson, vol. v. p. 221.

3 This idea was probably suggested to the poet by his native

Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies fest'ring 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 5;-
O! if I wake, shall I not be distraught 6,
Environed with all these hideous fears?

And madly play with my forefathers' 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?
O, 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, I come! this do I drink to thee.

[She throws herself on the Bed.

SCENE IV. Capulet's Hall.

Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse.

La. Cap. Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse.

place. The charnel at Stratford-upon-Avon is a very large one, and perhaps contains a greater number of bones than are to be found in any other repository of the same kind in England.

4 To fester is to corrupt. So in King Edward III. 1599 :— 'Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.' This line also occurs in the ninety-fourth Sonnet of Shakspeare. The play of Edward III. has been ascribed to him.

5 See vol v. p. 263; and vol. vi. p. 204. The mandrake (says Thomas Newton in his Herbal) has been idly represented as 'a creature having life, and engendered under the earth of the seed of some dead person that hath beene convicted and put to death for some felonie or murther, and that they had the same in such dampish and funerall places where the saide convicted persons were buried,' &c. So in Webster's Duchess of Malfy, 1623 :— I have this night digg'd up a mandrake,

And am grown mad with it.'

6 i. e. distracted.

Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the

pastry 1.

Enter CAPULET.

[Exit Nurse.

Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath

crow'd,

:

The curfew bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock:-
Look to the bak'd meats, good Angelica:

Spare not for cost.

La. Cap.

Go, go, you cot-quean, go, to bed; 'faith, you'll be sick to-morrow For this night's watching2.

Get you

Cap. No, not a whit; What! I have watch'd ere

now

All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick. La. Cap. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt3 in your time;

But I will watch you from such watching now.

[Exit LADY CAPULET. Cap. A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!-Now, fellow,

What's there?

Enter Servants, with Spits, Logs, and Baskets. 1 Serv. Things for the cook, sir; but I know not

what.

Cap. Make haste, make haste. [Exit 1 Serv.]— Sirrah, fetch drier logs;

Call Peter, he will show thee where they are.

1 The room where the pastry was made.

2 This speech, which in the old copies is attributed to the Nurse, should surely be given to Lady Capulet. The Nurse would hardly call her lordly master a cot-queen, or reply to a speech addressed to her mistress. Beside that, she had been sent for spices, and is shortly after made to re-enter. I have therefore made the necessary change.

3 The animal called the mouse-hunt is the martin, which, being of the weasel tribe, prowls about in the night for its prey. · Cat after kinde, good mouse-hunt,' is one of Heywood's proverbs.

1 2 Serv. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs, And never trouble Peter for the matter. [Exit.

Cap. 'Mass, and well said; A merry whoreson ! ha, Thou shalt be logger-head.—Good faith, 'tis day: The county will be here with musick straight.

[Musick within. For so he said he would. I hear him near:Nurse!-Wife!-what ho;-what, nurse, I say!

Enter Nurse.

Go, waken Juliet, go, and trim her up;

I'll

go

and chat with Paris:-Hie, make haste, Make haste! the bridegroom he is come already: Make haste, I say!

[Exeunt.

SCENE V.

Juliet's Chamber; JULIET on the Bed.

Enter Nurse.

Nurse. Mistress!-what, mistress!-Juliet!— fast, I warrant her, she:

Why, lamb! why, lady;-fye, you slug-a-bed!— Why, love, I say!-madam! sweet-heart!—why, bride!

What, not a word?-you take your pennyworths

now;

Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant,
The county Paris hath set up his rest1,
That you shall rest but little.-God forgive me,
(Marry and amen!) how sound is she asleep!

1 Nashe, in his Terrors of the Night, quibbles in the same manner on this expression:-'You that are married and have wives of your owne, and yet hold too nere friendship with your neighbours, set up your rests, that the night will be an ill neighbour to your rest, and that you shall have as little peace of minde as the rest.' The phrase is explained in vol. iii. p. 249.