Romeo and Juliet ACTS I and II

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

To move is to stir; and to be valiant is to stand: therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn'st away.

True; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push

The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.

'Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the maids, and cut off their heads.

Enter, several of both houses, who join the fray; then enter Citizens, with clubs

Clubs, bills, and partisans! strike! beat them down!

And flourishes his blade in spite of me.

That quench the fire of your pernicious rage

That quench the fire of your pernicious rage

And hear the sentence of your moved prince.

Have thrice disturb'd the quiet of our streets,

Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments,

Canker'd with peace, to part your canker'd hate:

Which, as he breathed defiance to my ears,

Where, underneath the grove of sycamore

And stole into the covert of the wood:

With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew.

Black and portentous must this humour prove,

Have you importuned him by any means?

I'll know his grievance, or be much denied.

Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,

O heavy lightness! serious vanity!

Why, such is love's transgression.

Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;

Being vex'd a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:

A choking gall and a preserving sweet.

And, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd,

She will not stay the siege of loving terms,

Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,

Cuts beauty off from all posterity.

She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow

I'll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.

Of honourable reckoning are you both;

Let two more summers wither in their pride,

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

Go, sirrah, trudge about

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.

One desperate grief cures with another's languish:

A fair assembly: whither should they come?

When the devout religion of mine eye

Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!

But to rejoice in splendor of mine own.

A fortnight and odd days.

And she was wean'd,--I never shall forget it,--

She could have run and waddled all about;

The pretty wretch left crying and said 'Ay.'

A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly:

How stands your disposition to be married?

Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,

Examine every married lineament,

And what obscured in this fair volume lies

Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity.

The date is out of such prolixity:

We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf,

Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling;

With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead

Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase;

If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:

Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,

With this night's revels and expire the term

'Tis since the nuptials of Lucentio,

Of yonder knight?

Fetch me my rapier, boy.

Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,

He bears him like a portly gentleman;

Here in my house do him disparagement:

And ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.

You are a saucy boy: is't so, indeed?

[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand

We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.

Prodigious birth of love it is to me,

Nay, I'll conjure too.

Her eye discourses; I will answer it.

Romeo, doff thy name,

Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye

And I am proof against their enmity.

Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.

And not impute this yielding to light love,

Which is the god of my idolatry,

Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest

But to be frank, and give it thee again.

I hear some noise within; dear love, adieu!

By one that I'll procure to come to thee,

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;

My intercession likewise steads my foe.

Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;

For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

Thy love did read by rote and could not spell.

For this alliance may so happy prove,

Alas poor Romeo! he is already dead; stabbed with a white wench's black eye; shot through the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft: and is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these perdona-mi's, who stand so much on the new form, that they cannot at ease on the old bench?

Romeo, bon jour! there's a French salutation to your French slop.

You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.

That's as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams.

Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature: for this drivelling love is like a great natural, that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.

Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature: for this drivelling love is like a great natural, that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.

One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for himself to mar.

By my troth, it is well said; 'for himself to mar,' quoth a'?

Scurvy knave!

And thou must stand by too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure?

Hark you, sir.

Lord! when 'twas a little prating thing:--O, there is a nobleman in town, one Paris, that would fain lay knife aboard; but she, good soul, had as lief see a toad, a very toad, as see him.

But old folks, many feign as they were dead;

Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.

If good, thou shamest the music of sweet news

Fie, how my bones ache! what a jaunt have I had!

Is this the poultice for my aching bones?

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness

And in the taste confounds the appetite:

A lover may bestride the gossamer