Romeo and Juliet Acts III-V

Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo,--

Consort! what, dost thou make us minstrels? an thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords: here's my fiddlestick; here's that shall make you dance.

Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.

With Tybalt's slander,--Tybalt, that an hour

Lovers can see to do their amorous rites

Come, civil night,

Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,

And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished;

Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!

Sole monarch of the universal earth.

When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?

Your tributary drops belong to woe,

Take up those cords: poor ropes, you are beguiled,

And thou art wedded to calamity.

What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand,

I bring thee tidings of the prince's doom.

But purgatory, torture, hell itself.

In carrion-flies than Romeo: they my seize

I thought thy disposition better temper'd.

Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit;

Than thou went'st forth in lamentation.

Sojourn in Mantua; I'll find out your man,

Being our kinsman, if we revel much:

For sweet discourses in our time to come.

O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle:

What are they, I beseech your ladyship?

How now! a conduit, girl? what, still in tears?

And yet 'not proud,' mistress minion, you,

Good prudence; smatter with your gossips, go.

My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now.

I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it,

Or my true heart with treacherous revolt

Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that

Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death:

Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.

So many guests invite as here are writ.

Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.

A peevish self-will'd harlotry it is.

To you and your behests, and am enjoin'd

To you and your behests, and am enjoin'd

For I have need of many orisons

No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries

As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,

O lamentable day!

In lasting labour of his pilgrimage!

But one thing to rejoice and solace in,

Despised, distressed, hated, martyr'd, kill'd!

To murder, murder our solemnity?

Yet nature's tears are reason's merriment.

All things that we ordained festival,

Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,

Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.

And doleful dumps the mind oppress,

With speedy help doth lend redress.'

What a pestilent knave is this same!

My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:

I do remember an apothecary,--

Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,

Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,

Noting this penury, to myself I said

As will disperse itself through all the veins

Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back;

Where the infectious pestilence did reign,

Give me thy torch, boy: hence, and stand aloof:

O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones;--

What with a torch! muffle me, night, awhile.

But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry

The time and my intents are savage-wild,

More fierce and more inexorable far

This is that banish'd haughty Montague,

Stop thy unhallow'd toil, vile Montague!

Let me peruse this face.

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,

Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

What mean these masterless and gory swords

And steep'd in blood?

Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep:

Hath thwarted our intents.

This is thy sheath;

Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain;

Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night;

Till we can clear these ambiguities,

And here I stand, both to impeach and purge

And here I stand, both to impeach and purge

You, to remove that siege of grief from her,

Betroth'd and would have married her perforce

That he should hither come as this dire night,

Her nurse is privy: and, if aught in this