READ STUDY GUIDE: Act IV, scenes iii–iv |
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Act IV, Scene iii:
Juliet's Chamber.
Juliet's Chamber.
| [Enter Juliet and Nurse.] |
| Juliet.: |
| 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.] |
| Lady Capulet. |
| What, are you busy, ho? need you my help? |
| Juliet.: |
| 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. |
| Lady Capulet. |
| Good night: |
| Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need. |
| [Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.] |
| Juliet.: |
| Farewell!—God knows when we shall meet again. |
| 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, vial.— |
| What if this mixture do not work at all? |
| Shall I be married, then, to-morrow morning?— |
| No, No!—this shall forbid it:—lie thou there.— |
| [Laying down her dagger.] |
| 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 this many hundred years, the bones |
| Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd; |
| Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, |
| Lies festering 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;— |
| O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught, |
| 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. |
| [Throws herself on the bed.] |
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