Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Act 4 - Scene 3
Juliet’s chamber.
Juliet : Ay, those attires are best: but, gentle nurse,
[p]I pray thee, leave
me to myself to-night,
[p]For I have need of many orisons
[p]To move
the heavens to smile upon my state,
[p]Which, well thou know'st, is
cross, and full of sin.
Lady Capulet : What, are you busy, ho? need you my help?
Juliet : No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries
[p]As are behoveful for our
state to-morrow:
[p]So please you, let me now be left alone,
[p]And
let the nurse this night sit up with you;
[p]For, I am sure, you have
your hands full all,
[p]In this so sudden business.
Lady Capulet : Good night:
[p]Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.
Juliet : Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.
[p]I have a faint cold
fear thrills through my veins,
[p]That almost freezes up the heat of
life:
[p]I'll call them back again to comfort me:
[p]Nurse! What
should she do here?
[p]My dismal scene I needs must act
alone.
[p]Come, vial.
[p]What if this mixture do not work at
all?
[p]Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?
[p]No, no: this
shall forbid it: lie thou there.
[p][Laying down her dagger]
[p]What
if it be a poison, which the friar
[p]Subtly hath minister'd to have
me dead,
[p]Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
[p]Because
he married me before to Romeo?
[p]I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it
should not,
[p]For he hath still been tried a holy man.
[p]How if,
when I am laid into the tomb,
[p]I wake before the time that
Romeo
[p]Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
[p]Shall I not,
then, be stifled in the vault,
[p]To whose foul mouth no healthsome
air breathes in,
[p]And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
[p]Or,
if I live, is it not very like,
[p]The horrible conceit of death and
night,
[p]Together with the terror of the place,--
[p]As in a vault,
an ancient receptacle,
[p]Where, for these many hundred years, the
bones
[p]Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
[p]Where bloody
Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
[p]Lies festering in his shroud;
where, as they say,
[p]At some hours in the night spirits
resort;--
[p]Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
[p]So early waking,
what with loathsome smells,
[p]And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of
the earth,
[p]That living mortals, hearing them, run mad:--
[p]O, if I
wake, shall I not be distraught,
[p]Environed with all these hideous
fears?
[p]And madly play with my forefather's joints?
[p]And pluck the
mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
[p]And, in this rage, with some great
kinsman's bone,
[p]As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?
[p]O,
look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
[p]Seeking out Romeo, that did
spit his body
[p]Upon a rapier's point: stay, Tybalt, stay!
[p]Romeo,
I come! this do I drink to thee.
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Next: Act 4 - Scene 4
