Nurse. Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, and, I warrant, a virtuous, Where is your mother?

Jul. Where is my mother! why, she is within; Where should she be? How oldly thou repliest ! Your love says, like an honest gentleman,

Where is your mother?

Nurse.

O God's Lady dear!

Are you so hot? marry, come up, I trow;

Is this the poultice for my aching bones?
Henceforward do your messages yourself.

Jul. Here's such a coil !2 Come, what says Romeo?
Nurse. Have you got leave to go to shrift to-day?
Jul. I have.

Nurse. Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence' cell;

There stays a husband to make you a wife :

Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks;
They'll be in scarlet straight at any news.3
Hie you to church ; I must another way,

To fetch a ladder, by the which your love
Must climb a bird's-nest soon when it is dark:

I am the drudge, and toil in your delight.
Go; I'll to dinner: hie you to the cell.

Jul. Hie to high fortune! — Honest nurse, farewell.

[Exeunt.

2 Coil was often used for tumult, bustle, or ado. Here it is fuss.

8 That is, they are sure to flush and redden forthwith at any talk of love

and Romeo. They'll be is not used in a futuritial sense here.

SCENE VI.

- The Same. Friar LAURENCE'S Cell.

Enter Friar LAURENCE and ROMEO.

Fri. L. So smile the Heavens upon this holy act,
That after-hours with sorrow chide us not!

Rom. Amen, amen! but come what sorrow can,
It cannot countervail th' exchange of joy
That one short minute gives me in her sight:
Do thou but close our hands with holy words,
Then love-devouring death do what he dare;
It is enough I may but call her mine.

Fri. L. These violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die; like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume: the sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,
And in the taste confounds the appetite:

Therefore, love moderately; long love doth so ;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
Here comes the lady: O,

So light a foot ne'er hurts the trodden flower ! 2
Of love and joy, see, see the sovereign power!
A lover may bestride the gossamer

That idles in the wanton summer air,

And yet not fall; so light is vanity.

1 To destroy is one of the old meanings of to confound. The Poet has it repeatedly in that sense. See The Merchant, page 150, note 40.

2 Jonson, in his Vision of Delight, has a strain of exquisite delicacy that may have been suggested by this:

And thence did Venus learn to lead
Th' Idalian brawls, and so to tread

As if the wind, not she, did walk,
Nor prest a flower, nor bow'd a stalk.

Enter JULIET.

Jul. Good even to my ghostly3 confessor.

Fri. L. Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both. Jul. As much to him, else is his thanks too much.

Rom. Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy

Be heap'd like mine, and that thy skill be more

To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath

This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue
Unfold th' imagined happiness that both
Receive in either by this dear encounter.

Jul. Conceit,4 more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament.

They are but beggars that can count their worth;

But my true love is grown to such excess,

I cannot sum up half my sum of wealth.

Fri. L. Come, come with me, and we will make short

work;

For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone

Till holy Church incorporate two in one.

[Exeunt.

8 It is hardly needful to say that ghostly is here used in the sense of spiritual. So in the Confirmation Office of the Episcopal Church: "The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength."

4 Conceit was always used in a good sense; here it is conception or imag ination.

SCENE I.

ACT III.

Verona. A public Place.

Enter MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, Page, and Servants.

Ben. I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire: The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,

And, if we meet, we shall not 'scape a brawl;

For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.

Mer. Thou art like one of those fellows that, when he enters the confines of a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table, and says, God send me no need of thee! and, by the operation of the second cup, draws it on the drawer, when, indeed, there is no need.

Ben. Am I like such a fellow?

Mer. Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as any in Italy; and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved.

Ben. And what to?

:

Mer. Nay, an there were two1 such, we should have none shortly, for one would kill the other. Thou! why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes: what eye, but such an eye, would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat; and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling thou hast quarrell'd with a man for cough

"

:

1 In the word two Mercutio plays on to, just used by Benvolio.

ing in the street, because he hath waken'd thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter? with another, for tying his new shoes with old riband? and yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling!

Ben. An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy the fee-simple2 of my life for an hour and a quarter.

Mer. The fee-simple! O simple!

Ben. By my head, here come the Capulets.

Mer. By my heel, I care not.

Enter TYBALT and others.

Tyb. Follow me close, for I will speak to them. Gentlemen, good den: a word with one of you.

Mer. And but one word with one of us? couple it with something; make it a word and a blow.

Tyb. You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, an you will give me occasion.

Mer. Could you not take some occasion without giving? Tyb. Mercutio, thou consort'st with Romeo,

Mer. Consort! what, dost thou make us minstrels ? 3 an thou make minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords: here's my fiddlestick; here's that shall make you dance. Zounds, consort !

Ben. We talk here in the public haunt of men :

Either withdraw unto some private place,

And reason coldly of your grievances,

2 Fee-simple is an old law term for the strongest tenure of a thing; as of land held in absolute and perpetual right.

8 Consort is the old term for company or band of musicians. Tybalt uses

it in the sense of keep company or associate; and Mercutio plays upon it. 4 To reason here means to talk or converse.