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Romeo and Juliet: Act III, Scene 3

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Romeo and Juliet
Act III, Scene 3

Friar Lawrence’s cell.

1894 Portuguese edition of Romeo and Juliet

1894 Portuguese edition of Romeo and Juliet

Dr. Patrocinio da Costa, Luigi Da Porto, Giulietta e Romeso

  1. Enter Friar Lawrence.

Friar Lawrence

1 - 3
  1. Romeo, come forth, come forth, thou fearful man:
  2. Affliction is enamor’d of thy parts,
  3. And thou art wedded to calamity.
  1. Enter Romeo.

Romeo

4 - 6
  1. Father, what news? What is the Prince’s doom?
  2. What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand,
  3. That I yet know not?

Friar Lawrence

7 - 9
  1.                      Too familiar
  2. Is my dear son with such sour company!
  3. I bring thee tidings of the Prince’s doom.

Romeo

10
  1. What less than dooms-day is the Prince’s doom?

Friar Lawrence

11 - 12
  1. A gentler judgment vanish’d from his lips—
  2. Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.

Romeo

13 - 15
  1. Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say “death”;
  2. For exile hath more terror in his look,
  3. Much more than death. Do not say “banishment”!

Friar Lawrence

16 - 17
  1. Here from Verona art thou banished.
  2. Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.

Romeo

18 - 24
  1. There is no world without Verona walls,
  2. But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
  3. Hence “banished” is banish’d from the world,
  4. And world’s exile is death; then “banished”
  5. Is death misterm’d. Calling death “banished,”
  6. Thou cut’st my head off with a golden axe,
  7. And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.

Friar Lawrence

25 - 29
  1. O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness!
  2. Thy fault our law calls death, but the kind Prince,
  3. Taking thy part, hath rush’d aside the law,
  4. And turn’d that black word ’death’ to “banishment.”
  5. This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not.

Romeo

30 - 52
  1. ’Tis torture, and not mercy. Heaven is here
  2. Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog
  3. And little mouse, every unworthy thing,
  4. Live here in heaven and may look on her,
  5. But Romeo may not. More validity,
  6. More honorable state, more courtship lives
  7. In carrion flies than Romeo; they may seize
  8. On the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand,
  9. And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
  10. Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,
  11. Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin;
  12. But Romeo may not, he is banished.
  13. Flies may do this, but I from this must fly;
  14. They are free men, but I am banished:
  15. And sayest thou yet that exile is not death?
  16. Hadst thou no poison mix’d, no sharp-ground knife,
  17. No sudden mean of death, though ne’er so mean,
  18. But “banished” to kill me? “Banished”?
  19. O friar, the damned use that word in hell;
  20. Howling attends it. How hast thou the heart,
  21. Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,
  22. A sin-absolver, and my friend profess’d,
  23. To mangle me with that word “banished”?

Friar Lawrence

53
  1. Thou fond mad man, hear me a little speak.

Romeo

54
  1. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.

Friar Lawrence

55 - 57
  1. I’ll give thee armor to keep off that word:
  2. Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,
  3. To comfort thee though thou art banished.

Romeo

58 - 61
  1. Yet “banished”? Hang up philosophy!
  2. Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
  3. Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom,
  4. It helps not, it prevails not. Talk no more.

Friar Lawrence

62
  1. O then I see that madmen have no ears.

Romeo

63
  1. How should they when that wise men have no eyes?

Friar Lawrence

64
  1. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.
Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare

Father, what news? What is the Prince’s doom?

From: Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare

Charles Cowden Clarke, Mary Cowden Clarke, 1866

Romeo

65 - 71
  1. Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.
  2. Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,
  3. An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,
  4. Doting like me, and like me banished,
  5. Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,
  6. And fall upon the ground, as I do now,
  7. Taking the measure of an unmade grave.
  1. Enter Nurse within and knock.

Friar Lawrence

72
  1. Arise, one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.

Romeo

73 - 74
  1. Not I, unless the breath of heart-sick groans
  2. Mist-like infold me from the search of eyes.
  1. Knock.

Friar Lawrence

75 - 79
  1. Hark how they knock!—Who’s there?—Romeo, arise,
  2. Thou wilt be taken.—Stay a while!—Stand up;
  3. Loud knock.
  4. Run to my study.—By and by!—God’s will,
  5. What simpleness is this?—I come, I come!
  6. Knock.
  7. Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? What’s your will?

Nurse

80 - 81
  1. Within.
  2. Let me come in, and you shall know my errant.
  3. I come from Lady Juliet.

Friar Lawrence

82
  1.                          Welcome then.
  1. Unlocks the door.
  1. Enter Nurse.

Nurse

83 - 84
  1. O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar,
  2. Where’s my lady’s lord? Where’s Romeo?

Friar Lawrence

85
  1. There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.

Nurse

86 - 92
  1. O, he is even in my mistress’ case,
  2. Just in her case. O woeful sympathy!
  3. Piteous predicament! Even so lies she,
  4. Blubb’ring and weeping, weeping and blubb’ring.
  5. Stand up, stand up, stand, and you be a man.
  6. For Juliet’s sake, for her sake, rise and stand;
  7. Why should you fall into so deep an O?

Romeo

93
  1. Nurse!
  1. He rises.

Nurse

94
  1. Ah sir, ah sir, death’s the end of all.

Romeo

95 - 100
  1. Spakest thou of Juliet? How is it with her?
  2. Doth not she think me an old murderer,
  3. Now I have stain’d the childhood of our joy
  4. With blood removed but little from her own?
  5. Where is she? And how doth she? And what says
  6. My conceal’d lady to our cancell’d love?

Nurse

101 - 104
  1. O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps,
  2. And now falls on her bed, and then starts up,
  3. And Tybalt calls, and then on Romeo cries,
  4. And then down falls again.

Romeo

105 - 111
  1.                            As if that name,
  2. Shot from the deadly level of a gun,
  3. Did murder her, as that name’s cursed hand
  4. Murder’d her kinsman. O, tell me, friar, tell me,
  5. In what vile part of this anatomy
  6. Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack
  7. The hateful mansion.
  1. He offers to stab himself, and Nurse snatches the dagger
  2. away.

Friar Lawrence

112 - 162
  1.                      Hold thy desperate hand!
  2. Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art;
  3. Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote
  4. The unreasonable fury of a beast.
  5. Unseemly woman in a seeming man,
  6. And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both,
  7. Thou hast amaz’d me! By my holy order,
  8. I thought thy disposition better temper’d.
  9. Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself,
  10. And slay thy lady that in thy life lives,
  11. By doing damned hate upon thyself?
  12. Why railest thou on thy birth? The heaven and earth?
  13. Since birth, and heaven, and earth, all three do meet
  14. In thee at once, which thou at once wouldst lose.
  15. Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit,
  16. Which like a usurer abound’st in all,
  17. And usest none in that true use indeed
  18. Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.
  19. Thy noble shape is but a form of wax,
  20. Digressing from the valor of a man;
  21. Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,
  22. Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish;
  23. Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
  24. Misshapen in the conduct of them both,
  25. Like powder in a skilless soldier’s flask,
  26. Is set afire by thine own ignorance,
  27. And thou dismemb’red with thine own defense.
  28. What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive,
  29. For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead:
  30. There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,
  31. But thou slewest Tybalt: there art thou happy.
  32. The law that threat’ned death becomes thy friend,
  33. And turns it to exile: there art thou happy.
  34. A pack of blessings light upon thy back,
  35. Happiness courts thee in her best array,
  36. But like a mishaved and sullen wench,
  37. Thou pouts upon thy fortune and thy love.
  38. Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
  39. Go get thee to thy love as was decreed,
  40. Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her.
  41. But look thou stay not till the watch be set,
  42. For then thou canst not pass to Mantua,
  43. Where thou shalt live till we can find a time
  44. To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,
  45. Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back
  46. With twenty hundred thousand times more joy
  47. Than thou went’st forth in lamentation.
  48. Go before, nurse; commend me to thy lady,
  49. And bid her hasten all the house to bed,
  50. Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto.
  51. Romeo is coming.

Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say “death”

Henri Gaugain; Louis Boulanger; Achille Devéria, printmaker; 19th century

Nurse

163 - 165
  1. O Lord, I could have sta’d here all the night
  2. To hear good counsel. O, what learning is!
  3. My lord, I’ll tell my lady you will come.

Romeo

166
  1. Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.
  1. Nurse offers to go in, and turns again.

Nurse

167 - 168
  1. Here, sir, a ring she bid me give you, sir.
  2. Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.

Romeo

169
  1. How well my comfort is reviv’d by this!
  1. Exit Nurse.

Friar Lawrence

170 - 176
  1. Go hence, good night; and here stands all your state:
  2. Either be gone before the watch be set,
  3. Or by the break of day disguis’d from hence.
  4. Sojourn in Mantua. I’ll find out your man,
  5. And he shall signify from time to time
  6. Every good hap to you that chances here.
  7. Give me thy hand. ’Tis late; farewell, good night.

Romeo

177 - 179
  1. But that a joy past joy calls out on me,
  2. It were a grief, so brief to part with thee.
  3. Farewell.
  1. Exeunt.
Costume design for unspecified character in Romeo and Juliet

From: Costume design for unspecified character in Romeo and Juliet

Percy Anderson, circa 1900

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