PRINCE           A glooming peace this morning with it brings,                         The sun for sorrow will not show his head.                         Go hence to have more talk of these sad things;                         Some will be pardoned, and some punishèd:                         For never was a story of more woe                         Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. […]

CAPULET        O brother Montague, give me thy hand.                         This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more                         Can I demand. MONTAGUE                           But I can give thee more,                         For I will raise her statue in pure gold,                         That whiles Verona by that name is known,                         There shall no figure at such rate […]

PRINCE           Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague?                         See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,                         That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!                         And I for winking at your discords too                         Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished. (5.3.291-295) Surely first a pause, filled with not […]

PRINCE           This letter doth make good the Friar’s words,                         Their course of love, the tidings of her death;                         And here he writes that he did buy a poison                         Of a poor pothecary, and therewithal                         Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet. (5.3.286-290) Realism is, as ever, a dodgy […]

PRINCE           Where is the County’s page that raised the Watch?                         Sirrah, what made your master in this place? PAGE               He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave,                         And bid me stand aloof, and so I did.                         Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb,                         And by and by my […]

PRINCE           Where’s Romeo’s man? what can he say to this? BALTHASAR   I brought my master news of Juliet’s death,                         And then in post he came from Mantua                         To this same place, to this same monument.                         This letter he early bid me give his father,                         And threatened me with death, going in […]

FRIAR              All this I know, and to the marriage                         Her nurse is privy; and if aught in this                         Miscarried by my fault, let my old life                         Be sacrificed, some hour before his time,                         Unto the rigour of severest law. PRINCE           We still have known thee for a holy man. (5.3.265-270) The […]

FRIAR              But when I came, some minute ere the time                         Of her awakening, here untimely lay                         The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.                         She wakes, and I entreated her come forth                         And bear this work of heaven with patience.                         But then a noise did scare me from the tomb,                         […]

FRIAR                                      Mean time I writ to Romeo                         That he should hither come as this dire night                         To help to take her from her borrowed grave,                         Before the time the potion’s force should cease.                         But he which bore my letter, Friar John,                         Was stayed by accident, and yesternight                         Returned my […]

FRIAR              You, to remove that siege of grief from her,                         Betrothed, and would have married her perforce                         To County Paris. Then comes she to me,                         And with wild looks bid me devise some mean                         To rid her from this second marriage,                         Or in my cell there would she kill herself. […]