Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, So early waking,-what with loathsome smells, And madly play with my forefathers' joints? [She throws herself on the Bed. SCENE IV. Capulet's Hall. Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse. La. Cap. Hold, take these keys, and fetch more spices, nurse. place. The charnel at Stratford-upon-Avon is a very large one, and perhaps contains a greater number of bones than are to be found in any other repository of the same kind in England. 4 To fester is to corrupt. So in King Edward III. 1599 :— 'Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.' This line also occurs in the ninety-fourth Sonnet of Shakspeare. The play of Edward III. has been ascribed to him. 5 See vol v. p. 263; and vol. vi. p. 204. The mandrake (says Thomas Newton in his Herbal) has been idly represented as 'a creature having life, and engendered under the earth of the seed of some dead person that hath beene convicted and put to death for some felonie or murther, and that they had the same in such dampish and funerall places where the saide convicted persons were buried,' &c. So in Webster's Duchess of Malfy, 1623:I have this night digg'd up a mandrake, And am grown mad with it.' 6 i. e. distracted. Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry 1. Enter CAPUlet. [Exit Nurse. Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! the second cock hath crow'd, The curfew bell hath rung, 'tis three o'clock:- La. Cap. Go, go, you cot-quean, go, Get you to bed; 'faith, you'll be sick to-morrow For this night's watching2. Cap. No, not a whit; What! I have watch'd ere now All night for lesser cause, and ne'er been sick. La. Cap. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt3 in your time; But I will watch you from such watching now. [Exit LADY CAPULET. Cap. A jealous-hood, a jealous-hood!—Now, fellow, What's there? Enter Servants, with Spits, Logs, and Baskets. 1 Serv. Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what. Cap. Make haste, make haste. [Exit 1 Serv.]— Sirrah, fetch drier logs; Call Peter, he will show thee where they are. 1 The room where the pastry was made. 2 This speech, which in the old copies is attributed to the Nurse, should surely be given to Lady Capulet. The Nurse would hardly call her lordly master a cot-queen, or reply to a speech addressed to her mistress. Beside that, she had been sent for spices, and is shortly after made to re-enter. I have therefore made the necessary change. 3 The animal called the mouse-hunt is the martin, which, being of the weasel tribe, prowls about in the night for its prey. Cat after kinde, good mouse-hunt,' is one of Heywood's proverbs. 2 Serv. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs, And never trouble Peter for the matter. [Exit. Cap. 'Mass, and well said; A merry whoreson ! ha, Thou shalt be logger-head.—Good faith, 'tis day: The county will be here with musick straight. [Musick within. For so he said he would. I hear him near:— Nurse!-Wife!-what ho;-what, nurse, I say! Enter Nurse. Go, waken Juliet, go, and trim her up; I'll go and chat with Paris:-Hie, make haste, Make haste! the bridegroom he is come already: Make haste, I say! [Exeunt. SCENE V. Juliet's Chamber; JULIET on the Bed. Enter Nurse. Nurse. Mistress!-what, mistress!-Juliet!fast, I warrant her, she : Why, lamb! why, lady;-fye, you slug-a-bed!Why, love, I say!-madam! sweet-heart!-why, bride! What, not a word?-you take your pennyworths now; Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant, 1 Nashe, in his Terrors of the Night, quibbles in the same manner on this expression:-' You that are married and have wives of your owne, and yet hold too nere friendship with your neighbours, set up your rests, that the night will be an ill neighbour to your rest, and that you shall have as little peace of minde as the rest.' The phrase is explained in vol. iii. p. 249. I needs must wake her :-Madam, madam, madam! Ay, let the county take you in your bed; He'll fright you up, i'faith.-Will it not be? Enter LADY CAPULET. La. Cap. What noise is here? O lamentable day! Look, look! O heavy day! La. Cap. What is the matter? La. Cap. O me, O me!-my child, my only life, Enter CAPULET. Cap. For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord is come. Nurse. She's dead, deceas'd, she's dead; alack the day! La. Cap. Alack the day! she's dead, she's dead, she's dead. Cap. Ha! let me see her :-Out, alas! she's cold; Her blood is settled; and her joints are stiff; Life and these lips have long been separated: Death lies on her, like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. Accursed time! unfortunate old man! Nurse. O lamentable day! La. Cap. O woful time! Cap. Death, that hath ta'en her hence to make me wail, Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speak 2. 2 Shakspeare has here followed the old poem closely, without recollecting that he had made Capulet in this scene clamorous Enter FRIAR LAURENCE and PARIS, with Musicians. Fri. Come, is the bride ready to go to church? Cap. Ready to go, but never to return: O son, the night before thy wedding-day Hath death lain with thy bride3:-See, there she lies, Flower as she was, deflowered by him. Death is my son-in-law, death is my heir; My daughter he hath wedded! I will die, And leave him all; life leaving, all is death's. Par. Have I thought long to see this morning's face+, And doth it give me such a sight as this? La. Cap. Accurs'd, unhappy, wretched, hateful day! in his grief. In the poem Juliet's mother makes a long speech, but the old man utters not a word. 'But more than all the rest the father's heart was so Smit with the heavy news, and so shut up with sudden woe, That he ne had the power his daughter to beweep, Ne yet to speak, but long is forc'd his tears and plaints to keep.' 3 Euripides has sported with this thought in the same manner. Iphig. in Aulid. v. 460: · Τήνδ' αὖ τάλαιναν παρθενον (τί παρθενον; "Αδης νιν, ὡς ἔοικε, νυμφεύσει τάχα). Decker, in his Satiromastix, has the same thought more coarsely expressed: 'Dead: she's death's bride; he hath her maidenhead.' He has the same thought in his Wonderful Year :- Death rudely lay with her, and spoiled her of her maidenhead in spite of her husband. 4 The quarto of 1597 continues the speech of Paris thus :And doth it now present such prodigies? Accurst, unhappy, miserable man, Forlorn, forsaken, destitute I am; Born to the world to be a slave in it: Distrest, remediless, unfortunate. Oh heavens! Oh nature! wherefore did you make me To live so vile, so wretched as I shall? In the text the edition of 1599 is here followed. The Nurse's exclamatory speech is not in the first quarto. |