FRIAR

The grey eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, Checkring the Eastern Clouds with streaks of light. And fleckled darkness Like a drunkard reels, From forth days path, and Titan's burning wheels: Now ere the Sun advance his burning eye, The day to cheer, and nights danke Due to dry, I must upfill this Osier Cage of ours, With baleful weeds, and precious Juiced flowers, The earth that's Nature's mother, is her Tomb, What is her burying graven that is her womb: And from her womb children of diverse kind We sucking on her natural bosom find: Many for many virtues excellent: None but for some, and yet all different. Omickle is the powerful grace that lies In Plants, Herbs, stones, and their true qualities: For nought so vile, that on the earth does live, But to the earth some special good does give. Nor ought so good, but strained from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Virtue it self turns vice being misapplied, And vice sometime by Actium dignified. Within the infant rin'd of this weak flower, Poison hath residence, and medicine power: For this being smelled, with that partly cheers each partly, Being tasted slays all senses with the heart. Two such opposed Kings encamp them still, In man as well as Herbs, grace and rude will: And where the worse is predominant, Full soon the Canker death eats up that Plant. Benedecite. What early tongue so sweet salutes me? Young Son, it argues a distempered head, So soon to bid goodmorrow to thy bed; Care keeps his watch in every old men eye, And where Care lodges, sleep will never lie: But where unbruised you h with unstuffed brain Does couch his limbs, there, golden sleep does reign; Therefore thy earliness does me assure, Thou art vprous'd with some diftemprature; Or if not so, then here I hit it right. Our Romeo hath not been in bed to night. God pardon sin: wast thou with Rosaline ? That's my good Son, but where hast thou been then? Be plain good Son, rest homely in thy drift, Riddling confession, finds but riddling shrift. Holy S. Francis, what a change is here? Is Rosaline that thou didst Love so deer So soon forsaken? young men's Love then lies Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine Hath washed thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline ? How much salt water thrown away in wast, To season Love that of it does not taste. The Sun not yet thy sighs, from heaven clears, Thy old groans yet ringing in my ancient ears: Lo here upon thy cheek the stain does fit, Of and old tear that is not washed off yet. If ere thou wast thy self, and these woes thine, Thou and these woes, were all for Rosaline. And art thou changed? pronounce this sentence then, Women may fallen, when there's no strength in men. For doting not for loving pupil mine. Not in a graven, To lay one in, another out to have. Oh she knew well, Thy Love did read by rote, that could not spell: But come young waverer, come go with me, In one respect, I'll thy assistant be: For this alliance may so happy prove, To turn your household rancour to pure Love. Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast. So smile the heavens upon this holy act, That after hours, with sorrow chide us not. 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 does so, Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. Here comes the Lady. O so light a foot Will never wear out the everlasting flint, A Lover may bestride the Gossamours, That ydles in the wanton Summer air, And yet not fallen, so light is vanity. Romeo shall thank thee Daughter for us both. Ah Juliet, if the measure of thy joy Be heaped Like mine, and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour air, and let rich musics tongue. Unfold the imagined happiness that both Receive in either, by this deer encounter. Come, come with me, & we will make short work, For by your leaves, you shall not stay alone, Till holy Church incorporate two in one. Romeo come forth, Come forth thou fearful man, Affliction is enamored of thy parts: And thou art wedded to calamity. Too familiar Is my deer Son with such sour Company: I bring thee tidings of the Princes Doom. A gentler judgement vanished from his lips, Not bodies death, but bodies banishment. Here from Verona art thou banished: Be patient, for the world is broad and wide. Oh deadly sin, Oh rude unthankfulness! Thy fault our Law calls death, but the kind Prince Taking thy partly, hath rushed aside the Law, And turned that black word death, to banishment. This is deer mercy, and thou seest it not. Then found Mad man, hear me speak. I'll give thee Armour to keep off that word, Adversities sweet milk, Philosophy, To comfort thee, though thou art banished. Oh then I see, that Mad men have no ears. Let me despair with thee of thy estate, Hark how they knock: (Who's there) Romeo arise, Thou wilt be taken, stay a while, stand up: Run to my study: by and by, Gods will What simpleness is this: I come, I come. Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? what's your will? Welcome then. There on the ground, With his own tears made drunk. Hold thy desperate hand: Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art: Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote The unreasonable Fury of a beast. Unseemly woman, in a seeming man, And ill beseeming beast in seeming both, Thou hast amazed me. By my holy order, I thought thy disposition better tempered. Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thy self? And slay thy Lady, that in thy life lies, By doing damned hate upon thy self? Why railest thou on thy birth? the heaven and earth? Since birth, and heaven and earth, all three do meet In thee at once, which thou at once wouldst lose. Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit, Which Like a Usurer aboundest in all: And usest none in that true use indeed, Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit: Thy Noble shape, is but a form of wax, Digressing from the Valour of a man, Thy deer Love sworn but hollow perjury, Killing that Love which thou hast vowed to cherish. Thy wit, that Ornament, to shape and Love, Mishapen in the conduct of them both: Like powder in a skillesse Soldiers flask, Is set a fire by thine own ignorance, And thou dismembered with thine own defence. What, rouse thee man, thy Juliet is alive, For whose deer sake thou wast but lately dead. There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee, But thou slewest Tybalt, there art thou happy. The law that threatened death became thy Friend, And turned it to exile, there art thou happy. A pack or blessing light upon thy back, Happiness Courts thee in her best array, But Like a mishapped and sullen wench, Thou puttest up thy Fortune and thy Love: Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable. Go get thee to thy Love as was decreed, Ascend her Chamber, hence and comfort her: But look thou stay not till the watch be set, For then thou canst not pass to Mantua, Where thou shalt live till we can find a time To blaze your marriage, reconcile your Friends, Beg pardon of thy Prince, and call thee back, With twenty hundred thousand times more joy Then thou wentest forth in lamentation. Go before Nurse, commend me to thy Lady, And bid her hasten all the house to bed, Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto. Romeo is coming. Go hence, Goodnight, and here stands all your state: Either be gone before the watch be set, Or by the break of day disguised from hence, Sojourn in Mantua, I'll find out your man, And he shall signify from time to time, Every good hap to you, that chances here: Give me thy hand, it's late, farewell, goodnight. On Thursday sir? the time is very short. You say you do not know the Ladies mind? Uneven is the course, I Like it not. I would I knew not why it should be slowed. Look sir, here comes the Lady towards my Cell. That's a certain text. My leisure serves me pensive daughter now. My Lord you must entreat the time alone. Oh Juliet, I already know thy grief, It streams me passed the compass of my wits: I hear thou must and nothing may prorogue it, On Thursday next be married to this County. Hold Daughter, I do spy a kind of hope, Which craves as desperate and execution, As that is desperate which we would prevent. If rather then to marry County Paris Thou hast the strength of will to stay thy self, Then is it likely thou wilt undertake A thinglike death to chide away this shame, That coap'st with death himself, to escape from it: And if thou darest, I'll give thee remedy. Hold then: go home, be merry give consent, To marry Paris : Wednesday is to morrow, To morrow night look that thou lie alone, Let not thy Nurse lie with thee in thy Chamber: Take thou this Viol being then in bed, And this distilling liquour drink thou off, When presently through all thy veins shall run, A cold and drowsy humour: for no pulse Shall keep his native progress, but surcease: No warmth, no breath shall testify thou livest, The Roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade To many ashes, the eyes windows fallen Like death when he shut up the day of life: Each partly deprived of supple government, Shall stiff and stark, and cold appear Like death, And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death Thou shalt continue two and forty hours, And then awake, as from a pleasant sleep. Now when the Bridegroom in the morning comes, To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead: Then as the manner of our country is, In thy best Robes uncovered on the Beer, Be born to burial in thy kindreds graven: Thou shalt be born to that same ancient vault, Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie, In the mean time against thou shalt awake, Shall Romeo by my Letters know our drift, And hither shall he come, and that very night Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua. And this shall free thee from this present shame, If no inconstant toy nor womanish fear, Abate thy valour in the acting it. Hold get you gone, be strong and prosperous: In this resolve, I'll send a Friar with speed To Mantua with my Letters to thy Lord. Come, is the Bride ready to go to Church? Peace ho for shame, confusions: Care lives not In these confusions, heaven and your self Had partly in this fair Maid, now heaven hath all, And all the better is it for the Maid: Your partly in her, you could not keep from death, But heaven keeps his partly in eternal life: The most you sought was her promotion, For 'twas your heaven, she shouldst be advanced, And weep you now, seeing she is advanced, Above the Clouds, as high as Heaven it self? Oh in this love, you love your Child so ill, That you run mad, seeing that she is well: She's not well married, that lives married long, But she's best married, that die married young. Dry up your tears, and stick your Rosemary On this fair Coarse, and as the custom is, And in her best array bear her to Church: For though some Nature bids all us lament, Yet Nature's tears are Reasons merriment. Sir go you in; and Madam, go with him, And go sir Paris, every one prepare To follow this fair Coarse unto her graven: The heavens do lower upon you, for some ill: Move them no more, by crossing their high will. St. Francis be my speed, how oft to night Have my old feet stumbled at graves? Who's there? Bliss be upon you. Tell me good my Friend What Torch is yond that vainly lends his light To grubs, and eyeless Sculle ? As I discern, It burns in the Capulets Monument. Who is it? How long hath he been there? Go with me to the Vault. Stay, then I'll go alone, fears comes upon me. Oh much I fear some ill unlucky thing. Romeo. Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains The stony entrance of this Sepulcher? What mean these Masterless, and gory Swords To lie discoloured by this place of peace? Romeo, o pale: who else? what Paris too? And steeped in blood? Ah what and vnknd hour Is guilty of this lamentable chance? The Lady stirs. I hear some noise Lady, come from that nest Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep, A greater power then we can contradict Hath thwarted our intents, come, come away, Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead: And Paris too: come I'll dispose of thee, Among a Sisterhood of holy Nuns: Stay not to question, for the watch is coming. Come, go good Juliet, I dare no longer stay. I am the greatest, able to do least, Yet most suspected as the time and place Does make against me of this direful murder: And here I stand both to impeach and purge My self condemned, and my self excused. I will be brief, for my short date of breath Is not so long as is a tedious tale. Romeo there dead, was husband to that Juliet, And she there dead, that's Romeos faithful wife: I married them; and their stolen marriage day Was Tybalts Doomsday: whose untimely death Banished the new-made Bridegroom from this City: For whom (and not for Tybalt ) Juliet pinde. 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 means To rid her from this second Marriage, Or in my Cell there would she kill her self. Then gave I her (so Tutored by my Art) A sleeping Potion, which so took effect As I intended, for it wrought on her The form of death. Mean time, I writ to Romeo, That he should hither come, as this dire night, To help to take her from her borrowed graven, Being the time the Potions force should cease. But he which boar my Letter, Friar John, Was stayed by accident; and yesternight Returned my Letter back. Then all alone, At the prefixed hour of her waking, Came I to take her from her Kindreds vault, Meaning to keep her closely at my Cell, Till I conveniently could send to Romeo. But when I came (some Minute ere the time Of her awaking) 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 scar me from the Tomb, And she (too desperate) would not go with me, But (as it seems) did violence on her self. All this I know, and to the Marriage her Nurse is privy: And if ought in this miscarried by my fault, Let my old life be sacrificed, some hour before the time, Unto the rigour of severest Law. Arise one knocks, Good Romeo hide thy self. This same should be the voice of Friar John. Welcome from Mantua, what says Romeo ? Or if his mind be writ, give me his Letter. Who bore my Letter then to Romeo ? Unhappy Fortune: by my Brotherhood The Letter was not nice, but full of charge, Of deer import, and the neglecting it May do much danger: Friar John go hence, Get me and Iron Crow, and bring it straight Unto my Cell. Now must I to the Monument alone, Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake, She will be shrew me much that Romeo Hath had no notice of these accidents: But I will write again to Mantua, And keep her at my Cell till Romeo come, Poor living Coarse, closed in a dead men Tomb,