Module 1: Excerpts from "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Acts 3–5

Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee
Doth much excuse the appertaining rage
To such a greeting.

Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.

Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage.

Tybalt, Mercutio, the Prince expressly hath
Forbid this bandying in Verona streets.

A braggart, a rogue, a villain,
that fights by the book of arithmetic!

A braggart, a rogue, a villain,
that fights by the book of arithmetic!

That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds,
Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.

Thou wretched boy, that didst consort him here,
Shalt with him hence.

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus’ lodging.

Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night.

Come, gentle night, come, loving black-browed night,
Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

So tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them.

Affliction is enamoured of thy parts,
And thou art wedded to calamity.

Affliction is enamoured of thy parts,
And thou art wedded to calamity.

I bring thee tidings of the Prince’s doom.

There is no world without Verona walls
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.

More validity,
More honourable state, more courtship lives
In carrion flies than Romeo.

How hast thou the heart,
Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,
A sin-absolver, and my friend professed,
To mangle me with that word ‘banished’?

Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom,
It helps not, it prevails not.

Therefore, out of thy long-experienced time
Give me some present counsel, or behold,
‘Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that
Which the commission of thy years and art
Could to no issue of true honour bring.

Therefore, out of thy long-experienced time
Give me some present counsel, or behold,
‘Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that
Which the commission of thy years and art
Could to no issue of true honour bring.

If rather than to marry County Paris
Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,
Then is it likely thou wilt undertake
A thing like death to chide away this shame,
That cop’st with death himself to scape from it;
An if thou dar’st, I’ll give thee remedy.

Or bid me go into a new-made grave,
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud,
Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble,
And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live an unstained wife to my sweet love.

Take thou this vial, being then in bed,
And this distilling liquor 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.

Each part, 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.

Then, as the manner of our country is,
In thy best robes, uncovered on the bier,
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.

Then, as the manner of our country is,
In thy best robes, uncovered on the bier,
Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.

Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interred.

Beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.

O, what more favour can I do to thee
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
To sunder his that was thine enemy?

Shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

Shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh.

O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh.

O true apothecary,
Thy drugs are quick.

Ah, what an unkind hour
Is guilty of this lamentable chance!

O churl, drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after?

Haply some poison yet doth hang on them
To make me die with a restorative.

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.

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.