Collection 4: "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Act I

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

Clubs, bills, and partisans! Strike! beat them down!

What, ho! you men, you beasts,
That quench the fire of your pernicious rage
With purple fountains issuing from your veins!

Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word
By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,
Have thrice disturbed the quiet of our streets
And made Verona's ancient citizens
Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments
To wield old partisans, in hands as old,
Cankered with peace, to part your cankered hate.

O, where is Romeo? Saw you him today?
Right glad I am he was not at this fray.

Towards him I made; but he was ware of me
And stole into the covert of the wood.

Black and portentous must this humor prove
Unless good counsel may the cause remove.

Have you importuned him by any means?

Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,
Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest
With more of thine.

A madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

A madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.

Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?

She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste;
For beauty, starved with her severity,
Cuts beauty off from all posterity.

She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow
Do I live dead that live to tell it now.

Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning;
One pain is lessoned by another's anguish;
Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;
One desperate grief cures with another's languish.

When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;
And these, who, often drowned, could never die,
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!

Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content

Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in extremity.

I beseech you follow straight.

The date is out of such prolixity.

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, too boist'rous, and it pricks like thorn.

Give me a case to put my visage in.

Let wantons light of heart
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;
For I am proverbed with a grandsire phrase,
I'll be a candle-holder and look on;
The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done.

If thou art Dun, we'll draw thee from the mire
Of, save your reverence, love, wherein thou stickst
Up to the ears.

Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fadom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again.

This is that very Mab
That plaits the manes of horses in the night
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled much misfortune bodes

I fear, too early; for my mind misgives
Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels and expire the term
Of a despised life, closed in my breast,
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.

I fear, too early; for my mind misgives
Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels and expire the term
Of a despised life, closed in my breast,
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.

He shift a trencher! he scrape a trencher!

'Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,
Come Pentecost as quickly as it will,
Some five-and-twenty years, and then we masked.

Fetch me my rapier, boy.

What, dares the slave
Come hither, covered with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?

I would not for the wealth of all this town
Here in my house do him disparagement.

It is my will; the which if thou respect,
Show a fair presence and put off these frowns,
An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.

You are a saucy boy.

If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone;
We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.

Prodigious birth of love it is to me
That I must love a loathed enemy.