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

Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat; and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for quarrelling.

Didst thou not fall out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter? with another for tying his new shoes with an old riband?

What, dost thou make us minstrels?

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

Gentlemen, for shame! forbear this outrage!

Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic!

This gentleman, the Prince's near ally,
My very friend, hath got this mortal hurt
In my behalf—my reputation stained
With Tybalt's slander—Tybalt, that an hour
Hath been my kinsman

O sweet Juliet,
Thy beauty hath made me effeminate
And in my temper softened valor's steel.

This day's black fate on mo days doth depend;
This but begins the woe others must end.

All this—uttered
With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bowed—
Could not take truce with the unruly spleen
Of Tybalt deaf to peace, but that he tilts
With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast

Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point,
And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats
Cold death aside and with the other sends
It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity
Retorts it.

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

Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.

Hood my unmanned blood bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.

Give me my Romeo; and, when he 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.

And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks
But Romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence.

There's no trust,
No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured,
All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.

There's no trust,
No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured,
All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.

I will bring you thither.

Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night.

Affliction is enamored 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 honorable state, more courtship lives
In carrion flies than Romeo.

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!

By my holy order,
I thought thy disposition better tempered.

Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit,
Which, like a usurer, aboundst in all,
And usest none in that true use indeed
Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.

Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit,
Which, like a usurer, aboundst in all,
And usest none in that true use indeed
Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.

A pack of blessings light upon thy back;
Happiness courts thee in her best array;
But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
Thou poutst upon thy fortune and thy love.

Go hence; good night; and here stands all your state:
Either be gone before the watch be set,
Or by the break of day disguis'd from hence.
Sojourn in Mantua.

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

I will omit no opportunity
That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.

O Fortune, Fortune! all men call thee fickle.

Villain and he be many miles asunder.—
God pardon him! I do, with all my heart;
And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.

O, how my heart abhors
To hear him named and cannot come to him,
To wreak the love I bore my cousin Tybalt
Upon his body that hath slaughtered him!

How now? a conduit, girl? What, still in tears?
Evermore show'ring?

For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is
Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs,
Who, raging with thy tears and they with them,
Without a sudden calm will overset
Thy tempest-tossed body.

Go in; and tell my lady I am gone,
Having displeased my father, to Laurence' cell,
To make confession and to be absolved.