Romeo and Juliet: ‘lest faith turn to despair’.



1) 4.4.110–116


CAPULET  All things that we ordainèd festival,

                   Turn from their office to black funeral:

                   Our instruments to melancholy bells,

                   Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,

                   Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change;

                   Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,

                   And all things change them to the contrary.



2) 1.4.206–217.


ROMEO     If I profane with my unworthiest hand

                        This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,

                   My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

                        To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET       Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

                        Which mannerly devotion shows in this,

                   For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,

                        And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

ROMEO     Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET            Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO     O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;

                        They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET                Saints do not move, though grant for prayer’s sake.

ROMEO              Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.



3) 3.2.42–51


JULIET       What devil art thou that torment me thus?

                   This torture should be roared in dismal hell.

                   Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but ‘Ay’,

                   And that bare vowel ‘I’ shall poison more

                   Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.

                   I am not I if there be such an ‘I’,

                   Or those eyes shut that makes thee answer ‘Ay’,

                   If he be slain say ‘Ay’, or if not, ‘No’.

                   Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.

NURSE      I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes –







4) 5.3.74–118.


ROMEO     In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face.

                   Mercutio’s kinsman, noble county Paris!

                   What said my man when my betossed soul

                   Did not attend him as we rode? I think

                   He told me Paris should have married Juliet.

                   Said he not so? Or did I dream it so?

                   Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,
   80

                   To think it was so? O, give me thy hand,

                   One writ in sour misfortune’s book.

                   I’ll bury thee in a triumphant grave.

                   A grave – O no, a lantern, slaughtered youth;

                   For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes

                   This vault a feasting presence full of light.

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

                   How oft, when men are at the point of death,

                   Have they been merry, which their keepers call

                   A light’ning before death. O how may I
90

                   Call this a light’ning? O my love, my wife,

                   Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,

                   Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.

                   Thou art not conquered; beauty’s ensign yet

                   Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,

                   And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.

                   Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?

                   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?                                               100

                         Forgive me, cousin. Ah, dear Juliet,

                   Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe

                   That unsubstantial death is amorous,

                   And that the lean abhorred monster keeps

                   Thee here in dark to be his paramour?

                   For fear of that I still will stay with thee,

                   And never from this pallet of dim night

                   Depart again. Here, here will I remain

                   With worms that are thy chambermaids. O, here

                   Will I set up my everlasting rest,                                         110

                   And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

                   From this world wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last.

                   Arms take your last embrace. And lips, O you

                   The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss

                   A dateless bargain to engrossing death.

                   Come, bitter conduct, come unsavoury guide,

                   Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on

                   The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark.


(Text edited by Jill L. Levenson, Oxford World’s Classics, 2000).