The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (Dowden)/Act 1/Scene 3

by William Shakespeare

SCENE III.—The Same. A Room in Capulet's House.

Enter Lady Capulet and Nurse.

Lady Cap.

Nurse, where's my daughter? call her forth to me.

Nurse.

Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old, I bade her come.—What, lamb! what, lady-bird!— God forbid![E 1]—Where's this girl?—What, Juliet![C 1]

Enter Juliet.

Jul.	How now! who calls?

Nurse.

How now! who calls? Your mother.

Jul.	How now! who calls? Your mother. Madam, I am here. 5 What is your will?[C 2]

Lady Cap.

This is the matter.—Nurse, give leave awhile, We must talk in secret:—nurse, come back again; I have remember'd me, thou's[E 2] hear our counsel. Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.[C 3]10

Nurse.

Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.

Lady Cap.

She's not fourteen.

Nurse.

She's not fourteen.[C 4] I'll lay fourteen of my teeth,— And yet, to my teen[E 3] be it spoken, I have but four,— She is[C 5] not fourteen. How long is it now To Lammas-tide?[E 4]

Lady Cap.

A fortnight and odd days. 15

Nurse.

[C 6]Even or odd, of all days in the year, Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen. Susan and she—God rest all Christian souls!— Were of an age: well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me:—but, as I said, 20 On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen; That shall she, marry; I remember it well. 'Tis since the earthquake[E 5] now eleven years; And she was wean'd—I never shall forget it— Of all the days of the year, upon that day: 25 For I had then laid wormwood[E 6] to my dug, Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall; My lord and you were then at Mantua:— Nay, I do bear a brain[E 7]:—but, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple 30 Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug! "Shake," quoth[E 8] the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow, To bid me trudge. And since that time it is eleven years; 35 For then she could stand high-lone;[C 7][E 9] nay, by the rood, She could have run and waddled all about; For even the day before, she broke her brow: And then my husband—God be with his soul! A' was a merry man—took up the child: 40 "Yea," quoth he, "dost thou fall upon thy face? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit; Wilt thou not, Jule?" and, by my holidame,[C 8][E 10] The pretty wretch left crying, and said "Ay." To see now how a jest shall come about! 45 I warrant, an[C 9] I should[C 10] live a thousand years, I never should forget it: "Wilt thou not, Jule?"[C 11] quoth he; And, pretty fool, it stinted[E 11] and said "Ay."

Lady Cap.

Enough of this; I pray thee, hold thy peace.

Nurse.

Yes, madam: yet I cannot choose but laugh, 50 To think it should leave crying, and say "Ay": And yet, I warrant, it had upon it[E 12] brow A bump as big as a young cockerel's stone; A perilous[E 13] knock; and it cried bitterly: "Yea," quoth my husband, "fall'st upon thy face? 55 Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age; Wilt thou not, Jule?" it stinted and said "Ay."[C 12][E 14]

Jul.	And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I.

Nurse.

Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace! Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nursed: 60 An[C 13] I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish.[C 14]

Lady Cap.

Marry, that "marry"[E 15] is the very theme I come to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet, How stands your disposition[C 15] to be married? 65

Jul.	It is an honour[C 16] that I dream not of.

Nurse.

An honour! were not I thine only nurse, I would[E 16] say thou hadst suck'd wisdom[C 17] from thy teat.[C 18]

Lady Cap.

Well, think of marriage now; younger than you, Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, 70 Are made already mothers. By[C 19] my count, I was your mother much upon these years[E 17] That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief; The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.

Nurse.

A man, young lady! lady, such a man 75 As all the world[C 20]—why, he's a man of wax.[C 21][E 18]

Lady Cap.

Verona's summer hath not such a flower.

Nurse.

Nay, he's a flower; in faith, a very flower.

Lady Cap.

What say you?[E 19] can you love the gentleman? This night you shall behold him at our feast: 80 Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face, And find delight writ there with beauty's pen; Examine every married[C 22][E 20] lineament, And see how one another lends content[E 21]; And what obscured[E 22] in this fair volume lies 85 Find written in the margent[E 23] of his eyes. This precious book of love, this unbound[E 24] lover, To beautify him, only lacks a cover[E 25]: The fish[E 26] lives in the sea; and 'tis much pride For fair without the fair within[C 23] to hide: 90 That book in many's eyes doth share the glory, That in gold clasps[E 27] locks in the golden story: So shall you share all that he doth possess, By having him making yourself no less.

Nurse.

No less! nay, bigger: women[C 24] grow by men. 95

Lady Cap.

Speak briefly, can you like of Paris' love?

Jul.	I'll look to like, if looking liking move; But no more deep will I endart[E 28] mine eye Than your consent gives strength to make it[C 25] fly.

Enter a Servant.

Serv.

Madam, the guests are come, supper served 100 up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity. I must hence to wait; I beseech you, follow straight.

Lady Cap.

We follow thee. [Exit Serv.]—Juliet, 105 the County[E 29] stays.

Nurse.

Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days. [Exeunt.

Critical notes

1. 2–4.] In Q, F prose; as verse, Johnson and many later editors.
2. 5, 6.] Capell's arrangement; three lines ending calls, mother, will Q, F.
3. 7–10.] as verse Capell; prose Q, F.
4. 12–15.] I'll … Lammas-tide] Steevens' arrangement.
5. 14. She is] Steevens, shees Q, shee's F.
6. 16–48 Even … "Ay"] Capell; prose Q, F.
7. 36. high-lone] Q1, hylone Q, a lone Q3, alone The rest.
8. 43. holidame] Dyce (ed. 1), holydam Q, holy-dam F.
9. 46. an] Pope, and Q, F
10. should] Q1, Q, shall F.
11. 47. Jule] Q, Iulet F.
12. 50–57. Yes … "Ay"] verse Capell, prose F.
13. 61. An] Pope; And Q, F.
14. 59–62. Peace … wish] verse Pope; prose Q, F.
15. 65. disposition] F, dispositions Q.
16. 66, 67. honour] Q1; houre Q, F.
17. 68. wisdom] Q, F; thy wisdome Qq 4, 5.
18. 67, 68.] verse Pope; prose Q, F.
19. 71. mothers. By] F, mothers by Q.
20. 76. world—] F4; world. Q, F.
21. 75, 76.] verse Pope; prose Q, F.
22. 83. married] Q (alone), severall F.
23. 90. fair within] F, faire, within Q (alone).
24. 95. bigger: women] F, bigger women Q.
25. 99. it] omitted Q, F, Q3; present in the rest.

Explanatory notes

1. 4. God forbid] Staunton fancied that having used lady-bird as a term of endearment, the Nurse recollected that it was a cant term for a woman of loose life. A quotation from Fletcher's Poems, given in Halliwell's Dict. of Archaic and Prov. Words, illustrates the evil sense of the word. Dyce is probably right in rejecting the notion; he explains: "God forbid that any accident should keep her away."
2. 9. thou's] Pope and other editors substitute thou shalt. The abbreviation 'se for shall occurs again in Lear, IV. vi. 246.
3. 13. teen] sorrow, as in Tempest, I. ii. 64. Ff 2–4 here read teeth, which spoils the play on fourteen.
4. 15. Lammas-tide] The first of August, loaf-mass or wheat-harvest. Lady Capulet's reply fixes the dramatic season of the year.
5. 23. the earthquake] Tyrwhitt conjectured a reference here to the earthquake felt in England, April 6, 1580, and he inferred that the play, or this part of it, was written in 1591. Malone pointed out that if we suppose that Juliet was weaned at a year old, she would be only twelve; but she is just fourteen. An earthquake happened at Verona 1348 (Knight), and at Verona 1570 (Hunter); an account of the Italian earthquakes of 1570 was printed in London (Staunton). "In the whole speech of the Nurse there are such discrepancies as render it impossible to arrive at any definite conclusion" (Collier). See Introduction.
6. 26. wormwood] Halliwell quotes from Cawdray's Treasurie (1600) an allusion to mothers putting "worme-wood or mustard" on the breast at weaning time.
7. 29. bear a brain] have a headpiece, have sound memory. The earliest example in New Eng. Dict. is from Skelton's Magnificence, 1526, the latest from Scott's Marmion.
8. 33. quoth] Daniel suggested as possible go'th or goeth; he withdraws the suggestion. He compares "Bounce quoth the guns," Peele, Old Wives' Tale (Dyce's Greene and Peele, p. 454); also in Heywood's Fair Maid of the West (Pearson's reprint, ii. 315): "Rouse quoth the ship," Chettle, Hoffman, I. ii.
9. 36. high-lone] New Eng. Dict.: "An alteration of alone, of obscure origin. High probably expresses degree or intensity"; examples follow from Marston and Middleton. A late example (1760), G. Washington, Diary (MS.), is used of mares. Some early examples are of infants, which leads me to conjecture that it was a favourite nursery word, as nurses nowadays encourage a child to stand loney-proudy. It occurs, however, with no reference to children in Calfhill's Answere to the Treatise of the Crosse (1565), p. 274, Parker Soc., and in Rowley's A Shoemaker a Gentleman (1638).
10. 43. holidame] A different form of halidom (which Dyce ed. 2 reads) induced by the popular error that halidom (sanctity) was = Holy Dame, "our Lady."
11. 48. stinted] ceased to weep. Steevens quotes North, Plutarch (of Antony's wound), "the blood stinted a little."
12. 52. it] its; it is a form of the word more common in the Folio than it's. Ff 3, 4 here alter the word to its, and so many editors.
13. 54. perilous] altered by Capell and many editors to parlous. But need we be more Elizabethan than Elizabethan printers?
14. 57. "Ay"] pronounced, and commonly spelt in Shakespeare's time, I; to which Juliet's say I is a retort.
15. 63. Marry, that "marry"] Pope reads, from Q1, "And that same marriage."
16. 68. I would] many editors follow Pope in the contraction I'd.
17. 72. these years] Juliet being fourteen, Lady Capulet is "much upon" twenty-eight. Staunton observes that her husband, old Capulet, having done masking some thirty years (I. v. 37), must be at least threescore. Knight changes your mother to a mother.
18. 76. a man of wax] a man for beauty like a model in wax; see III. iii. 126. Steevens quotes from Wily Beguiled: "A man as one should picture him in wax"; White, from Euphues and his England: "So exquisite that for shape he must be framed in wax." Dyce, from Fair Em:

    "A body, were it framed of wax
    By all the cunning artists of the world,
    It could not better be proportioned."

    Field, in A Woman is a Weathercock, has, "By Jove, it is a little man of wax." Ingleby's notion that it means a man of full growth does not deserve consideration, and finds no support from 2 Henry IV. I. ii. 180, where Falstaff plays on wax of a candle and wax to grow in size.
19. 79. What say you?] This bravura speech of ingenious conceits is supposed by Ulrici to have a deep dramatic design to exhibit Lady Capulet as an artificial woman of the world in her euphuistic speech. It probably means no more than that the writer was immature and liked such conceits, as seen in Lucrece, quoted line 86, note.
20. 83. married] The word as used here for mutually dependent is illustrated by the "well-tuned sounds By unions married" of Sonnets, viii.; but several has the authority of all texts except Q.
21. 84. content] Perhaps with a play on contents of a volume, though elsewhere in Shakespeare only the plural contents is used for what is contained.
22. 85. obscured] Allen suggests obscure.
23. 86. margent] Obscurities were often explained in old books in the margin. Compare Hamlet, v. ii. 162. Malone quotes a close parallel: Lucrece, 99–102:

    "But she, that never coped with stranger eyes,
    Could pick no meaning from their parling looks,
    Nor read the subtle-shining secrecies
    Writ in the glassy margents of such books."

    So Dekker, Honest Whore (Pearson's Dekker, ii. p. 136): "I read Strange comments in those margines of your lookes."
24. 87. unbound] unattached (of a lover); without binding (of a book).
25. 88. cover] Mason suggests a play on femme couverte, a married woman. That which binds a lover is a wife, and as the lover here is an unbound book, a wife corresponds to the binding or cover of the book. The present passage is the earliest cited in New Eng. Dict, for cover of a book.
26. 89. The fish] Farmer supposed there was an allusion here to fish-skin used for binding books, a far-fetched notion. Lady Capulet, I think, interrupts her metaphor of a book to say Lovers are at large, like fishes in the sea, but ready to be hooked. For the metaphor of lover as a fish, see Chorus preceding Act II. 8, Much Ado, II. iii. 114, and III. i. 26–29, Ant. and Cleop. II. v. 10–15. This parenthetical metaphor occurs after the description of Paris; then the main metaphor proceeds, in a second part, with Juliet (the book-cover) for its theme. Mason proposes shell for sea, the purport of what follows being, he thinks, to show the advantage of having a handsome person to cover a virtuous mind.
27. 92. clasps] Paris's bride is still the binding; there is a play on clasps; the golden clasps (embraces) of a bride shutting in the golden story of love. In Othello, I. i. 127, we have "the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor." T. Bright, Treatise of Melancholy, 1586, p. 36, compares soul and body to lovers handfasted by "that golden claspe of the spirite."
28. 98. endart] Pope, from Q1, reads ingage, which meant entangle.
29. 106. County] Count, probably an adoption of Italian conte with retention of the final syllable. So All's Well, III, vii. 22, "a ring the county wears."