The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (Dowden)/Act 4/Scene 3

SCENE III.—The Same. Juliet's chamber.^{[C 1]}

Enter Juliet and Nurse.

Jul.	Ay, those attires are best; but, gentle nurse, I pray thee, leave me to myself to-night; For I have need of many orisons To move the heavens to smile upon my state, Which, well thou know'st, is cross and full of sin.[E 1]5

Enter Lady Capulet.

Lady Cap.

What, are you busy, ho? need you[C 2] my help?

Jul.	No, madam; we have cull'd such necessaries As are behoveful[E 2] for our state to-morrow: So please you, let me now be left alone, And let the nurse this night sit up with you,10 For I am sure you have your hands full all In this so sudden business.

Lady Cap.

Good night: Get thee to bed, and rest, for thou hast need.

[Exeunt Lady Capulet and Nurse.

Jul.

Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,15 That almost freezes up the heat of life:[C 3][E 3] I'll call them back again to comfort me. Nurse!—[C 4]What should she do here? My dismal scene I needs must act alone.— Come, vial.—[E 4]20 What if this mixture do not work at all? Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?[C 5] No, no:—this shall forbid it:—lie thou there.—[C 6][E 5] [Laying down a dagger. What if it be a poison, which the friar Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,25 Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd, Because he married me before to Romeo? I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not, For he hath still been tried a holy man.[E 6] How if, when I am laid into the tomb,30 I wake before the time that Romeo Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point! Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?35 Or, if I live, is it not very like, The horrible conceit of death and night, Together with the terror of the place, As[E 7] in a vault, an ancient receptacle,[E 8] Where, for this[C 7] many hundred years, the bones40 Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd; Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, Lies festering[E 9] in his shroud; where, as they say, At some hours in the night spirits resort: Alack, alack, is it not like that I,45 So early waking, what with loathsome smells And shrieks like mandrakes'[C 8][E 10] torn out of the earth, That living mortals, hearing them, run mad: O, if I wake,[C 9] shall I not be distraught,[E 11] Environed with all these hideous fears?50 And madly play with my forefathers' joints? And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud? And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone, As with a club, dash out my desperate brains? O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost55 Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body Upon a[C 10] rapier's point:—stay, Tybalt, stay!— Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.[C 11][E 12][She falls upon her bed within the curtains.[C 12][E 13]

Critical notes

1. Juliet's chamber] Rowe.
2. 6. ho? need you] Q, F; doo you need Q 1.
3. 16. life] Q, fire F.
4. 18. Nurse!—] Hanmer; Nurse, Q, F.
5. 22. Shall … morning?] Q, F; Must I of force be married to the Countie? Q 1.
6. 23. No … there] Q, F; This shall forbid it. Knife, lye thou there Q 1.
7. 40. this] Q, these F.
8. 47. mandrakes'] Capell (Errata); mandrakes Q, F.
9. 49. O, if I wake] Hanmer; O if I walke Q, F; Or if I wake Qq 4, 5; Or if I walke F 2.
10. 57. a] Q, my F, his F 2.
11. 58. Romeo … thee] Q 1, Pope; Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, heeres drinke, I drinke to thee Q, F.
12. She … curtains] Q 1; omitted Q, F.

Explanatory notes

1. 5. sin] In Q 1 Nurse speaks, "Well theres a cleane smocke under your pillow, and so good night," with which words she departs.
2. 8. behoveful] useful. Only here in Shakespeare; New Eng. Dict. says: "Extremely common from 1400 to 1700; but used since only by archaists." The only example after 1736 is cited from Carlyle's Frederick.
3. 15, 16. I … life] So Brooke's poem: "A sweat as cold as mountaine yse pearst through her slender skin."
4. 20. Come, vial—] The dramatic pause following vial in this (Hanmer's) arrangement is disregarded by Keightley, who emends thus:

   "Nurse!—What should she do here? My dismal scene
   I needs must act alone. Come, vial, come!"

5. 23. lie thou there] Juliet had already provided herself with a dagger; see IV. i. 54. Gifford says that daggers were worn in Shakespeare's time by every woman in England. They certainly, as Steevens shows by several quotations which speak of "wedding knives," formed part of the accoutrements of a bride.
6. 29. For … man] Instead of this one line Q 1 has two, the second of which Steevens and other editors make part of the text:

   "He is a holy and religious Man:
   I will not entertaine so bad a thought."

7. 39. As] Schmidt takes "As" here to mean "to wit," and cites many other passages of Shakespeare, where, he maintains, it has a like meaning. Steevens supposes that the charnel at Stratford-on-Avon was in Shakespeare's mind when he wrote these lines.
8. 39. receptacle] Rolfe: "For the accent compare Titus Andronicus, I. i. 92: 'O sacred receptacle of my joys.'"
9. 43. festering] becoming loathsome by corruption, as in Henry V. IV. iii. 88.
10. 47. mandrakes'] The mandrake, or mandragora (the opiate properties of which are spoken of in Othello, III. iii. 330), having a forked root, was supposed to be like a man, to have a proportion of animal life, and (as T. Newton in his Herball of the Bible, 1587, notices) possibly to be engendered by dead criminals who had been executed and buried. When torn from the earth the mandrake uttered shrieks; the uprooter went mad; it was wise, as Bulleine notices (Bulwark of Defence against Sickness, 1575), to tie a dog to the root and let him be the victim, stopping one's ears meanwhile "for feare of the terrible shriek and cry." References in Elizabethan dramatists to the mandrake and its terrors are not uncommon. See 2 Henry VI. III. ii. 310: "Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan?"
11. 49. Distraught] distracted.
12. 58. Romeo, I come] Dyce suggests that heeres drinke, Q, F, may be a corrupted stage-direction foisted into the text. Daniel writes : "I incline also to believe that the triple repetition of Romeo in those editions may have been intended as an addition to the text as given in Q 1, to be murmured by Juliet as she falls asleep." Johnson read, "Romeo, here's drink! Romeo, I drink to thee!"; Knight (Stratford ed.), "Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, I drink to thee."
13. 58. She falls …] The Cambridge editors introduce this stage-direction from Q 1. Daniel writes: "The space 'within the curtains,' where Juliet's bed is placed, was the space at the back of the stage proper, beneath the raised stage or gallery which served for a balcony …; this was divided from the stage proper by a traverse or curtain."