Romeo and Juliet Act 5 Scene 3

Give me the torch, boy. Go and keep your distance —

and put it out; I don't want to be seen.

Lie down flat under those yew trees

with your ear against the hollow ground.

Then nobody can set foot in this churchyard —

the soil's loose from all the grave-digging —

without you hearing it. Whistle to me then,

as a signal that something's coming.

Give me those flowers. Do as I say. Go.

(to himself) I'm almost too scared to stand alone

here in the churchyard — but I'll risk it.

Sweet flower, I scatter flowers on your bridal bed —

oh, grief: your canopy is dust and stone.

I'll sprinkle it with perfumed water every night,

or, failing that, with tears wrung out by grief.

The funeral rites I'll perform for you

will be to strew your grave with flowers and weep.

The boy's warning me that someone's coming.

Whose cursed feet are wandering here tonight,

interrupting my mourning and my love's rites?

With a torch, too! Night, hide me for a moment.

Give me that pickaxe and the crowbar.

Here, take this letter. Early tomorrow morning

make sure you deliver it to my father.

Give me the light. On your life, I order you:

whatever you hear or see, stay well back

and don't interrupt what I'm doing.

The reason I'm going down into this bed of death

is partly to see my wife's face,

but mainly to take from her dead finger

a precious ring — a ring I need

for an important purpose. So go, get out.

But if you come sneaking back to spy

on what I'm going to do next,

I swear I'll tear you apart joint by joint

and scatter your limbs across this hungry churchyard.

The hour and my intentions are savage —

far fiercer and more unstoppable

than starving tigers or a roaring sea.

I'll go, sir, and not disturb you.

That's how you'll show me friendship. Take this money.

Live well and prosper. Goodbye, good fellow.

(to himself) All the same, I'll hide somewhere nearby.

His face frightens me, and I don't trust his intentions.

You disgusting stomach, you womb of death,

stuffed with the most precious morsel on earth —

I'm forcing your rotten jaws open,

and out of spite I'll stuff you with more food!

That's the banished, arrogant Montague

who murdered my love's cousin — the grief of which,

they say, is what killed her.

And now he's come to commit some vile outrage

on the dead bodies. I'll arrest him.

Stop your unholy work, vile Montague!

Can revenge be carried on past death itself?

Condemned villain, I'm arresting you.

Obey and come with me — you have to die.

I do indeed. That's exactly why I came.

Good gentle young man, don't provoke a desperate one.

Run away and leave me. Think about these dead —

let them frighten you off. I beg you, young man,

don't put another sin on my head

by driving me to rage. Please — go!

I swear I care about you more than about myself,

since I came here armed against my own life.

Don't stay. Go. Live, and say afterwards

that a madman's mercy told you to run.

I reject your pleading,

and I arrest you here as a criminal.

You're going to provoke me? Then come on, boy!

Oh God, they're fighting! I'll go call the watchmen.

I'm killed!

If you have any mercy,

open the tomb and lay me beside Juliet.

I will, I promise. — Let me look at his face.

Mercutio's relative — noble Count Paris!

What did my servant say, when my churning mind

wasn't listening as we rode? I think

he told me Paris was supposed to marry Juliet.

Didn't he say that? Or did I dream it?

Or am I mad — hearing him talk about Juliet

and imagining it? Give me your hand,

fellow entry in misfortune's ledger.

I'll bury you in a triumphant grave.

A grave? No — a lantern, murdered boy,

because Juliet lies here, and her beauty turns

this vault into a bright banquet hall.

Death, lie there, buried by a dead man.

How often men on the point of death

have felt suddenly cheerful — what their nurses call

the lightening before death. Oh, how can I

call this a lightening? — My love! My wife!

Death has sucked the honey from your breath

but has had no power over your beauty yet.

You're not conquered. Beauty's flag is still

crimson in your lips and cheeks,

and death's pale flag hasn't been raised there. (He notices she looks alive. He is three minutes from finding out why.)

Tybalt — are you lying there in your bloody shroud?

What better favour can I do you

than to use the same hand that cut your life short

to end the life of the man who was your enemy?

Forgive me, cousin! — Ah, dear Juliet,

why are you still so beautiful? Am I to believe

that insubstantial death is in love with you,

and that the thin, hated monster is keeping

you here in the dark to be his mistress?

Fearing that, I'll stay with you forever

and never leave this palace of dim night

again. Here, here I'll stay,

with the worms who are your chambermaids. Here

I'll take my eternal rest,

and shake the yoke of unlucky stars

off this world-weary body. Eyes, take your last look!

Arms, take your last embrace! And lips —

you doors of breath — seal with a rightful kiss

an endless contract with all-consuming death.

Come, bitter escort; come, foul-tasting guide!

You desperate pilot — now run

this seasick, weary ship straight onto the rocks!

Here's to my love!

Honest apothecary!

Your drugs are fast. And so, with a kiss, I die.

Saint Francis help me! How many times tonight

have my old feet stumbled over graves? — Who's there?

Someone friendly — and someone who knows you well.

Bless you! Tell me, my friend,

what torch is that, wasting its light

on maggots and eyeless skulls? As far as I can tell,

it's burning inside the Capulet tomb.

It is, holy sir. And my master's in there —

someone you're fond of.

Who?

Romeo.

How long has he been in there?

A full half hour.

Come with me to the vault.

I don't dare, sir.

My master thinks I've left,

and he threatened me terrifyingly with death

if I stayed to watch what he was doing.

Stay here, then. I'll go alone. I'm filling with dread —

I'm badly afraid something terrible has happened.

While I was asleep under this yew tree

I dreamed my master fought someone

and killed him.

Romeo!

God help us — what blood is this, staining

the stone entrance of this tomb?

What are these abandoned, bloody swords doing

lying stained beside this place of peace?

Romeo! Oh, so pale! Who else — Paris too?

Soaked in blood? What a cruel hour

is to blame for this pitiful accident!

— The lady is stirring.

Oh, comforting friar! Where's my husband?

I remember perfectly where I'm supposed to be,

and here I am. Where's my Romeo?

I hear a noise. Lady, come away from that nest

of death, disease, and unnatural sleep.

A power greater than we can argue with

has wrecked our plans. Come, come away.

Your husband is lying dead beside you,

and Paris too. Come — I'll place you

in a convent of holy nuns.

Don't stop to ask questions — the watchmen are coming.

Come on, go, good Juliet.

I don't dare stay any longer.

Go on, get out — because I'm not leaving.

What's this? A cup, closed in my love's hand?

Poison, I see, was his untimely end.

Oh, you selfish man — drank it all and left no friendly drop

to help me follow you? I'll kiss your lips.

Maybe some poison is still on them,

to let me die by a cure.

Your lips are warm. (Three words. She has missed him by minutes and she knows it.)

(offstage) Lead on, boy — which way?

A noise? Then I'll be quick. Oh, welcome dagger!

This is your sheath.

Rust in there, and let me die.

This is the place — there, where the torch is burning.

There's blood on the ground. Search the churchyard.

Some of you go — arrest anyone you find.

What a pitiful sight. Here's the Count, killed,

and Juliet bleeding, warm, freshly dead —

who's been buried here for two days.

Go, tell the Prince. Run to the Capulets.

Wake the Montagues. The rest of you, search.

We can see the ground where these horrors lie,

but the true cause of all this misery

we can't work out without more detail.

Here's Romeo's servant. We found him in the churchyard.

Hold him securely until the Prince gets here.

Here's a friar, trembling, sighing and crying.

We took this pickaxe and spade off him

as he was leaving this side of the churchyard.

Highly suspicious. Detain the friar as well.

What disaster is awake this early,

calling us out of our morning's rest?

What can it be, that people are shrieking about outside?

People in the street are crying 'Romeo,'

some 'Juliet,' some 'Paris' — and they're all running,

shouting, toward our family tomb.

What is this terror screaming in our ears?

Your Majesty, Count Paris lies here killed,

and Romeo dead, and Juliet — dead before this —

warm, and freshly killed.

Search, investigate, and find out how this foul murder happened.

Here's a friar, and dead Romeo's servant,

carrying tools suitable for opening

these tombs.

Oh God! Wife, look how our daughter is bleeding!

This dagger went astray — look, its sheath

hangs empty on the Montague boy's belt —

and it's mis-sheathed in my daughter's chest!

Oh God — this sight of death is like a bell

summoning my old age to the grave.

Come, Montague. You're up early

to see your son and heir laid down even earlier.

My lord, my wife died tonight.

Grief at my son's exile stopped her breath.

What further misery is plotting against my old age?

Look, and you'll see.

Oh, you badly-taught boy! What kind of manners are these,

pushing ahead of your father into a grave?

Hold back your outcry for a while,

until we can clear up these confusions

and learn their source, their origin, their true course.

Then I'll be the commander of your grief

and lead you even to death. Meanwhile, be patient,

and let misfortune be patience's servant.

Bring forward the suspects.

I'm the chief suspect, though least able to have done it,

and the most suspected, since the time and place

point at me in this dreadful killing.

So here I stand, both to accuse and clear

myself — condemned and excused at once.

Then tell us at once everything you know.

I'll be brief — the little breath I have left

won't last as long as a long-winded story.

Romeo, dead there, was married to that Juliet;

and she, dead there, was Romeo's faithful wife.

I married them, and their secret wedding day

was Tybalt's death day. Tybalt's untimely death

got the new bridegroom banished from the city —

and it was for Romeo, not Tybalt, that Juliet grieved.

You, to lift that siege of grief off her,

engaged her and would have forced her to marry

Count Paris. Then she came to me,

wild-eyed, and told me to find some way

to free her from this second marriage,

or she'd kill herself right there in my cell.

So I gave her — using my knowledge —

a sleeping potion, which worked exactly

as I intended: it gave her

the appearance of death. Meanwhile I wrote to Romeo

telling him to come here on this terrible night

to help take her from her borrowed grave,

that being when the potion would wear off.

But the man carrying my letter, Friar John,

was delayed by accident, and last night

brought my letter back. So, alone,

at the appointed hour of her waking,

I came to take her from her family's vault,

meaning to hide her at my cell

until I could get word to Romeo.

But when I arrived, a minute or so before

she woke, here lay — far too soon —

noble Paris and true Romeo, dead.

She woke, and I begged her to come away

and bear heaven's work patiently.

But then a noise frightened me out of the tomb,

and she, too desperate, wouldn't come with me,

and, it seems, did violence to herself.

That's everything I know. The Nurse also knew

about the marriage. And if any of this

went wrong through my fault, let my old life

be sacrificed an hour before its time

to the harshest rigour of the law.

We've always known you as a holy man.

Where's Romeo's servant? What can he tell us?

I brought my master the news of Juliet's death.

He rode here at once from Mantua,

to this very place, to this tomb.

He told me to give this letter to his father in the morning,

and threatened me with death, as he went into the vault,

if I didn't leave him there.

Give me the letter. I'll look at it.

Where's the Count's page, who called the watch?

Boy — what was your master doing here?

He came with flowers to scatter on his lady's grave,

and told me to stand back, which I did.

Then someone came with a light to open the tomb,

and soon my master drew his sword on him,

and I ran off to call the watch.

This letter confirms the friar's account —

their love affair, the news of her death.

And here he writes that he bought poison

from a poor apothecary, and with it

came to this vault to die and lie with Juliet.

Where are these enemies? Capulet! Montague!

See what a punishment has been laid on your hatred —

heaven has found a way to kill your joys with love.

And I, for turning a blind eye to your feuding,

have lost a pair of relatives. Everyone is punished.

Brother Montague, give me your hand.

Let this be my daughter's marriage settlement — I can ask

for nothing more.

But I can give you more.

I'll have a statue of her made in pure gold,

so that as long as Verona bears that name

no figure will be valued so highly

as that of true and faithful Juliet.

Romeo's shall lie beside his wife's, just as rich —

poor sacrifices to our hatred!

This morning brings a gloomy peace with it.

The sun is too sorrowful to show its face.

Go now, and we'll talk more about these sad matters.

Some will be pardoned, and some punished.

Because there was never a story of more sorrow

than this one, of Juliet and her Romeo.