ROMEO AND JULIET
A monologue from the
play by William
Shakespeare
- FRIAR: Hold thy desperate hand.
- Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art;
- Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote
- The unreasonable fury of a beast.
- Unseemly woman is a seeming man!
- And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!
- Thou hast amazed me. By my holy order,
- I thought thy disposition better tempered.
- Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself?
- And slay thy lady that in thy life lives,
- By doing damnèd hate upon thyself?
- Why railest thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth?
- Since birth and heaven and earth, all three do meet
- In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose.
- Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit,
- Which, like a userer, abound'st in all,
- And uses none in that true sense indeed
- Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.
- Thy noble shape is but a form of wax,
- Digressing from the valor of a man;
- Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,
- Killing that love which thou hast vowed to cherish;
- Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
- Misshapen in the conduct of them both,
- Like powder in a skilless soldier's flask,
- Is set afire by thine own ignorance,
- And thou dismemb'red with thine own defense.
- What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive,
- For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead.
- There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,
- But thou slewest Tybalt. There are thou happy too.
- The law, that threat'ned death, becomes thy friend
- And turns it to exile. There art thou happy.
- A pack of blessings light upon thy back;
- Happiness courts thee in her best array;
- But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
- Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love.
- Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
- Go get thee to thy love, as was decreed,
- Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her.
- But look thou stay not till the watch be set,
- For then thou canst not pass to Mantua,
- Where thou shalt live till we can find a time
- To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,
- Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back
- With twenty hundred thousand times more joy
- Than thou went'st forth in lamentation.
- Go before, nurse. Commend me to thy lady,
- And bid her hasten all the house to bed,
- Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto.
- Romeo is coming.
MORE MONOLOGUES BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE |
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