The Illustrated Works of Shakespeare/Illustrated Works of Shakespeare, The (1990)(Animated Pixels)[!][CDTV-PC].iso/shakes/text/32/02_04

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 10KB | 298 lines

A Street.
 Enter BENVOLIO and MERCUTIO.

Mercutio    Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home
    tonight?

Benvolio    Not to his father's; I spoke with his man.

Mercutio    Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline,
    Torments him so that he will sure run mad.

Benvolio    Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet,
    Hath sent a letter to his father's house.

Mercutio    A challenge, on my life.

Benvolio    Romeo will answer it.

Mercutio    Any man that can write may answer a letter.

Benvolio    Nay, he will answer the letter's master, how he dares,
    being dared.

Mercutio    Alas poor Romeo, he is already dead; stabbed with a white
    wench's black eye, run through the ear with a love song,
    the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's
    butt-shaft - and is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

Benvolio    Why, what is Tybalt?

Mercutio    More than Prince of Cats. O, he's the courageous captain of
    compliments. He fights as you sing prick-song: keeps time,
    distance, and proportion; he rests his minim rests, one,
    two, and the third in your bosom; the very butcher of a
    silk button. A duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the
    very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the
    immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hay!

Benvolio    The what?

Mercutio    The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes,
    these new tuners of accent. By Jesu, a very good blade, a
    very tall man, a very good whore! Why, is not this a
    lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus
    afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers,
    these 'pardon-me's', who stand so much on the new form that
    they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? O their bones,
    their bones!

                               Enter ROMEO.

Benvolio    Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo!

Mercutio    Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how
    art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch
    flowed in. Laura to his lady was a kitchen wench - marry,
    she had a better love to berhyme her - Dido a dowdy;
    Cleopatra a gypsy; Helen and Hero hildings and harlots;
    Thisbe a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signor
    Romeo, bonjour! There's a French salutation to your French
    slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.

Romeo    Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?

Mercutio    The slip, sir, the slip; can you not conceive?

Romeo    Pardon, good Mercutio; my business was great, and in such a
    case as mine a man may strain courtesy.

Mercutio    That's as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a
    man to bow in the hams.

Romeo    Meaning to curtsy.

Mercutio    Thou hast most kindly hit it.

Romeo    A most courteous exposition.

Mercutio    Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.

Romeo    Pink for flower.

Mercutio    Right.

Romeo    Why, then is my pump well flowered.

Mercutio    Sure wit; follow me this jest now, till thou hast worn out
    thy pump, that, when the single sole of it is worn, the
    jest may remain, after the wearing, solely singular.

Romeo    O single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness.

Mercutio    Come between us, good Benvolio; my wit faints.

Romeo    Switch and spurs, switch and spurs, or I'll cry a match.

Mercutio    Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done; for
    thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than I
    am sure I have in my whole five. Was I with you there for
    the goose?

Romeo    Thou wast never with me for anything when thou wast not
    there for the goose.

Mercutio    I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.

Romeo    Nay, good goose, bite not.

Mercutio    Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp
    sauce.

Romeo    And is it not then well served in to a sweet goose?

Mercutio    O, here's a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch
    narrow to an ell broad.

Romeo    I stretch it out for that word 'broad', which, added to the
    goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.

Mercutio    Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art
    thou sociable, now art thou Romeo, now art thou what thou
    art, by art as well as by nature; for this drivelling love
    is like a great natural that runs lolling up and down to
    hide his bauble in a hole.

Benvolio    Stop there, stop there.

Mercutio    Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.

Benvolio    Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.

Mercutio    O, thou art deceived; I would have made it short; for I was
    come to the whole depth of my tale and meant, indeed, to
    occupy the argument no longer.

                      Enter NURSE and her man PETER.

Romeo    Here's goodly gear.

Benvolio    A sail! A sail!

Mercutio    Two, two; a shirt and a smock.

Nurse    Peter!

Peter    Anon.

Nurse    My fan, Peter.

Mercutio    Good Peter, to hide her face, for her fan's the fairer
    face.

Nurse    God ye good morrow, gentlemen.

Mercutio    God ye good e'en, fair gentlewoman.

Nurse    Is it good e'en?

Mercutio    'Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is
    now upon the prick of noon.

Nurse    Out upon you! What a man are you!

Romeo    One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for himself to mar.

Nurse    By my troth, it is well said. 'For himself to mar' quoth
    a'? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I may find the
    young Romeo?

Romeo    I can tell you; but young Romeo will be older when you have
    found him than he was when you sought him. I am the
    youngest of that name, for fault of a worse.

Nurse    You say well.

Mercutio    Yea, is the worst well? Very well took, i'faith; wisely,
    wisely.

Nurse    If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with you.

Benvolio    She will endite him to some supper.

Mercutio    A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho!

Romeo    What hast thou found?

Mercutio    No hare, sir, unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is
    something stale and hoar ere it be spent.

    [Sings.]    An old hare hoar,
            And an old hare hoar,
                Is very good meat in Lent.
            But a hare that is hoar
            Is too much for a score,
                When it hoars ere it be spent.

    Romeo, will you come to your father's? We'll to dinner
    thither.

Romeo    I will follow you.

Mercutio    Farewell, ancient lady; farewell,
                                [Sings.] Lady, lady, lady.
                                            [Exeunt MERCUTIO and BENVOLIO.

Nurse    I pray you, sir, what saucy merchant was this that was so
    full of his ropery?

Romeo    A gentleman, Nurse, that loves to hear himself talk, and
    will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a
    month.

Nurse    An a' speak anything against me I'll take him down, and a'
    were lustier than he is - and twenty such Jacks!. And if I
    cannot, I'll find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none
    of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skaines-mates.
    [To PETER.] And thou must stand by too, and suffer every
    knave to use me at his pleasure!

Peter    I saw no man use you at his pleasure; if I had, my weapon
    should quickly have been out, I warrant you. I dare draw as
    soon as another man if I see occasion in a good quarrel,
    and the law on my side.

Nurse    Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every part about me
    quivers. Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word; and, as I
    told you, my young lady bid me enquire you out. What she
    bid me say, I will keep to myself; but first let me tell
    ye, if ye should lead her in a fool's paradise, as they
    say, it were a very gross kind of behaviour, as they say,
    for the gentlewoman is young; and therefore, if you should
    deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be
    offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.

Romeo    Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I protest unto
    thee-

Nurse    Good heart, and, i'faith, I will tell her as much. Lord,
    Lord, she will be a joyful woman.

Romeo    What wilt thou tell her, Nurse? Thou dost not mark me.

Nurse    I will tell her, sir, that you do protest; which, as I take
    it, is a gentlemanlike offer.

Romeo    Bid her devise
    Some means to come to shrift this afternoon;
    And there she shall at Friar Laurence' cell
    Be shrived and married. Here is for thy pains.

Nurse    No; truly, sir, not a penny.

Romeo    Go to, I say you shall.

Nurse    This afternoon, sir? Well, she shall be there.

Romeo    And stay, good Nurse, behind the abbey wall.
    Within this hour my man shall be with thee,
    And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair,
    Which to the high top-gallant of my joy
    Must be my convoy in the secret night.
    Farewell. Be trusty, and I'll quit thy pains.
    Farewell. Commend me to thy mistress.

Nurse    Now God in heaven bless thee! Hark you, sir.

Romeo    What sayst thou, my dear Nurse?

Nurse    Is your man secret? Did you ne'er hear say
    Two may keep counsel, putting one away?

Romeo    I warrant thee my man's as true as steel.

Nurse    Well, sir, my mistress is the sweetest lady - Lord, Lord,
    when 'twas a little prating thing - O! there is a nobleman
    in town, one Paris, that would fain lay knife aboard; but
    she, good soul, had as lief see a toad, a very toad, as see
    him. I anger her sometimes and tell her that Paris is the
    properer man; but, I'll warrant you, when I say so she
    looks as pale as any clout in the versal world. Doth not
    rosemary and Romeo begin both with a letter?

Romeo    Ay, Nurse, what of that? Both with an R.

Nurse    Ah, mocker! - that's the dog's name. 'R' is for the - no, I
    know it begins with some other letter; and she hath the
    prettiest sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it
    would do you good to hear it.

Romeo    Commend me to thy lady.

Nurse    Ay, a thousand times. Peter!
                                            [Exit ROMEO.
Peter    Anon.

Nurse    Before, and apace.
                                            [Exeunt.