Page:Romeo and Juliet (1917) Yale.djvu/100

88

Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that

Which the commission of thy years and art

Could to no issue of true honour bring.

Be not so long to speak; I long to die,

If what thou speak'st speak not of remedy.

''Fri. L''. Hold, daughter; I do spy a kind of hope,

Which craves as desperate an execution

As that is desperate which we would prevent.

If, rather than to marry County Paris,

Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,

Then is it likely thou wilt undertake

A thing like death to chide away this shame,

That cop'st with death himself to 'scape from it;

And, if thou dar'st, I’ll give thee remedy.

Jul. O! bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,

From off the battlements of any tower;

Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk

Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears;

Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house,

O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,

With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless skulls;

Or bid me go into a new-made grave

And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;

Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble;

And I will do it without fear or doubt,

To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love.

''Fri. L''. Hold, then; go home, be merry, give consent

To marry Paris: Wednesday is to-morrow:

To-morrow night look that thou lie alone,

Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber:

 64 commission: authority

74 chide: drive

75 cop'st: encounterest

79 thievish: infested with robbers

81 charnel-house: place where the dead are laid

83 reeky: full of rank moisture

chapless: lacking the lower jaw

