from this that Shakespeare took not only the incidents, but, as will be seen, some of his expressions. Brooke describes Romeus in Mantua, resolved to die, and looking for a shop where he may buy poison.
Brooke's Version, 1562.
And then from street to street he wand'reth up and down
To see if he in any place may find in all the town
A salve meet for his sore, an oil fit for his wound,
And seeking long, alas, too soon, the thing he sought he found,
An apothecary sat unbusied at his door,
Whom by his heavy countenance he guessed to be poor;
And in his shop he saw his boxes were but few,
And in his window of his wares there was so small a shew.
Wherefore our Romeus assuredly hath thought
What by no friendship could be got with money should be bought.
For needy lack is like the poor man to compel
To sell that which the city's law forbiddeth him to sell.
Then by the hand he drew the needy man apart
And with the sight of glittering gold inflamed well his heart.
"Take fifty crowns of gold (quoth he) I give them thee
So that before I part from hence thou shalt deliver me
Some poison strong that may in less than half an hour
Kill him whose wretched hap shall be the poison to devour."
The wretch by covetisse is won and doth assent
To sell the thing whose sale ere long too late he doth repent.
In haste he poison sought and closely he it bound
And then began in whisp'ring voice thus in his ear to round:
"Fair Sir (quoth he), be sure this is the speeding gear,
And more there is than you shall need; for half of that is there
Will serve, I undertake, in less than half an hour
To kill the strongest man alive. Such is the poison's power."
Shakespeare's First Rendering.
This is the rendering of the scene from Shakespeare's first quarto edition, 1597:
As I do remember
Here dwells a pothecarie whom oft I noted
As I past by, whose needie shop is stuft
With beggarly accounts of empty boxes.
