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SC. III.
ROMEO AND JULIET
171
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The doors of breath,[E 1] seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing[E 2] death!115 Come, bitter conduct,[E 3] come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy[E 4] sea-sick weary bark! Here's to my love! [Drinks][C 1] O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick.—Thus with a kiss I die.120[Dies.[C 2] |
Enter,[C 3] at the other end of the churchyard. Friar Laurence, with a lantern, crow, and spade.
| Fri. | Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night Have my old feet stumbled[E 5] at graves!—Who's there? |
| Bal.[E 6] | Here's one, a friend, and one that knows you well. |
| Fri. | Bliss be upon you! Tell me, good my friend, What torch is yond, that vainly lends his light125 To grubs and eyeless skulls? as I discern, It burneth in the Capels' monument. |
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- ↑ 114. doors of breath] Compare 2 Henry IV. IV. v. 31: "gates of breath," in the sense of lips.
- ↑ 115. dateless … engrossing] Dateless is without a term, everlasting, as in Sonnets, xxx. 6: "death's dateless night." "Engrossing," probably not copying a document, but rather buying up wholesale, as in Sonnets, cxxxiii. 6. So Misselden, Free Trade, 71 (1622): "Some one or few … do joine together to engrosse and buy in a Commodotie."
- ↑ 116. conduct] See [[../../Act 3/Scene 2|III. i. 130]].
- ↑ 118. thy] Pope read my, which Capell and Dyce adopt. Rolfe justly observes that Romeo has given up the helm to the "desperate pilot," who now is master of the bark.
- ↑ 122. stumbled] an evil omen, referred to in 3 Henry VI. IV. vii. 11. Sir Tobie Matthew, stumbling on the morning of his intended reception into the Roman Catholic Church, was tempted to postpone it to another day. After this line (122) Steevens inserts from Q 1, "Who is it that consorts, so late, the dead?"
- ↑ 123. Bal.] So, and in subsequent speeches, Qq 4, 5; "Man." Q, F.
