The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (Dowden)/Act 5/Scene 1

ACT V

SCENE I.—Mantua.^{[C 1]} A Street.

Enter Romeo.

Rom.

If I may trust the flattering truth[C 2][E 1] of sleep, My dreams presage some joyful news at hand: My bosom's lord[E 2] sits lightly in his throne, And all this day an[E 3] unaccustom'd spirit Shifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.5 I dreamt my lady came and found me dead— Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think!— And breathed[E 4] such life with kisses in my lips That I revived, and was an emperor. Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd,10 When but love's shadows are so rich in joy! Enter Balthasar, booted.[C 3] News from Verona! How now, Balthasar! Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar? How doth my lady? Is my father well? How fares my Juliet?[C 4] that I ask again;15 For nothing can be ill if she be well.

Bal.

Then she is well,[E 5] and nothing can be ill: Her body sleeps in Capel's[E 6] monument, And her immortal part with angels lives.[C 5] I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault,20 And presently took post to tell it you: O, pardon me for bringing these ill news, Since you did leave it for my office, sir.

Rom.	Is it even[C 6] so? then I defy[E 7] you,[C 7] stars! Thou know'st my lodging: get me ink and paper,25 And hire post-horses; I will hence to-night.

Bal.	I do beseech you, sir, have patience:[C 8] Your looks are pale and wild, and do import Some misadventure.

Rom.	Some misadventure. Tush, thou are deceived; Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do.30 Hast thou no letters to me from the friar?

Bal.	No, my good lord.

Rom.

No, my good lord. No matter: get thee gone, And hire those horses; I'll be with thee straight. [Exit[C 9] Balthazar. Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. Let's see for means:—O mischief, thou art swift35 To enter in the thoughts of desperate men! I do remember an apothecary, And hereabouts he[C 10] dwells, which[C 11] late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming[E 8] brows, Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,40 Sharp misery had worn him to the bones: And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator[E 9] stuff'd and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes,[E 10]45 Green earthen pots,[E 11] bladders and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses, Were thinly scatter'd to make up a show. Noting this penury, to myself I said, An if[C 12] a man did need a poison now,50 Whose sale is present[E 12] death in Mantua, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him. O, this same thought did but forerun my need, And this same needy man must sell it me. As I remember, this should be the house:55 Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut.— What, ho! apothecary!

Enter Apothecary.^{[C 13]}

Ap.	What, ho! apothecary! Who calls so loud?

Rom.

Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor; Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have A dram of poison, such soon-speeding[C 14] gear[E 13]60 As will disperse itself through all the veins That the life-weary taker may fall dead, And that the trunk may be discharged of breath, As violently as hasty powder fired Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.65

Ap.	Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law Is death to any he[E 14] that utters them.

Rom.

Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness, And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks, Need and oppression starveth[E 15] in thy eyes,70 Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back;[C 15] The world is not thy friend nor the world's law: The world affords no law to make thee rich; Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

Ap.	My poverty, but not my will, consents.75

Rom.	I pay[C 16][E 16] thy poverty, and not thy will.

Ap.	Put this[E 17] in any liquid thing you will, And drink it off; and, if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.

Rom.

There is[C 17] thy gold, worse poison to men's souls80 Doing more murder[C 18] in this loathsome world Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell: I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none. Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in[C 19] flesh.— Come, cordial and not poison, go with me85 To Juliet's grave, for there must I use thee.[Exeunt.

Critical notes

1. Mantua] Rowe.
2. 1. truth] Q, F; eye Q 1.
3. 11. Enter …] Enter Balthasar his man booted Q 1; Enter Romeos man Q, F.
4. 15. fares my Juliet] Q 1; doth my Lady Juliet Q, F.
5. 19. lives] Q, live F.
6. 24. even] F, in Q, e'en Collier;
7. ⁠defy you] Pope; defie my Q 1; denie you Q, F.
8. 27. I … patience] Q, F; Pardon me Sir, I will not leave you thus, Q 1.
9. 33. Exit] Rowe; after lord, line 32, Q, F.
10. 38. he] F 2, a Q, omitted F;
11. which] Q, F; whom Q 1.
12. 50. An if} Q, F; And if Q 1, Q 5.
13. 57. Enter …] Q 1, F; omitted Q.
14. 60. soon-speeding] hyphen F 4.
15. 71. Contempt … back] Q, F; Upon thy backe hangs ragged Miserie Q 1.
16. 76. pay] Q 1, Qq 4, 5; pray Q, F.
17. 80. There is] Q, There's F.
18. 81. murder] Q, F; murders Qq 4, 5.
19. 84. thyself in] Q, F; thee into Q 1.

Explanatory notes

1. 1. truth] I do not doubt that Shakespeare originally wrote eye Q 1—"eye of sleep" meaning visions of the night. We have in Sonnets, xxxiii., "flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye"; in Richard III. I. iv. 271, "if thine eye be not a flatterer"; in King John, II. i. 503, "the flattering table of her eye"; compare also Julius Cæsar, IV. iii. 89, 90. But, as Daniel notes, in Q 1 of the present play for II. ii. 141, we have "Too flattering true to be substantial"; possibly when flattering truth here was substituted for flattering eye, the flattering true of the earlier passage became flattering sweet. Mr. Fleay suggested that flattering means in both passages (when connected with true and truth) seeming. It is an old saying that morning dreams come true; can "flattering truth of sleep" mean a flattering morning-dream? Various emendations of truth have been made or proposed; Warburton, ruth; Collier (MS.) death; Singer soother (for "truth of"); White sooth, in the sense of augury.
2. 3. bosom's lord] Steevens notes that, in Chester's Love's Martyr (1601), the line "How his deepe bosomes lord the dutchess thwarted" is explained in a marginal note "Cupid." Malone compares Othello, III. iii. 448: "Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne." Again, in Twelfth Night, I. i. 38, the heart is the throne, the lover its king; and in the same play, II. iv. 21, "the seat where Love is throned" seems to mean the heart. Bosom's lord perhaps, then, means Love; but perhaps, more obviously, it means the heart.
3. 4. this day an] Misprinted "this an day an" in F, and altered in F 2 to "this winged."
4. 8. breathed] Steevens suggests that Shakespeare remembered Marlowe's line in Hero and Leander: "He kiss'd her and breathed life into her lips." That poem was not published till 1598.
5. 17. well] See IV. v. 76, note.
6. 18. Capel's] Capels Q, F. Rolfe: "Capel's seems better here than Capels', on account of the omission of the article; but V. iii. 127, 'the Capels' monument.'" Shakespeare found Capel and Capulet used indiscriminately in Brooke's poem (Malone).
7. 24. defy] Deny may be right, in the sense disown, repudiate. Delius cites King John, I. i. 252: "I deny the devil. See V. iii. 111.
8. 39. overwhelming] a word which Shakespeare connects with brows in Venus and Adonis, line 183, and Henry V. III. i. II.
9. 43. alligator] Malone notes that Nash in Have with You to Saffron Walden, 1596, refers to an "apothecary's crocodile or stuffed alligator" as part of his shop properties. It appears in Hogarth's Marriage à la Mode, plate iii. So, too, in Garth's Dispensary.
10. 45. empty boxes] Some details and words are imported into the play from the corresponding description in Brooke's poem.
11. 46. Green earthen pots] Halliwell quotes a letter, August 1594, from Sir J. Cæsar showing that the manufacture of these pots was carried on in England at that date. They were "drunk in by the gentlemen of the Temple."
12. 51. present] immediate. Knight says there was no law in England against the sale of poisons, but (quoting Raleigh's Discourse of Tenures in proof) that such a law was in force in Spain and Portugal.
13. 60. soon-speeding gear] Rolfe: "quick-dispatching stuff." From Brooke's poem, "Faire syr (quoth he) be sure this is the speeding gere."
14. 67. any he] Delius cites Taming of the Shrew, III. ii. 236: "I'll bring mine action on the proudest he." Other examples could be added.
15. 70. starveth] are hungry. Changed by Rowe (following Otway's version in Caius Marius) to stareth. Pope read stare within; starteth in has been suggested.
16. 76. pay] Knight retains pray Q, F; but the line should be read in connection with "take this," line 74.
17. 77. Put this] Steevens suggests that Shakespeare had not quite forgot a somewhat similar commendation of his poison by the Potecary in Chaucer's Pardoneres Tale.