The boy gives warning something doth approach.

What cursed foot wanders this way tonight,

To cross my obsequies and true love’s rite?

What, with a torch! Muffle me, night, awhile.


 [Retires.]
 Enter Romeo and

Balthasar with a torch, mattock, &c.
ROMEO.

Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.

Hold, take this letter; early in the morning

See thou deliver it to my lord and father.

Give me the light; upon thy life I charge thee,

Whate’er thou hear’st or seest, stand all aloof

And do not interrupt me in my course.

Why I descend into this bed of death

Is partly to behold my lady’s face,

But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger

A precious ring, a ring that I must use

In dear employment. Therefore hence, be gone.

But if thou jealous dost return to pry

In what I further shall intend to do,

By heaven I will tear thee joint by joint,

And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs.

The time and my intents are savage-wild;

More fierce and more inexorable far

Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.


BALTHASAR.

I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.


ROMEO.

So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that.

Live, and be prosperous, and farewell, good fellow.


BALTHASAR.

For all this same, I’ll hide me hereabout.

His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.


 [Retires]
ROMEO.

Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,

Gorg’d with the dearest morsel of the earth,

Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,


 [Breaking open the door of the monument.]
And in despite, I’ll cram thee with more food.
PARIS.

This is that banish’d haughty Montague

That murder’d my love’s cousin,—with which grief,

It is supposed, the fair creature died,—

And here is come to do some villanous shame

To the dead bodies. I will apprehend him.


 [Advances.]
Stop thy unhallow’d toil, vile Montague.

Can vengeance be pursu’d further than death?

Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee.