To help to take her from her borrow’d grave,

Being the time the potion’s force should cease.

But he which bore my letter, Friar John,

Was stay’d by accident; and yesternight

Return’d my letter back. Then all alone

At the prefixed hour of her waking

Came I to take her from her kindred’s vault,

Meaning to keep her closely at my cell

Till I conveniently could send to Romeo.

But when I came, some minute ere the time

Of her awaking, here untimely lay

The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.

She wakes; and I entreated her come forth

And bear this work of heaven with patience.

But then a noise did scare me from the tomb;

And she, too desperate, would not go with me,

But, as it seems, did violence on herself.

All this I know; and to the marriage

Her Nurse is privy. And if ought in this

Miscarried by my fault, let my old life

Be sacrific’d, some hour before his time,

Unto the rigour of severest law.


PRINCE.

We still have known thee for a holy man.

Where’s Romeo’s man? What can he say to this?


BALTHASAR.

I brought my master news of Juliet’s death,

And then in post he came from Mantua

To this same place, to this same monument.

This letter he early bid me give his father,

And threaten’d me with death, going in the vault,

If I departed not, and left him there.


PRINCE.

Give me the letter, I will look on it.

Where is the County’s Page that rais’d the watch?

Sirrah, what made your master in this place?


PAGE.

He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave,

And bid me stand aloof, and so I did.

Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb,

And by and by my master drew on him,

And then I ran away to call the watch.


PRINCE.

This letter doth make good the Friar’s words,

Their course of love, the tidings of her death.

And here he writes that he did buy a poison

Of a poor ’pothecary, and therewithal

Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.

Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague,