Such comfort as do lusty young men feel

When well apparell’d April on the heel

Of limping winter treads, even such delight

Among fresh female buds shall you this night

Inherit at my house. Hear all, all see,

And like her most whose merit most shall be:

Which, on more view of many, mine, being one,

May stand in number, though in reckoning none.

Come, go with me. Go, sirrah, trudge about

Through fair Verona; find those persons out

Whose names are written there, [gives a paper] and to them say,

My house and welcome on their pleasure stay.


 [Exeunt Capulet and

Paris.]
SERVANT.

Find them out whose names are written here!

It is written that the shoemaker should meddle with

his yard and the tailor with his last, the fisher with

his pencil, and the painter with his nets; but I am

sent to find those persons whose names are here writ,

and can never find what names the writing person

hath here writ. I must to the learned. In good time!


 Enter Benvolio and

Romeo.
BENVOLIO.

Tut, man, one fire burns out another’s burning,

One pain is lessen’d by another’s anguish;

Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;

One desperate grief cures with another’s languish:

Take thou some new infection to thy eye,

And the rank poison of the old will die.


ROMEO.

Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.


BENVOLIO.

For what, I pray thee?


ROMEO.

For your broken shin.


BENVOLIO.

Why, Romeo, art thou mad?


ROMEO.

Not mad, but bound more than a madman is:

Shut up in prison, kept without my food,

Whipp’d and tormented and—God-den, good fellow.


SERVANT.

God gi’ go-den. I pray, sir, can you read?


ROMEO.

Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.


SERVANT.

Perhaps you have learned it without book.

But I pray, can you read anything you see?
ROMEO.

Ay, If I know the letters and the language.


SERVANT.

Ye say honestly, rest you merry!


ROMEO.

Stay, fellow; I can read.