How fares my Juliet? That I ask again;

For nothing can be ill if she be well.


BALTHASAR.

Then she is well, and nothing can be ill.

Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument,

And her immortal part with angels lives.

I saw her laid low in her kindred’s vault,

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.


ROMEO.

Is it even so? Then I defy you, stars!

Thou know’st my lodging. Get me ink and paper,

And hire post-horses. I will hence tonight.


BALTHASAR.

I do beseech you sir, have patience.

Your looks are pale and wild, and do import

Some misadventure.


ROMEO.

Tush, thou art deceiv’d.

Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do.

Hast thou no letters to me from the Friar?


BALTHASAR.

No, my good lord.


ROMEO.

No matter. Get thee gone,

And hire those horses. I’ll be with thee straight.


 [Exit Balthasar.]
Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight.

Let’s see for means. O mischief thou art swift

To enter in the thoughts of desperate men.

I do remember an apothecary,—

And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted

In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows,

Culling of simples, meagre were his looks,

Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;

And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,

An alligator stuff’d, and other skins

Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves

A beggarly account of empty boxes,

Green earthen pots, 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,

And if a man did need a poison now,

Whose sale is present 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.

Being holiday, the beggar’s shop is shut.

What, ho! Apothecary!


 Enter Apothecary.