That warns my old age to a sepulchre.


 Enter Montague and others.
PRINCE.

Come, Montague, for thou art early up,

To see thy son and heir more early down.


MONTAGUE.

Alas, my liege, my wife is dead tonight.

Grief of my son’s exile hath stopp’d her breath.

What further woe conspires against mine age?


PRINCE.

Look, and thou shalt see.


MONTAGUE.

O thou untaught! What manners is in this,

To press before thy father to a grave?


PRINCE.

Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,

Till we can clear these ambiguities,

And know their spring, their head, their true descent,

And then will I be general of your woes,

And lead you even to death. Meantime forbear,

And let mischance be slave to patience.

Bring forth the parties of suspicion.


FRIAR LAWRENCE.

I am the greatest, able to do least,

Yet most suspected, as the time and place

Doth make against me, of this direful murder.

And here I stand, both to impeach and purge

Myself condemned and myself excus’d.


PRINCE.

Then say at once what thou dost know in this.


FRIAR LAWRENCE.

I will be brief, for my short date of breath

Is not so long as is a tedious tale.

Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet,

And she, there dead, that Romeo’s faithful wife.

I married them; and their stol’n marriage day

Was Tybalt’s doomsday, whose untimely death

Banish’d the new-made bridegroom from this city;

For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin’d.

You, to remove that siege of grief from her,

Betroth’d, and would have married her perforce

To County Paris. Then comes she to me,

And with wild looks, bid me devise some means

To rid her from this second marriage,

Or in my cell there would she kill herself.

Then gave I her, so tutored by my art,

A sleeping potion, which so took effect

As I intended, for it wrought on her

The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo

That he should hither come as this dire night