Page 3225 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

And with this knife I’ll help it presently.
God join’d my heart and Romeo’s, thou our hands; [55]
And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo’s seal’d,
Shall be the label to another deed,
Or my true heart with treacherous revolt
Turn to another, this shall slay them both.
Therefore, out of thy long-experienc’d time [60]
Give me some present counsel, or behold:
’Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that
Which the commission of thy years and art
Could to no issue of true honour bring. [65]
Be not so long to speak. I long to die
If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy.

FRIAR LAURENCE

Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope
Which craves as disperate an execution
As that is disperate which we would prevent. [70]
If, rather than to marry County Paris,
Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,
Then is it likely thou wilt undertake
A thing like death to chide away this shame,
That cop’st with death himself to scape from it. [75]
And if thou dar’st, I’ll give thee remedy.

JULIET

O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
From off the battlements of any tower,
Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk
Where serpents are. Chain me with roaring bears, [80]
Or hide me nightly in a charnel-house
O’ercover’d quite with dead men’s rattling bones,
With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls.
Or bid me go into a new-made grave,
And bide me with a dead man in his shroud - [85]
Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble -
And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live an unstain’d wife to my sweet love.

FRIAR LAURENCE