Page 3241 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

Is it e’en so? Then I defy you, stars!
Thou know’st my lodging. Get me ink and paper, [25]
And hire posthorses. I will hence tonight.

BALT HASAR

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. [30]
Hast thou no letters to me from the Friar?

BALT HASAR

No, my good lord.

ROMEO Exit Balthasar.

No matter. Get thee gone.
And hire those horses. I’ll be with thee straight.

Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight.
Let’s see for means. O mischief thou art swift [35]
To enter in the thoughts of disperate men.
I do remember an apothecary -
And hereabouts a dwells - which late I noted
In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples. Meagre were his looks, [40]
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-shap’d fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes, [45]
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, [50]
Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him’.