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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 LAURENCE: |
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 excused. |
PRINCE: |
Then say at once what thou dost know in this. |
FRIAR LAURENCE: |
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 dooms-day, whose untimely death |
Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from the city, |
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined. |
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 mean |
To rid her from this second marriage, |
Or in my cell there would she kill herself. |
Then gave I her, so tutor'd 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, |
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave, |
Being the time the potion's force should cease. |
But he which bore my letter, Friar John, |
Was stay'd by accident, and yesternight |
Return'd my letter back. Then all alone |
At the prefixed hour of her waking, |
Came I to take her from her kindred's vault; |
Meaning to keep her closely at my cell, |
Till I conveniently could send to Romeo: |
But when I came, some minute ere the time |
Of her awaking, here untimely lay |
The noble Paris and true Romeo dead. |
She wakes; and I entreated her come forth, |
And bear this work of heaven with patience: |
But then a noise did scare me from the tomb; |
And she, too desperate, would not go with me, |
But, as it seems, did violence on herself. |
All this I know; and to the marriage |
Her nurse is privy: and, if aught in this |
Miscarried by my fault, let my old life |
Be sacrificed, some hour before his time, |
Unto the rigour of severest law. |