Jul. Go, get thee hence, for I will not | These dead men's tombs.

away.--
[hand?
What's here? a cup, closed in my true love's
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end :-
O churl! drink all; and leave no friendly
drop,

To help me after?-I will kiss thy lips;
Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make me die with a restorative.

[Kisses him.
Thy lips are warm!
[way?
1 Watch. [Within.] Lead, boy:-Which
Jul. Yea, noise ?-then I'll be brief.-O
happy dagger!
[Snatching Romeo's Dagger.
This is thy sheath; [Stabs herself.] there rust,

and let me die.

[Fulls on Romeo's Body, and dies. Enter Watch, with the Page of Paris. Page. This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn.

1 Watch. The ground is bloody;-Search about the church-yard: Go, some of you, who e'er you find, attach. [Exeunt some. Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain ;And Juliet bleeding; warm, and newly dead, Who here hath lain these two days buried.Go, tell the prince,-run to the Capulets,Raise up the Montagues,-some others search; [Exeunt other Watchmen. We see the ground whereon these woes do lie; But the true ground of all these piteous woes, We cannot without circunstance descry. Enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR. 2 Watch. Here's Romeo's man, we found him in the church-yard.

1 Watch. Hold him in safety, till the prince
come hither.

Enter another Watchman, with Friar
LAURENCE.

3 Watch. Here is a friar, that trembles,

sighs, and weeps:

We took this mattock and this spade from him, As he was coming from this church-yard side. 1 Watch. A great suspicion; Stay the friar

too.

Enter the Prince and Attendants. Prince. What misadventure is so early up, That calls our person from our morning's rest? Enter CAPULET, Lady CAPULET, and Óthers.

Cap. What should it be, that they so shriek abroad? [Romeo. La. Cap. The people in the street crySome-Juliet, and some-Paris; and all run, With open outcry toward our monument. Prince. What fear is this, which startles in our ears? [Paris slain; 1 Watch. Sovereign, here lies the county And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before, Warm and new kill'd.

Prince. Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes. [Romeo's man; 1 Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter'd With instruments upon them, fit to open i.e., The scabbard.

Cap. O, heavens!-O, wife! look how our
daughter bleeds!

This dagger hath mista'en,-for lo! his house
Is empty on the back of Montague,
And is mis-sheathed in my daughter's bosomt.
La. Cap. O me! this sight of death is as a
That warns my old age to a sepulchre. [bell,
Enter MONTAGUE and Others.
Prince. Come, Montague; for thou art early
up.

To see thy son and heir more early down.
Mon. Alas, my liege, my wire is dead to-

night;

[breath: Grief of my son's exile hath stopp'd her What further woe conspires against mine age? Prince. Look, and thou shalt see. [this, Mon. O thou untaught! what manners is in To press before thy father to a grave?

Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a
Till we can clear these ambiguities, [while,
And know their spring, their head, their true
descent;

And then will I be general of your woes,
And lead you even to death: Mean time forbear,
And let mischance be slave to patience.-
Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

Fri. 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
_clf condemned and myself excused.
Prince. Then say at once what thou dost
[breath
Fri. I will be brief, for my short date of
Is not so long as is a tedious tale.
Romeo, there dead, was husband to that
Juliet ;
[wife:

know in this.

And she, there dead, that Romeo's faithful
I married them; and their stolen-marriage-day
Was Tybalt's dooms-day, whose untimely
[city;

death

Banish'd the new-made bridegroom from this
For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pined.
You-to remove that siege of grief from her,
Betroth'd, and would have married her per-
force,

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 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 staid 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:
+ The dagger.
i Seat.

But, when I came, (some minute ere the time | And, by and by, my master drew on him;
Of her awakening,) 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 ine,
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.

And then I ran away to call the watch.
Prince. This letter doth make good the
friar's words,

man.

Prince. We still have known thee for a holy [this? Where's Romeo's man? what can he say in Bal. I brought my master news of Juliet's death;

And then in post he came from Mantna,
To this same place, to this same monument.
This letter he early bid me give his father;
And threaten'd me with death, going in the
If I departe not, and left him there. vault,
Prince. Give me the letter, I will look on
it.-
[watch?-
Where is the county's page, that raised the
Sirrah, what made your master in this place?
Puge. He came with flowers to strew his
lady's grave;

Their course of love, the tidings of her death:
And here he writes-that he did buy a poison
Of a poor 'pothecary, and therewithal
Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.-
Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!-
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with
And I, for winking at your discords too, [love!
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are
punish'd.

Cap. O, brother Montague, give me thy hand:
This is my daughter's jointure, for no more
Can I demand.
Mon.
But I can give thee more:
For I will raise her statue in pure gold;
That, while Verona by that name is known,
There shall no figure at such rate be set,
As that of true and faithful Juliet.

Cap. As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie;
Poor sacrifices of our enmity!
Prince. A glooming peace this morning with
it brings;

The sun for sorrow will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punish'd:
For never was a story of more woe,
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. [Exeunt.
• Mercutio and Paris.

And bid me stand aloof, and so I did:
Anon, comes one with light to ope the tomb:

This play is one of the most pleasing of our author's performances. The scenes are busy and varions, the incidents numerous and important, the catastrophe irresistibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires.

Here is one of the few attempts of Shakspeare to exhibit the conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of juvenile elegance. Mr. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakspeare, that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third Act, lest he should have been killed by him. Yet he thinks him no such formidable person, but that he might have lived through the play, and died in his bed, without danger to the poet. Dryden well knew, had he been in quest of truth, in a pointed sentence, that more regard is commonly had to the words than the thought, and that it is very seldom to be rigorously understood. Mercutio's wit, gaiety, and courage, will always procure him friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated, he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakspeare to have continued his existence, though some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime.

The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author delighted: be has, with great subtilty of distinction, drawn her at once loquacious and secret, obsequiors and insolent, trusty and dishonest.

His comic scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetic strairs are always polluted with some unexpected depravations. His persons, however distressed, have a conceit left them in their misery, a miserable conceit.-JOHNSON.

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.

Persons represented.

FRANCISCO, a soldier

HAMLET, Son to the former, and nephew to REYNALDO, servant to Polonius.

Fran. Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us; Yourself.

• Partners. + Make good or establish.

Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge
Mar. It is offended.
[thee, speak.
Ber.
See! it stalks away.
Hor. Stay; speak: speak. I charge thee,
speak.
[Exit Ghost.
Mar. 'Tis gone, and will not answer.
Ber. How now, Horatio? you tremble, and
look pale:

Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you of it?

[believe, Hor. Before my God, I might not this Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

Mar.

Hor. As thou art to thyself:

That hath a stomach in't: which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state,)
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those 'foresaid lands
So by his father lost: And this, I take it,
1s the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch, and the chief

head

Of this post-haste and romage § in the land.
[Ber. I think it be no other, but even so:
Well may it sort, that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the
king.

That was, and is, the question of these wars.
Hor. A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.

Is it not like the king? In the most high and palmy ¶¶ state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, [dead
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

Such was the very armour he had on,
When he the ambitions Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle *
He smote the sledded + Polack on the ice.
'Tis strange.

Mar. Thus twice before, and jump at this
dead hour,

With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
Hor. In what particular thought to work I
know not;

But, in the gross and scope of mine opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he
that knows,

Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land ;
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore

task

Does not divide the sunday from the week:
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the
[day;
That can 1;
At least, the whisper goes so, Our last king,
Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbris of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant
Hamlet
[him.)
(For so this side of our known world esteem'd
Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal'd
compact,

"Who is't that can inform me?
Hor.

Well ratified by law and heraldry,

-

As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star***,
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire
stands,

Was sick almost to dooms-day with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of fierce events,-
As harbingers preceding still the fates,
And prologue to the omen +++ coming on,
Have heaven and earth together démonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.-]
Re-enter Ghost.

But soft; behold! lo, where it comes again!
I'll cross it, though it blast me.-Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
peak to me:

If there be any good thing to be done,
Thit may to thee do ease, and grace to me,
Speak to me:

If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing, may avoid,
O, speak!

Or, if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in
death,
[Cock crows.
Speak of it :-stay, and speak.-Stop it, Mar-
cellus.

Mar. Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
Hor. Do, if it will not stand.
Ber.
'Tis here!

Hor.

Mar. 'Tis gone!

'Tis here. [Exit Ghost.

We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicions mockery.
Ber. It was about to speak when the cock

crew.

Did forfeit with his life all those his lands,
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had r turn'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras, [co-mart ||
Had he been vanquisher; as. by the same
And carriage of the article design'd¶, [bras
His fell to Hamlet: Now, sir, young Fortin-Upon a fearful summons. I have heard,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full **,
Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
Shark'd up a list of landless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise

* Dispnte. ↑ Sledge. Joint bargain. **Fail of spirit without experience. ¶¶ Victorions.

Hor. And then it started, like a guilty thing

The cock, that is the trumpet of the moru,
Doth with his lofty and sh ill sounding throat
Awake the god of day; and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,

[Exeunt. Laer. My dread lord, Your leave and favour to return to France; A Room of State in the sume. From whence though willingly I came to DenEnter the King, Queen, HAMLET, POLO-Yet now, To show my duty in your coronation; [mark, must contess, that duty done, NIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNE- My thoughts and wishes bend again toward LIUS, Lords, and Attendants. France, [pardon. And bow them to your gracious leave and King. Have you your father's leave? What Islow leave,

+ Proof. Bonds. little more than a kinsman, and less than a natural one.