Romeo and Juliet / Ромео и Джульетта

If ere thou wast thyself, and these woes thine,

Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline,

And art thou chang’d? Pronounce this sentence then,

Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.

Romeo

Thou chidd’st me oft for loving Rosaline.

Friar Lawrence

For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

Romeo

And bad’st me bury love.

Friar Lawrence

Not in a grave

To lay one in, another out to have.

Romeo

I pray thee chide me not, her I love now

Doth grace for grace and love for love allow.

The other did not so.

Friar Lawrence

O, she knew well

Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell.

But come young waverer, come go with me,

In one respect I’ll thy assistant be;

For this alliance may so happy prove,

To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.

Romeo

O let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.

Friar Lawrence

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

[Exeunt.]

Scene IV

A Street.

Enter Benvolio and Mercutio.

Mercutio

Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home tonight?

Benvolio

Not to his father’s; I spoke with his man.

Mercutio

Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, torments him so that he will sure run mad.

Benvolio

Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, hath sent a letter to his father’s house.

Mercutio

A challenge, on my life.

Benvolio

Romeo will answer it.

Mercutio

Any man that can write may answer a letter.

Benvolio

Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how he dares, being dared.

Mercutio

Alas poor Romeo, he is already dead, stabbed with a white wench’s black eye; run through the ear with a love song, the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft. And is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

Benvolio

Why, what is Tybalt?

Mercutio

More than Prince of cats. O, he’s the courageous captain of compliments.

He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion. He rests his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hay.

Benvolio

The what?

Mercutio

The pox of such antic lisping, affecting phantasies; these new tuners of accent.