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Romeo and Juliet: Act II, Scene 3

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Romeo and Juliet
Act II, Scene 3

Friar Lawrence’s cell.

Costume design for Friar Lawrence

Costume design for Friar Lawrence

Percy Anderson, circa 1900

  1. Enter Friar Lawrence alone, with a basket.

Friar Lawrence

1 - 30
  1. The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,
  2. Check’ring the Eastern clouds with streaks of light,
  3. And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels
  4. From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels.
  5. Now ere the sun advance his burning eye,
  6. The day to cheer and night’s dank dew to dry,
  7. I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
  8. With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
  9. The earth that’s nature’s mother is her tomb;
  10. What is her burying grave, that is her womb;
  11. And from her womb children of divers kind
  12. We sucking on her natural bosom find:
  13. Many for many virtues excellent,
  14. None but for some, and yet all different.
  15. O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
  16. In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities;
  17. For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
  18. But to the earth some special good doth give;
  19. Nor aught so good but, strain’d from that fair use,
  20. Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
  21. Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
  22. And vice sometime by action dignified.
  23. Enter Romeo.
  24. Within the infant rind of this weak flower
  25. Poison hath residence and medicine power;
  26. For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part,
  27. Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.
  28. Two such opposed kings encamp them still
  29. In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
  30. And where the worser is predominant,
  31. Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

Romeo

31
  1. Good morrow, father.

Friar Lawrence

32 - 43
  1.                      Benedicite!
  2. What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?
  3. Young son, it argues a distempered head
  4. So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed.
  5. Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,
  6. And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;
  7. But where unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain
  8. Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.
  9. Therefore thy earliness doth me assure
  10. Thou art up-rous’d with some distemp’rature;
  11. Or if not so, then here I hit it right—
  12. Our Romeo hath not been in bed tonight.

Romeo

44
  1. That last is true—the sweeter rest was mine.

Friar Lawrence

45
  1. God pardon sin! Wast thou with Rosaline?

Romeo

46 - 47
  1. With Rosaline? My ghostly father, no;
  2. I have forgot that name, and that name’s woe.

Friar Lawrence

48
  1. That’s my good son, but where hast thou been then?

Romeo

49 - 55
  1. I’ll tell thee ere thou ask it me again.
  2. I have been feasting with mine enemy,
  3. Where on a sudden one hath wounded me
  4. That’s by me wounded; both our remedies
  5. Within thy help and holy physic lies.
  6. I bear no hatred, blessed man, for lo
  7. My intercession likewise steads my foe.
The Flowers of Shakspeare

From: The Flowers of Shakspeare

Viola, 1883

Friar Lawrence

56 - 57
  1. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift,
  2. Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.

Romeo

58 - 65
  1. Then plainly know my heart’s dear love is set
  2. On the fair daughter of rich Capulet.
  3. As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine,
  4. And all combin’d, save what thou must combine
  5. By holy marriage. When and where and how
  6. We met, we woo’d, and made exchange of vow,
  7. I’ll tell thee as we pass, but this I pray,
  8. That thou consent to marry us today.

Friar Lawrence

66 - 81
  1. Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!
  2. Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear,
  3. So soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies
  4. Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
  5. Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine
  6. Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
  7. How much salt water thrown away in waste,
  8. To season love, that of it doth not taste!
  9. The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,
  10. Thy old groans yet ringing in mine ancient ears;
  11. Lo here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
  12. Of an old tear that is not wash’d off yet.
  13. If e’er thou wast thyself and these woes thine,
  14. Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline.
  15. And art thou chang’d? Pronounce this sentence then:
  16. Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.

Romeo

82
  1. Thou chidst me oft for loving Rosaline.

Friar Lawrence

83
  1. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.

Romeo

84
  1. And badst me bury love.

Friar Lawrence

85 - 86
  1.                         Not in a grave,
  2. To lay one in, another out to have.

Romeo

87 - 89
  1. I pray thee chide me not. Her I love now
  2. Doth grace for grace and love for love allow;
  3. The other did not so.

Friar Lawrence

90 - 95
  1.                       O, she knew well
  2. Thy love did read by rote that could not spell.
  3. But come, young waverer, come go with me,
  4. In one respect I’ll thy assistant be;
  5. For this alliance may so happy prove
  6. To turn your households’ rancor to pure love.

Romeo

96
  1. O, let us hence, I stand on sudden haste.

Friar Lawrence

97
  1. Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast.
  1. Exeunt.
Kyrle Bellew as Romeo, W.H.Thompson as Friar Lawrence

Kyrle Bellew as Romeo, W.H.Thompson as Friar Lawrence

Byron Company, photographer; circa 1903

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