The arden shakespeare co.., p.441
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, page 441
New joy wait on you! Here our play has ending.
Exit.
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet was among the first plays Shakespeare wrote as a leading member of the Chamberlain’s Men, of which he was a founder-member in 1594. A drastically abbreviated text, printed in Quarto in 1597, was superseded in 1599 by a Quarto representing the play, ‘newly corrected, augmented, and amended’, much as we know it and in the form in which it was reprinted in the 1623 First Folio. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written in 1594-5, is usually thought of as following Romeo, mainly on the grounds that the mechanicals’ play of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ parodies the tragic theme of feuding families and star-crossed lovers.
Unlike most of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Romeo and Juliet (in common with Othello) is based on a fiction, a novella written in Italy in the late fifteenth century, that he knew in English versions including Arthur Brooke’s pedestrian verse narrative, Romeus and Juliet (1562), which Shakespeare transformed into an unrivalled tragedy of young love. The transformation involved abbreviation, increasing sympathy for the lovers by decreasing their ages, building up the contrasting roles of the Nurse and the Friar, inventing that of Mercutio and reducing the element of explicit moralizing. The play is one of several in which Shakespeare openly challenges neoclassical assumptions about genre. It might almost be described as setting its tragic action in the world of comedy.
The celebrity of Romeo and Juliet derives largely from the love scenes, but the play which contains them is not confined to lyricism. It includes a wide spectrum of views on love, sex and marriage, so that impulsive adolescent passion gains sympathy by contrast with the prudential arguments of the parents and of Friar Laurence, the obscenity and homosocial jealousy of Mercutio and the Nurse’s moral relativism. The involvement of love in the family feud intensifies both love and danger: despite an emphasis on the lovers’ disaster as fated, the outcome of the action as constructed by Shakespeare is as much the result of their own impulsiveness in marrying and in believing the worst as it is of the unexplained feud into which they were born.
Romeo and Juliet is the earliest of Shakespeare’s plays to have imparted mythic status to its characters, to the extent that ‘Juliet’s balcony’ (itself an eighteenth-century substitution for the window required by Shakespeare’s text) is among the tourist sites of modern Verona. Also in the eighteenth century, David Garrick adapted the ending to allow the revived Juliet a final dialogue with the dying Romeo before her suicide. Nineteenth-century sensibilities were protected by removal of the play’s pervasive sexual jesting and by suppression of Romeo’s initial love for Rosaline. Famous Romeos of that time included the American actress Charlotte Cushman.
The play was a powerful inspiration to composers of the romantic period and since, and is now widely known in the form of Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet (1935), or as the source of orchestral compositions by Hector Berlioz (1839) and Peter Ilitsch Tchaikovsky (1869). It has been reworked in countless other plays, novels and films –most famously in Leonard Bernstein’s musical West Side Story (1957) – and its theme of love destroyed by irrational inherited hate remains painfully familiar in the events of our own time.
The Arden text is based on the 1599 Second Quarto, with the addition of some stage directions from the 1597 First Quarto.
LIST OF ROLES
Escalus, PRINCE of Verona
MERCUTIO
a young gentleman and kinsman to the Prince, friend of Romeo
PARIS
a noble young kinsman to the Prince
PAGE
to Paris
MONTAGUE
head of a Veronese family at feud with the Capulets
LADY MONTAGUE
ROMEO
Montague’s son
BENVOLIO
Montague’s nephew and friend of Romeo and Mercutio
ABRAM
a servant to Montague
BALTHASAR
Romeo’s servant
CAPULET
head of a Veronese family at feud with the Montagues
LADY CAPULET
JULIET
Capulet’s daughter
TYBALT
Lady Capulet’s nephew
COUSIN CAPULET
an old gentleman
NURSE
a Capulet servant, Juliet’s foster-mother
PETER
a Capulet servant attending on the nurse
of the Capulet household
of the Franciscan Order
APOTHECARY
of Mantua
THREE MUSICIANS
(Simon Catling, Hugh Rebeck, James Soundpost)
CHORUS
Members of the Watch, Citizens of Verona, Masquers, Torchbearers, Pages, Servants
PROLOGUE
Enter CHORUS.
CHORUS Two households both alike in dignity
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene)
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
5
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life,
Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
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Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which, if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Exit.
1.1 Enter SAMPSON and GREGORY, with swords and bucklers, of the house of Capulet.
SAMPSON Gregory, on my word we’ll not carry coals.
GREGORY No, for then we should be colliers.
SAMPSON I mean, and we be in choler, we’ll draw.
GREGORY Ay, while you live, draw your neck out of
collar.
5
SAMPSON I strike quickly being moved.
GREGORY But thou art not quickly moved to strike.
SAMPSON A dog of the house of Montague moves me.
GREGORY To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to
stand: therefore if thou art moved thou runn’st away.
10
SAMPSON A dog of that house shall move me to stand. I
will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague’s.
GREGORY That shows thee a weak slave, for the weakest
goes to the wall.
SAMPSON ’Tis true, and therefore women, being the
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weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall; therefore I
will push Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust
his maids to the wall.
GREGORY The quarrel is between our masters and us
their men.
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SAMPSON ’Tis all one. I will show myself a tyrant: when
I have fought with the men I will be civil with the
maids, I will cut off their heads.
GREGORY The heads of the maids?
SAMPSON Ay, the heads of the maids, or their
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maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt.
GREGORY They must take it in sense that feel it.
SAMPSON Me they shall feel while I am able to stand,
and ’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh.
GREGORY ’Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou
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hadst been Poor John. Draw thy tool – here comes of
the house of Montagues.
Enter two other servingmen, ABRAM and BALTHASAR.
SAMPSON My naked weapon is out. Quarrel, I will back
thee.
GREGORY How, turn thy back and run?
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SAMPSON Fear me not.
GREGORY No, marry! I fear thee!
SAMPSON Let us take the law of our sides: let them
begin.
GREGORY I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it
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as they list.
SAMPSON Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at
them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it.
ABRAM Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
SAMPSON I do bite my thumb, sir.
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ABRAM Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
SAMPSON Is the law of our side if I say ay?
GREGORY No.
SAMPSON No sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but
I bite my thumb, sir.
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GREGORY Do you quarrel, sir?
ABRAM Quarrel, sir? No, sir.
SAMPSON But if you do, sir, I am for you. I serve as good
a man as you.
ABRAM No better.
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SAMPSON Well, sir.
Enter BENVOLIO.
GREGORY Say ‘better’, here comes one of my master’s
kinsmen.
SAMPSON Yes, better, sir.
ABRAM You lie.
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SAMPSON Draw if you be men. Gregory, remember thy
washing blow. [They fight.]
BENVOLIO Part, fools, put up your swords, you know
not what you do.
Enter TYBALT.
TYBALT
What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?
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Turn thee, Benvolio, look upon thy death.
BENVOLIO I do but keep the peace, put up thy sword,
Or manage it to part these men with me.
TYBALT
What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word,
As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee:
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Have at thee, coward. [They fight.]
Enter three or four Citizens with clubs or partisans.
CITIZENS Clubs, bills and partisans! Strike! Beat them
down! Down with the Capulets! Down with the
Montagues!
Enter old CAPULET in his gown, and LADY CAPULET.
CAPULET
What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!
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LADY CAPULET
A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?
Enter old MONTAGUE and LADY MONTAGUE.
CAPULET My sword I say! Old Montague is come,
And flourishes his blade in spite of me.
MONTAGUE
Thou villain Capulet! Hold me not! Let me go!
LADY MONTAGUE
Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.
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Enter Prince ESCALUS with his train.
PRINCE Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,
Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel –
Will they not hear? What ho! You men, you beasts!
That quench the fire of your pernicious rage
With purple fountains issuing from your veins,
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On pain of torture from those bloody hands
Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground
And hear the sentence of your moved prince.
Three civil brawls bred of an airy word
By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,
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Have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets
And made Verona’s ancient citizens
Cast by their grave-beseeming ornaments
To wield old partisans, in hands as old,
Canker’d with peace, to part your canker’d hate.
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If ever you disturb our streets again
Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.
For this time all the rest depart away;
You, Capulet, shall go along with me,
And Montague, come you this afternoon,
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To know our farther pleasure in this case,
To old Freetown, our common judgement-place.
Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.
Exeunt all but Montague, Lady Montague
and Benvolio.
MONTAGUE Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?
Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?
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BENVOLIO Here were the servants of your adversary
And yours, close fighting ere I did approach.
I drew to part them; in the instant came
The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepar’d,
Which, as he breath’d defiance to my ears
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He swung about his head and cut the winds,
Who nothing hurt withal, hiss’d him in scorn.
While we were interchanging thrusts and blows
Came more and more, and fought on part and part,
Till the Prince came, who parted either part.
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LADY MONTAGUE
O where is Romeo, saw you him today?
Right glad I am he was not at this fray.
BENVOLIO Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun
Peer’d forth the golden window of the east
A troubled mind drive me to walk abroad,
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Where underneath the grove of sycamore
That westward rooteth from this city side
So early walking did I see your son.
Towards him I made, but he was ware of me,
And stole into the covert of the wood.
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I, measuring his affections by my own,
Which then most sought, where most might not be found,
