Juliet's Soliloquy Poem by William Shakespeare
Juliet's Soliloquy
Farewell!--God knows when we shall meet again.
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins
That almost freezes up the heat of life:
I'll call them back again to comfort me;--
Nurse!--What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.--
Come, vial.--
What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married, then, to-morrow morning?--
No, No!--this shall forbid it:--lie thou there.--
What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is: and yet methinks it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man:--
I will not entertain so bad a thought.--
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,--
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for this many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;--
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking,--what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad;--
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefathers' joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?--
O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point:--stay, Tybalt, stay!--
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
Romeo and Juliet have married in secret, and in the meantime, her parents have promised her to Paris. It is the eve of her wedding: the next day, if the potion doesn't work, she will have to marry a man she abhors. She ponders the wisdom of Friar Lawrence, but consoles herself with the fact that he is a holy man, he was the one who presided over and sanctioned her marriage to Romeo, and therefore would do nothing which would actually harm her. She then fears waking up in the tomb before Romeo can find her. She wonders if she will be suffocated in the place, surrounded by death and putrid air before Romeo can come to take her away. She thinks it unlikely she will live through that, but even if she does, won't the experience of being virtually buried alive cause her so much distress that she will surely go insane? Essentially, Juliet is weighing the options available to her. She is young, she's in love, she is alone. She chooses to drink the potion with the words, Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
from 'Romeo and Juliet' - Act 4, Scene 3 Juliet is in her room. She is determined to be with Romeo, who has been banished for having, out of anger, accidentally killed her cousin, Tybalt. She wants to be with Romeo, yet she has doubts as to whether the potion will do (as Friar Lawrence has told her it will) or if she will truly die [ the potion would give her only the appearance of death ]. Juliet is very young, maybe 14 - maybe even younger.. Her nurse, to whom she is very close, nursed her and raised her from infancy (likely) and has always been her only confidante. So Juliet is remorseful of the fact that she can't even have that comfort when she makes this decision.
FIVE: In the later balcony scene, Shakespeare has Romeo overhear Juliet's soliloquy, but in Arthur Brooke's version of the story, her declaration is done alone...
FOUR: more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins 'To be or not to be; that is the question'. .
THREE: in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but expanded the plot by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. And the result is Julliette's Soliloquy
TWO: The plot is based on an Italian tale written by Matteo Bandello and translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke
ONE: Let's know how it was: Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/17/2024 10:40:40 AM # 1.0.0.1119
Love it just love it.