R&J Study Guide: Quotes to note and know
FINAL on
MONDAY, June 16
Directions: in informal jigsaw groups with other players, read these lines (in
chronological order) and identify the speaker, who s/he is speaking to (if it is a
soliloquy, let me know) and where we are in the plot. There will be 10 quotes on the
test, all pulled from this study guide.
For each quote, be able to write down what it means.
You will not need to translate anything but the Prologue.
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
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
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.
I.iv
If love be rough with you, be rough with love; Prick love for pricking, and you beat love
down.
I.v
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of
night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
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I.v
This, by his voice, should be a Montague. Fetch me my rapier, boy. What dares the
slave Come hither, cover'd with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our
solemnity?
Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,
To strike him dead, I hold it not a
sin.
I.v
My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.
I.v
If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will he sit under a medlar tree,
And wish
his mistress were that kind of fruit As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.
Romeo, that she were, O, that she were
An open et caetera, thou a poperin pear!
Romeo, good night: I'll to my truckle-bed; This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep:
Come, shall we go?
II.ii
Speaker 1:
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the
sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that
hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
Speaker 2:
Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's
Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a
man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other
name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, Retain that
dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself.
2
O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled
orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Speaker 1: I would I were thy bird.
Speaker 2: Sweet, so would I:
Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing. Good night,
good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
III.i
Speaker 1:
Romeo, the hate I bear thee can afford
No better term than this,--thou art a villain.
Speaker 2:
I do protest, I never injured thee,
But love thee better than thou canst devise, Till thou
shalt know the reason of my love: And so, good Capulet,--which name I tender As dearly
as my own,--be satisfied.
Speaker 3:
I am hurt.
A plague o' both your houses! I am sped. Is he gone, and hath nothing?
Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough. Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a
surgeon.
Speaker 2: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
Speaker 3: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis
enough,'twill serve: ask for
me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man…
Help me into some house, Benvolio,
Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses! They
have made worms' meat of me.
Speaker 4:
And for that offence Immediately we do exile him hence:
I have an interest in your
hate's proceeding,
My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding;
But I'll amerce you with so strong a fine
That you shall all repent the loss of mine:
I
will be deaf to pleading and excuses;
Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses:
Therefore use none: let Romeo hence in haste, Else, when he's found, that hour is his last.
Bear hence this body and attend our will: Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.
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III.ii
Speaker 1: Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Ah, poor my lord, what tongue
shall smooth thy name, When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?
But, wherefore,
villain, didst thou kill my cousin? That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband:
(III.ii later in scene)
Speaker 1: Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the
lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranatetree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
Speaker 2: It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what
envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east: Night's candles are burnt out,
and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or
stay and die.
(later in the scene)
Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch! I tell thee what: get thee to church o'
Thursday, Or never after look me in the face:
Speak not, reply not, do not answer
me;
My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest That God had lent us but this only
child;
But now I see this one is one too much,
And that we have a curse in having
her:
Out on her, hilding!
IV.v
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 these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my
buried ancestors are packed:
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;—
(later in the scene)
Speaker 1:
What, dress'd! and in your clothes! and down again! I must needs wake you; Lady! lady!
lady!
Alas, alas! Help, help! my lady's dead!
O, well-a-day, that ever I was born!
Some aqua vitae, ho! My lord! my lady!
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Speaker 2:
Ready to go, but never to return.
O son! the night before thy wedding-day Hath Death
lain with thy wife. There she lies, Flower as she was, deflowered by him.
Death is my
son-in-law, Death is my heir; My daughter he hath wedded: I will die,
And leave him
all; life, living, all is Death's.
Speaker 1:
O woe! O woful, woful, woful day! Most lamentable day, most woful day, That ever,
ever, I did yet behold!
O day! O day! O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a
day as this: O woful day, O woful day!
Speaker 3:
O, in this love, you love your child so ill,
That you run mad, seeing that she is
well:
She's not well married that lives married long; But she's best married that dies
married young. Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary
On this fair corse; and, as the
custom is,
In all her best array bear her to church:
(later…)
Then have at you with my wit! I will dry-beat you with an iron wit, and put up my iron
dagger. Answer me like men:
'When griping grief the heart doth wound,
And doleful
dumps the mind oppress,
Then music with her silver sound'—
why 'silver sound'? why
'music with her silver sound'? What say you, Simon Catling?
V.iii
Whate'er thou hear'st or seest, stand all aloof, And do not interrupt me in my
course.
Why I descend into this bed of death,
Is partly to behold my lady's face;
But
chiefly to take thence from her dead finger
A precious ring, a ring that I must use
In
dear employment: therefore hence, be gone: But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry
In
what I further shall intend to do,
By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint
And strew
this hungry churchyard with thy limbs: The time and my intents are savage-wild,
More
fierce and more inexorable far
Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man; Fly hence, and leave me: think upon these
gone; Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth, Put not another sin upon my
head,
By urging me to fury: O, be gone!
By heaven, I love thee better than
myself;
For I come hither arm'd against myself:
Stay not, be gone; live, and hereafter
say,
A madman's mercy bade thee run away.
5
Why art thou yet so fair? shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that
the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
For fear of that,
I still will stay with thee;
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again: here,
here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids;
Speaker 2:
I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest Of death, contagion, and unnatural
sleep:
A greater power than we can contradict
Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come
away. Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead; And Paris too. Come, I'll dispose of
thee Among a sisterhood of holy nuns:
Stay not to question, for the watch is coming;
Come, go, good Juliet,
Speaker 3:
Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See, what a scourge is laid upon your
hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love. And I for winking at your
discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.
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
punished: For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
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