You are here

Juliet, Lines 97-127
Performance Videos
Act 3,
Scene 2
Lines 97-127

Juliet performs a speech from Act 3, Scene 2 of myShakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

myShakespeare | Romeo and Juliet 3.2 Performance: Juliet, Lines 97-127

Juliet

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 killed my husband.
Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring;
Your tributary drops belong to woe,
Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.
My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain,
And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband.
All this is comfort. Wherefore weep I then?
Some word there was, worser than Tybalt's death,
That murdered me. I would forget it fain,
But O, it presses to my memory,                                   
Like damnèd guilty deeds to sinners' minds:
'Tybalt is dead, and Romeo banishèd;'
That 'banishèd,' that one word 'banishèd,'
Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt's death
Was woe enough if it had ended there;
Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship,
And needly will be ranked with other griefs,
Why followed not, when she said 'Tybalt's dead,'
‘Thy father,’ or ‘thy mother,’ nay, or both,
Which modern lamentations might have moved?       
But with a rearward following Tybalt's death:
Romeo is "banishèd." To speak that word,
Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
All slain, all dead — Romeo is “banishèd” –
There is no end, no limit, measure, bound
In that word's death; no words can that woe sound.
Where is my father and my mother, nurse?