Friar Laurence

Come here, Romeo. Come here my frightened young man. Trouble must be in love with you because you seem to be married to disaster.

Romeo

What’s the news, father? How did the Prince rule in my case? What other misfortune is waiting to meet me that I’m not already acquainted with?

Friar Laurence

Unfortunately trouble and disaster are your closest friends, my dear son. I have news of the Prince’s verdict.

Romeo

Could the Prince’s sentence be anything less than the end of the world for me?

Friar Laurence

A more lenient ruling: not death, just banishment from Verona.

Romeo

Ha, banishment! You might as well take mercy on me and say “death” because exile is much more horrible than death. Don’t say “banishment.”

Friar Laurence

From this time on, you are banished from Verona. But be patient, the world is wide.

Romeo

There is no world for me outside Verona’s walls, except for the worlds of purgatory, torture, and hell itself.

So to be banished from Verona is to be banished from the world. And what is being banished from the world if not death? Banishment is death by another name. Calling death banishment is just cutting off my head with a golden axe while giving me a nice smile.

Friar Laurence

It’s a sin for you to be so rude and ungrateful! The crime you committed calls for the death penalty, but the kind prince has set aside the law and changed your dark sentence of death into banishment. This is kind mercy, and you don’t see it.

Romeo

Banishment is torture, not mercy. Heaven is here where Juliet lives. How can every cat, dog, mouse, and unworthy beast live in heaven and look at her, but I cannot? Flies in Verona live with more worth and more dignity than I do. Flies can touch her wonderful pale hands or hear blessings from her lips, but I can’t. Those lips still blush with pure virginal modesty, as though the kisses they bring are sinful! Flies can see all this but I must flee Verona.

Flies live freely and I’m banished. And you still insist that exile isn’t death to me? Do you have no other way to kill me but the word “banished”? No poison, no sharpened knife, no other sudden, less cruel means of dying? Just “banished”? Oh Friar, that’s a word for the damned souls in hell to howl. How do you, my priest, my confessor, and my sworn friend, have the heart to torture me with that word “banished”?

Friar Laurence

You mad lovestruck man, just listen to me briefly.

Romeo

Oh, you’re just going to talk about banishment again.

Friar Laurence

I’ll give you the armor to fend off the effects of banishment. I’ll give you a soothing balm for your struggle, a rational word to comfort you, despite your banishment.

Romeo

Still talking about banishment? Go hang up your “rational” armor on the wall! Unless it can make another Juliet to go with me, or uproot Verona to where I’ll be, or reverse the Prince’s decision — if if your rationality can’t do any of these things, then it’s useless. Say no more.

Friar Laurence

Then I see that madmen have no ears to listen.

Romeo

Why should they, when wise men have no eyes to see things as they are?

Friar Laurence

Let me explain to you how your situation doesn’t have to be so terrible.

Romeo

You can’t talk about what you don’t feel. If you were this young, you were in love with Juliet, you were just married hours ago, you were the murderer of Tybalt, and you were as hopelessly in love as I am and banished like me, then you could talk about it. Then you could tear your hair out in despair and fall over like I am now, on the ground stretched out as if for a new grave.

Friar Laurence

Get up. Someone’s knocking at the door. Good Romeo, hide yourself.

Romeo

I can’t hide, unless perhaps I’m shrouded from sight in the mist of my own heartsick groans.

Friar Laurence

Listen, they’re knocking urgently! [To outside] Who’s there? [To Romeo] Romeo, you have to get up, you’ll be arrested. [To outside] Wait one moment!  [To Romeo] Stand up. Run to my office. [To outside] Just a minute! [To Romeo] By God, how can you act so stupid! I’m coming, I’m coming! Who is it that’s knocking so hard? Where are you coming from? What do you want?

Nurse

Let me come in, and I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’ve come from Lady Juliet.

Friar Laurence

Welcome, then.

Nurse

Oh holy friar, oh, tell me holy friar, where is my lady’s husband, where’s Romeo?

Friar Laurence

He’s lying there on the ground, drunk on his own tears.

Nurse

Oh, he’s just like Juliet is now, just like her! Oh what similar misery! What a pitiful predicament!

She’s lying down just like that, blubbering and weeping, weeping and blubbering. Stand up, stand up! Be a man for Juliet’s sake, for her sake get up and stand! Why are you falling into such a deep groan?

Romeo

Nurse!

Nurse

Ah sir! Ah sir! Well, death is everyone’s end.

Romeo

Were you talking about Juliet? How is she?

Does she think I’m a murderer now that I’ve stained the innocent infancy of our love with her own family’s blood? Where is she? And how is she doing? And what does my hidden wife say about our ruined love?

Nurse

Oh, she doesn’t say anything, sir, she just weeps and weeps. She’ll fall on her bed, and then bolt up and cry “Tybalt”, then cry about Romeo, and finally fall back down again.

Romeo

Oh, it’s as if my name was shot from a gun and murdered her, just like the hand that belongs to my name murdered her family. Oh friar, tell me which part of my body contains my name? Tell me so that I may hack off the place where that name dwells.

Friar Laurence

Stop, don’t give in to desperation. Are you a man? You look like one, but your tears are more fit for a woman and your wild actions are only fit for the irrational fury of some beast.

Friar Laurence

How shameful to have these womanly qualities in someone who appears to be a man. Or even worse, how shameful to seem like you’re half man and half wild animal. You’ve astonished me. I swear by my holy order of friars, I didn’t think you were this unstable. Did you kill Tybalt? Are you going to kill yourself? And would you kill your wife — who’s living for you — by committing sinful suicide? Why are you trying to shame your family and heaven and the earth? They had to come together to create your life, and you would throw that all away in a second!

You are bringing shame to your body, your love, and your intellect. You have so much potential in all these things, but you want to get rid of them rather than use them correctly, like a rich man who would rather lend money than work an honest trade. You’re abusing your body, your love, and your wit. Your body is just like the wax form of a man without the virtue of a real person. Your marriage vows are like lies under sworn oath since you’re trying to kill yourself and the love you vowed to uphold. Your intelligence, which should enhance your body and your love, has been warped by the way it’s managed both of them. Now your intellect is like powder in the loaded gun of an unskilled soldier, going off due to its owner’s ignorance and maiming what it should protect.

Come on, take heart, man! Your Juliet, for whom you were just now about to kill yourself, is alive. For that you are fortunate. Tybalt wanted to kill you, but you slew Tybalt, and you’re fortunate there as well. The law that would have condemned you to death has been much friendlier to you, and that punishment was turned into exile, which is fortunate, too. You’ve got a whole pack of blessings resting on you, and happiness woos you, but you’re behaving like a sullen girl by pouting about your bad luck and your love. Watch out, for people like you will be miserable all their lives. Go, get yourself to your love, like you agreed, and climb into her room and comfort her.

But make sure you leave before the town watchmen go to their posts, for then you won’t be able to flee Verona for Mantua. You can live in Mantua until we can find a time to make your marriage public, reconcile your friends with each other, beg the Prince’s pardon, and call you back with twenty thousand times more joy than you had sorrow when you left. Lead the way, nurse. Pay my respects to Juliet, and tell her to go quickly home to bed, which I’m sure her intense sorrow will lead her to do anyway. Tell her Romeo is coming.

Nurse

Oh Lord, I could have stayed here all night long hearing such good advice. What a smart man. My lord, I’ll tell my lady Juliet that you will come to her.

Romeo

Do so, and tell my dear to prepare to criticize me for what I’ve done.

Nurse

Here, sir, I have a ring that she told me to give you, sir. Hurry, be quick, as it’s getting really late.

Romeo

Oh I’m so relieved by all of this!

Friar Laurence

Be off and good night. Romeo, here’s your situation: either be gone before they set the watch tonight, or sneak out in disguise at daybreak. Stay in Mantua. I’ll find your servant, and from time to time, I’ll have him bring news to you of anything that bodes well for you here in Verona. Let me shake your hand, it’s late. Farewell and goodnight.

Romeo

If I weren’t called to a joy beyond all other joys, I would be sad to leave you after such a brief visit. Farewell.