Romeo

Dreams often make things seem better than they are, but if I believe the dreams I’ve had, I’ll be getting good news shortly. I feel lighthearted, and I’ve been in an unusually good mood all day. I dreamed that I was dead— isn’t it strange how in dreams you can think when you’re dead? I dreamed I was dead, and then Juliet found me and kissed me, bringing me back to life. I became an emperor. Love is so wonderful that even dreams of love can bring so much joy.

[Enter Romeo’s servant, Balthasar]

What’s the news from Verona, Balthasar? You have letters for me from the friar, don’t you? How’s my lady, Juliet? How’s my father? How’s Juliet? I ask again because if she is well then nothing else matters.

Balthasar

Well, she is well in the sense that no more misfortune can touch her. Her body lies in the Capulet family mausoleum, and her soul is with the angels above. I attended her burial, and then I immediately came to bring you the message. Oh, forgive me for bringing you this horrible news, but that was the duty you assigned me, sir.

Romeo

Is it really true, she’s dead? Then I defy you, Fate! You know where I’m staying. Get me some pen and paper, and hire some fast horses. I’m leaving here tonight.

Balthasar

I beg you sir, have patience. You look pale and a bit crazy, and I’m afraid you’re going to do something desperate.

Romeo

No, no, you’re wrong.  Leave me alone, and do what I asked you.  You don’t have any letters to me from the friar?

Balthasar

No, sir.

Romeo

Well never mind. Go and hire those horses, I’ll catch up to you very soon.

Well, Juliet, I’ll sleep with you tonight in the crypt.  Let’s see how I can end my life.  How quickly desperate men find ways to kill themselves! I remember an apothecary who lives around here. I saw him recently walking around with tattered clothes and wild eyebrows, gathering medicinal plants.

He looked very humble, and poverty had made him mere skin and bones. There was a tortoise hanging in his shop, and a stuffed alligator, and odd fish skins. There was a meager supply of empty boxes on his shelves, and some clay drinking pots, leather, musty old seeds, and threads. Old roses packed for making perfume that had lost much of their scent were scattered thinly around for decoration. When I noted the extreme poverty in that shop, I thought to myself “If a man needed a deadly poison, no questions asked, the miserable wretch who lives here would sell it to him.”

This exact thought came before my need to act on it, and this very needy man will have to sell the poison to me. If I remember correctly, this is the house. It’s a holiday, so the beggar’s shop is closed. Hey, hello, apothecary!

Apothecary

Who’s yelling so loudly?    

Romeo

Come here, man. I see you are clearly very poor. Look, here’s forty ducats.

Let me have an ounce of poison, the kind that will work speedily to bring an end to the life of a world-weary man. Give me a poison that will stop a man’s breathing as suddenly as if he’d been shot by a cannon.

Apothecary

I have those types of fatal drugs, but it is a capital crime in Mantua to sell them.

Romeo

Can you be this poor and close to starvation and worried about the death penalty of all things?

I can tell that you’re starving from your gaunt cheeks, and your eyes tell me that you are desperate and in need. The tattered rags on your back clearly indicate that you’re extremely poor. The world has not been a friend to you, nor have its laws. You haven’t been able to become richer by following the law, so break it, take the money, and don’t be poor.

Apothecary

My desperate poverty, and not my will, agrees.

Romeo

Well then I’ll pay your poverty and not your will.

Apothecary

Put this in any liquid and drink it. It would kill you right away even if you had the strength of twenty men.

Romeo

There’s your payment. Gold is a worse poison to the souls of men and causes more murders than any of these poisons you aren’t allowed to sell. Really, I’m the one who has sold a poison here, not you. Farewell. Buy food, and nourish your body. Come on, powder, you’ll be like an antidote to me, not a poison. Come with me to Juliet’s grave--that’s where I’ll need to use you.