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—
40
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,
45
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—?
Alright, here's the vial. What if this mixture
doesn't work at all? Will I be married tomorrow morning?
No, no, this knife will stop it. Lie down right there.
(she lays down the knife) What if
the Friar mixed the potion to kill me? Is he worried that he will be
disgraced if I marry Paris after he married me to Romeo?
I'm afraid that it's poison. And yet, it
shouldn't be poison because he is a trustworthy holy man.
What if, when I am put in the tomb, I wake up before Romeo comes to
save me? That's a frightening idea. Won't I
suffocate in the tomb? There's no healthy air to breathe in
there. Will I die of suffocation before Romeo comes? Or if I live,
I'll be surrounded by death and darkness. It will be
terrible. There will be bones hundreds of years old in that tomb, my
ancestors' bones. Tybalt's body will be in there,
freshly entombed, and his corpse will be rotting. They say that
during the night the spirits are in tombs. Oh no, oh no.
I'll wake up and smell awful odors. I'll hear
screams that would drive people crazy.
