FRIAR LAWRENCE enters by himself,
carrying a basket.
FRIAR LAWRENCE
The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels.
5
Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,
I must upfill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juicèd flowers.
The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb.
10
What is her burying, grave that is her womb.
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some and yet all different.
15
Oh, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities.
For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give.
Nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use
20
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
And vice sometime by action dignified.
FRIAR LAWRENCE
The smiling morning is replacing the frowning night. Darkness is
stumbling out of the sun's path like a drunk man. Now,
before the sun comes up and burns away the dew, I have to fill this
basket of mine with poisonous weeds and medicinal flowers. The Earth
is nature's mother and also nature's tomb. Plants
are born out of the Earth, and they are buried in the Earth when
they die. From the Earth's womb, many different sorts of
plants and animals come forth, and the Earth provides her children
with many excellent forms of nourishment. Evertything nature creates
has some special property, and each one is different. Herbs, plants,
and stones possess great power. There is nothing on Earth that is so
evil that it does not provide the earth with some special quality.
And there is nothing that does not turn bad if it's put to
the wrong use and abused. Virtue turns to vice if it's
misused. Vice sometimes becomes virtue through the right
activity.
Enter ROMEO
ROMEO enters.
Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power.
25
For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.
Two such opposèd kings encamp them still,
In man as well as herbs—grace and rude will.
Inside the little rind of this weak flower, there is both poison
and powerful medicine. If you smell it, you feel good all over your
body. But if you taste it, you die. There are two opposite elements
in everything, in men as well as in herbs—good and
evil.
