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
kill’d 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 murd’red me; I would forget it fain,
But O, it presses to my memory
Like damned guilty deeds to sinners’ minds:
“Tybalt is dead, and Romeo banished.”
That “banished,” that one word “banished,”
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
rank’d with other griefs,
Why followed not, when she said, “Tybalt’s dead,”
Thy
father or thy mother, nay, or both,
Which modern lamentation might have moved?
But with a rearward following Tybalt’s death,
“Romeo is banished”: to speak that word,
Is
father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
All slain, all dead: “Romeo is banished”!
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?