With all due rites, but that my father’s ghost
Did stride between to part us evermore.
[Sad music heard]
[Exit Hamlet slowly.
Enter Launce leading a dog.
Launce. What a very dog is this my Crab here for a stony-hearted cur! Why but now there met us two distressed females weeping their hearts out at their eyes, and sighing, moreover, as ’twould move a very Turk to pity, and yet this cur took no more note on ’t than they had been two sticks or stones. Why, the Woman of Samaria would have plucked out her hair in pity of the twain, nay, so would I have done the same in her stead,—yet what say I, for there’s not so much hair on my head as my mother’s brass kettle has of its cover. A vengeance on ’t, now where was I? O, truly, I was e’en at the Woman of Samaria. Now, good sirs, and gentles all, the Woman of Samaria had for ruth plucked out her hair, but did not my dog Crab, who by your leaves is as hairy a dog as goes on one-and-twenty toes, shed even one hair in sorrow for the twain: not e’en the smallest hair on ’s nose. And the matter of the meeting was on this wise. This small stone, with the crack in ’t, is the maid, she with the flowers; and I think there be a crack in her wits, but no matter for that; this stone, a something bigger, ay, and with a crack in ’t, too, shall be the lady with her hair all unbound; this tree shall be the dog; nay, that’s not so neither, for I am the tree and the tree is me, and this stick is the dog, and thus it is. Now doth the small stone weep as ’twere a fountain gone astray, and may not speak for weeping; now doth the something bigger stone weep too, yet with a difference, and she doth not speak for weeping either, and truly I did weep likewise and no more could speak for my weeping than the poor distressed females might, yet there came all the while no word of comfort from this dog’s mouth, not even one tear from his lids. Pray God, gentles all, there be no such hard hearts among any of you, or ’twere ten thousand pities. ’Tis an ill thing to have a sour nature like my dog Crab’s, and no good comes on ’t.
Nurse. Beshrew my heart, and that is so. My Mistress Juliet hath the tenderest and the most pitiful heart that lives in a maid’s body, I do think, for she will weep by the hour together if she but behold a fly caught by the wings in a spider’s web.
Mercutio [to Romeo] No, Juliet, but a Niobe. Eh, man?
Romeo. Prate not of Juliet now, for I do love
Another way from her.