Rom. Is it e'en so? then I defy you, stars![1404]
Thou know'st my lodging: get me ink and paper,[1405] 25
And hire post-horses; I will hence to-night.
Bal. I do beseech you, sir, have patience:[1400][1406]
Your looks are pale and wild, and do import
Some misadventure.
Rom. Tush, thou art deceived:
Leave me, and do the thing I bid thee do. 30
Hast thou no letters to me from the friar?
Bal. No, my good lord.[1400][1407]
Rom. No matter: get thee gone,[1408]
And hire those horses; I'll be with thee straight.
[Exit Balthasar.
Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.
Let's see for means:—O mischief, thou art swift 35
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men![1409]
I do remember an apothecary,
And hereabouts a' dwells, which late I noted[1410]
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples; meagre were his looks; 40
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones:
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,[1411]
An alligator stuff'd and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,[1412] 45
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show.[1413]
Noting this penury, to myself I said,
An if a man did need a poison now,[1414] 50
Whose sale is present death in Mantua,[1415]
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.
O, this same thought did but forerun my need,
And this same needy man must sell it me.
As I remember, this should be the house: 55
Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut.
What, ho! apothecary![1416]
Enter Apothecary.
Ap. Who calls so loud?
Rom. Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor;
Hold, there is forty ducats: let me have
A dram of poison; such soon-speeding gear[1417] 60
As will disperse itself through all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may fall dead,
And that the trunk may be discharged of breath
As violently as hasty powder fired
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb. 65