How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death. O, how may I(90)
Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
Thou art not conquer'd. Beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,(95)
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.
Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favour can I do to thee
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain
To sunder his that was thine enemy?(100)
Forgive me, cousin. Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial Death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?(105)
For fear of that I still will stay with thee
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again. Here, here will I remain
With worms that are thy chambermaids. O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest(110)
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!(115)
Come, bitter conduct; come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark!
Here's to my love! Drinks . O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.(120)
Enter Friar Laurence, with lantern, crow, and spade.
Enters the tomb.
What's here? A cup, clos'd in my true love's hand?
Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.
O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips.
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them(170)
To make me die with a restorative.
Snatches Romeo's dagger.
This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die.(175)
She stabs herself and falls on Romeo's body.
Enter Paris’ Boy and Watch.
Exeunt some of the Watch.
Pitiful sight! here lies the County slain;
And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,
Who here hath lain this two days buried.(185)
Go, tell the Prince; run to the Capulets;
Raise up the Montagues; some others search.
Exeunt others of the Watch.
Enter some of the Watch, with Romeo's Man Balthasar.
Enter Friar Laurence and another Watchman.
Enter the Prince and Attendants.
Enter Capulet, Lady Capulet, and others.
Enter Montague and others.
The Friar is a controversial character within this play. On one hand, he is a man of the cloth who allows the lovers to be together and keeps their secret until they die. However, he is also the catalyst for the tragedy that ensues in this play. His actions can be seen as a form of cowardice: he gives Juliet the vial so that no one finds out he married the lovers, and he runs in the tomb rather than staying with Juliet and preventing her from killing herself. Even this final speech, in which he tells the prince that he should be prosecuted for his actions, is full of blame for everyone's involvement in the young lovers's deaths. In this way the Friar can either be read as a selfish character who acts and speaks out of self interest, or as the moral center who reminds everyone of their hand in the tragedy.
Juliet's famous dying lines represent the final transformation and bring about the tragic ending. The "happy dagger" finds a new "sheath" in Juliet's body. Some critics have seen this as an erotic suicide in which the dagger replaces Romeo in her heart. Much like previous metaphors in which Juliet likened her marriage bed to a grave, this suicide literalizes the presence of death within her love.
By "true apothecary" Romeo means that the poison he bought in the previous scene is just as potent and deadly as the apothecary promised. Romeo's dying words underscore the theme of telling and believing within this play. Just as Romeo is surprised that the apothecary held true to his word that the poison would kill him instantly, the audience may feel sadness that "with a kiss" Romeo dies despite being told by the Prologue at the beginning that this would happen.
This line gives the play an unfinished ending. The fate of the other characters within the play who had a hand in Romeo and Juliet's deaths is uncertain. While the source text for this play details the banishment of the Nurse, the pardoning of the Friar, and the hanging of the Apothecary, Shakespeare leaves the ending open to deny a sense of closure to the audience.
The finals lines of this play mimic the structure of the end of a sonnet, an ABAB quatrain followed by a rhyming couplet. This could be read as a sense of closure in which the Prince offers the audience the story's moral. It would also be read as another instance in which a character tries to shape the story by adding their own narrative.
Notice that even in their grief, Montague and Capulet are competing for who can build a better monument. This could suggest that the lovers' deaths did not end the feud, simply repurpose it.
Like the Friar, the Prince blames higher powers for the deaths of the lovers. The Prince invokes the idea of fate in order to blame the deaths on the feud between the Capulets and Montagues: the tragedy is karma for their hatred. Notice that this is once again a retelling of what has happened. The many instances of retelling throughout this story ask the audience to focus on not what is being said but how it is being said.
The Friar narrates everything that the audience has just seen for the other characters on the stage. Yet because the Friar is telling the basic points of the story, it is once again a reminder to focus on how something is told rather than what is told. Like the Prologue, this is another instance in which the audience must check if they have paid attention to the right part of the story.
Like Romeo who called the poison "cordial", Juliet sees death as a restorative, or medication. Now that Romeo is dead, Juliet's only relief will come with death. Ironically, the poison is the only "medicine" that can save her.
Notice that the Friar blames chance, the "unkind hour," for the tragedy of Romeo and Paris's deaths. Even though it was the Friar's plan that set up these two deaths, he focuses on the random, uncontrollable forces that made his plan go so awry.
In this metaphor, Romeo compares his suicide to a desperate ship captain intentionally destroying his boat on rocks when his boat is weary. This imagery recalls Romeo's original characterization of his passionate grief as "the roaring sea."
Romeo fears that Death will keep Juliet as his love, and thus vows to kill himself to protect her from Death. Romeo personifies Death here in order to offer a reason why he must die other than sadness over Juliet's death. If Death is a personified being, then Romeo can protect his love from this "abhorred monster."
Here, Romeo claims that Tybalt is avenged if Romeo kills himself, just as Mercutio was avenged when Romeo killed Tybalt. Notice that while Romeo sees his own death as justice, he still connects Tybalt with the fault of "sundering", splitting or dissolving Mercutio's youth. In this way, he both justifies and takes responsibility for his action.
Unlike sick men who die surrounded by "keepers," or nurses, and merrily welcome death, Romeo does not greet death with the same joy. In comparing himself to these men who are happy to die, Romeo bring attention to the tragedy of his young death.
This is a moment of dramatic irony. The audience knows that Juliet's cheeks and lips are not pale because she is not actually dead. However, Romeo believes that this is a sign of her everlasting beauty: even in death Juliet is beautiful.
Here Romeo conflates his fate with Paris's fate. Both men were doomed by misfortune in love; both men have lost their love. Notice that Romeo holds no malice towards Paris or anger that he was supposed to marry Juliet. Both men become equal in the face of death.
The Friar here speaks to his own inability to control the events of the story. His plan was thwarted by a series of unlikely and unfortunate events that led to the death that he was trying to prevent. The friar says this in order to recognize his own inability to control fate and death.
Romeo's final words to Juliet reflect his first words to her. It is another example of a reverse-blazon in which the speaker fragments himself by individually describing each of his body parts rather than fragmenting his love object.
Romeo references the graves around them to threaten Paris with death if he interferes with Romeo's plans. Notice how Shakespeare uses the dialogue to establish the setting, and fills that setting with emotional charge based on who is speaking.
A "maw" is a jaw generally associated with a ravenous animal. Here, Romeo conflates the image of death as devouring with the image of death as giving life in depicting it as a womb. His metaphors mix life and death together to suggest that his grief makes them indistinguishable.
Notice how Paris goes back and forth between wedding night imagery and funeral imagery. The "canopy" is not a cloth covering to a bed, but the dust covering a head stone.