Romeo and Juliet (extrait)

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo :

   No matter : get thee gone,

   And hire those horses ; i’ll be with thee straight.

                                                                                                     [Exit Balthazar]

   Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.

   Let’s see for means : O mischief, thou art swift

   To enter in the thoughts of desperate men !

   I do remember an apothecary,-

   And hereabouts he dwells,-which hate I noted

   In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows,

   Culling of simples ; meagre were his looks,

   Sharp misery had worn him to the bones :

   And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,

   An alligator stuff’d, and other skins

   Of ill-shaped fishes ; and about his shelves

   A beggarly accout of empty boxes,

   Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,

   Remmants pf packthread and old cakes of roses,

   Were thinly scatter’d, to make up a show.

   Nothing this penury, to myself I said

   ‘An if a man did need a poison now,

   Whose sale is present death in Mantua,

    Here lives a caitiffwretch 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.

   Being holiday,the beggar’s shop is shut.

   What, ho ! apothecary !

William Shakespeare