As I do remember Here dwells a pothecarie whom oft I noted As I past by, whose needie shop is stuft With beggarly accounts of empty boxes. And on the same an Aligarta hangs, Olde ends of packthred, and cakes of roses Are thinly strewed to make up a show. Here as I noted thus with myselfe I thought: Ah, if a man should need a poison now, (Whose present sale is death in Mantua), Here he might buy it. This thought of mine Did but forerune my need; and hereabout he dwells. Being holiday the beggar’s shop is shut. What ho! Apothecary! Come forth I say. _Ap._ Who calls? What would you, Sir? _Rom._ Here’s twenty ducats. Give me a dram of some such speeding gere As will despatch the weary taker’s life As suddenly as powder being fired From forth a cannon’s mouth. _Ap._ Such drugs I have, I must of force confesse, But yet the law is death to those that sell them. _Rom._ Art though so bare and full of poverty, And dost thou fear to violate the law? The law is not thy friend nor the law’s friend, And therefore make no conscience of the law. Upon thy back hangs ragged misery And starved famine dwelleth in thy cheeks. _Ap._ My poverty but not my will consents. _Rom._ I pay thy poverty but not thy will. _Ap._ Hold, take you this and put it In any liquid thing you will, and it will serve, Had you the lives of twenty men. _Rom._ Hold, take this gold, worse poison to men’s souls Than this which thou hast given me. Go hie thee hence, Go, buy thee cloathes, and get thee into flesh: Come cordial and not poison, go with me To Juliet’s grave, for there must I use thee. Shakespeare was a busy man in 1597, and in the years before as well as about that date he was preparing novelties for his theatre. Later he had more leisure, and it is interesting to notice how artistically he fills out his original sketch with only just such details as make the ideas more vivid. In the revised version of this scene, published in 1609, there are no new ideas, but scarcely a line is left untouched. A comparison of title-pages in the two editions is amusing and at the same time instructive. In 1597 it reads: “An Excellent Conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet as it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely.” In 1609 this is toned down to “The most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet as it hath been sundri times publiquely Acted.” The omission of the parenthetic (“with great applause”) is significant. The poet knows he no longer needs meretricious advertisement. The scene as we have it in our modern books is very similar to