Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Adaptations; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stories, plots, etc. -- Juvenile literature
She, unconscious of being overheard, and full of the new passion
which that night’s adventure had given birth to, called upon her
lover by name (whom she supposed absent). “O Romeo, Romeo!” said
she, “wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy
name, for my sake; or if thou wilt not, be but my sworn love, and
I no longer will be a Capulet.”
Romeo, having this encouragement, would fain have spoken, but he
was desirous of hearing more; and the lady continued her
passionate discourse with herself (as she thought), still chiding
Romeo for being Romeo and a Montague, and wishing him some other
name, or that he would put away that hated name, and for that
name which was no part of himself he should take all herself. At
this loving word Romeo could no longer refrain, but, taking up
the dialogue as if her words had been addressed to him
personally, and not merely in fancy, he bade her call him Love,
or by whatever other name she pleased, for he was no longer
Romeo, if that name was displeasing to her. Juliet, alarmed to
hear a man’s voice in the garden, did not at first know who it
was that by favor of the night and darkness had thus stumbled
upon the discovery of her secret; but when he spoke again, though
her ears had not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue’s
uttering, yet so nice is a lover’s hearing that she immediately
knew him to be young Romeo, and she expostulated with him on the
danger to which he had exposed himself by climbing the orchard
walls, for if any of her kinsmen should find him there it would
be death to him, being a Montague.
“Alack!” said Romeo, “there is more peril in your eye than in
twenty of their swords. Do you but look kind upon me, lady, and I
am proof against their enmity. Better my life should be ended by
their hate than that hated life should be prolonged to live
without your love.”
“How came you into this place,” said Juliet, “and by whose
direction?”
“Love directed me,” answered Romeo. “I am no pilot, yet ‘wert
thou as far apart from me as that vast shore which is washed with
the farthest sea, I should venture for such merchandise.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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