Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Adaptations; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stories, plots, etc. -- Juvenile literature
On the Wednesday night Juliet drank off the potion. She had many
misgivings lest the friar, to avoid the blame which might be
imputed to him for marrying her to Romeo, had given her poison;
but then he was always known for a holy man. Then lest she should
awake before the time that Romeo was to come for her; whether the
terror of the place, a vault full of dead Capulets’ bones, and
where Tybalt, all bloody, lay festering in his shroud, would not
be enough to drive her distracted. Again she thought of all the
stories she had heard of spirits haunting the places where their
bodies were bestowed. But then her love for Romeo and her
aversion for Paris returned, and she desperately swallowed the
draught and became insensible.
When young Paris came early in the morning with music to awaken
his bride, instead of a living Juliet her chamber presented the
dreary spectacle of a lifeless corse. What death to his hopes!
What confusion then reigned through the whole house! Poor Paris
lamenting his bride, whom most detestable death had beguiled him
of, had divorced from him even before their hands were joined.
But still more piteous it was to hear the mournings of the old
Lord and Lady Capulet, who having but this one, one poor loving
child to rejoice and solace in, cruel death had snatched her from
their sight, just as these careful parents were on the point of
seeing her advanced (as they thought) by a promising and
advantageous match. Now all things that were ordained for the
festival were turned from their properties to do the office of a
black funeral. The wedding cheer served for a sad burial feast,
the bridal hymns were changed for sullen dirges, the sprightly
instruments to melancholy.bells, and the flowers that should have
been strewed in the bride’s path now served but to strew her
corse. Now, instead of a priest to marry her, a priest was needed
to bury her, and she was borne to church indeed, not to augment
the cheerful hopes of the living, but to swell the dreary numbers
of the dead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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