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Juliet

You wish to go? It still is not near day.

It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

That pierced the fretful hollow of your ear.

That pomegranate tree’s her nightly perch.

Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

 

Romeo

It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale. Look, love, malicious streaks,

They lace the clouds dispersing in the east.

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jovial day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

 

Juliet

That light is not daylight, I know it’s so.

It is some meteor the sun exhaled

To be for you tonight a torch-bearer

And lead you on your way to Mantua.

Stay longer then, you do not need to go.

 

Romeo

Let me be seized, let me be put to death.

I am content, if you wish it to be.

I’ll say that gray is not the morning’s eye,

It’s just the pale reflection of the moon.

And that’s no lark whose notes reverb against

The arching sky so high above our heads.

The wish to stay exceeds the will to go.

Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wants it so.

How is my sweet? Let’s talk. It is not day.

 

Juliet

It is, it is! Be quick, now go away!

It is the lark that sings so out of tune,

Discordant strains and jarring notes too sharp.

Some say the lark can intermingle tunes.

This one does not, for she’s not mingling us.

Some say the lark and loathsome toad swap eyes.

I wish that they’d exchange their voices too,

For arm from arm we’re scattered by the day.

“The Hunt is On”, it calls, and you’re away.

O, now be gone. More light and light it grows.

 

Romeo

More light and light—then darker are our woes!

 

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This excerpt from Act Two shows how carefully the Enjoy Shakespeare translations recreate all of Shakespeare's effects. Shakespeare usually wrote in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). But in this scene, he mostly employed rhyming couplets. This translation recreates those couplets, rhyming wherever Shakespeare rhymed.

 

Act Two, Scene Three. Friar Lawrence’s Cell

 

[Enter Friar Lawrence with a basket]

 

FRIAR LAWRENCE

The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,

Slicing the eastern clouds with streaks of light,

And mottled darkness like a drunkard reels

From daylight’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels.

Before the sun can raise its burning eye,

To cheer the day and drink the night’s dew dry,

I must fill up this wicker crate of ours

With toxic weeds and precious-nectared flowers.

The earth, our natural mother, is a tomb;

What is her burying ground serves as her womb;

And from her womb come children of all kinds,

All sucking from her natural breast one finds,

Many with many powers excellent,

Not one without one, yet all different.

Each plant and herb and stone, innate in it,

There lies some rich medicinal benefit.

For on this earth the vilest things that live

Add to the earth some special good they give;

And every good when stretched past proper use,

Rejects its nature, stumbling on abuse.

A virtue turns to vice, when misapplied;

Acts born of vice are sometimes dignified.

 

[Enter ROMEO]

 

Within the infant bud of this small flower

Resides a poison and a healing power:

If it is sniffed, one sense is overjoyed;

If tasted, then all senses are destroyed.

These two opposing kings contest this place

In man as well as herbs—brute will and grace;

And anywhere the worst comes out on top,

The canker worm will soon wipe out the crop.... [excerpt continues...]

 

© 2004 by Kent Richmond