romeo and Juliet

SCENE 3

SCENE III. A room in Capulet's house.

Enter LADY CAPULET and Nurse

LADY CAPULET

Nurse, where's my daughter? call her forth to me.

Nurse

Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old,

I bade her come. What, lamb! what, ladybird!

God forbid! Where's this girl? What, Juliet!

Enter JULIET

JULIET

How now! who calls?

Nurse

Your mother.

JULIET

Madam, I am here.

What is your will?

LADY CAPULET

This is the matter:--Nurse, give leave awhile,

We must talk in secret:--nurse, come back again;

I have remember'd me, thou's hear our counsel.

Thou know'st my daughter's of a pretty age.

Nurse

Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.

LADY CAPULET

She's not fourteen.

Nurse

I'll lay fourteen of my teeth,--

And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four--

She is not fourteen. How long is it now

To Lammas-tide?

LADY CAPULET

A fortnight and odd days.

Nurse

Even or odd, of all days in the year,

Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.

Susan and she--God rest all Christian souls!--

Were of an age: well, Susan is with God;

She was too good for me: but, as I said,

On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;

That shall she, marry; I remember it well.

'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;

And she was wean'd,--I never shall forget it,--

Of all the days of the year, upon that day:

For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,

Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall;

My lord and you were then at Mantua:--

Nay, I do bear a brain:--but, as I said,

When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple

Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,

To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!

Shake quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow,

To bid me trudge:

And since that time it is eleven years;

For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,

She could have run and waddled all about;