Romeo notices Juliet across the room and is immediately captivated by her beauty. Capulet prevents Tybalt from attacking Romeo after Tybalt recognises the intruder’s voice. Romeo and Juliet exchange kisses before each learns that the other belongs to the enemy house.
SCENE I. An open place adjoining Capulet’s Garden.
Enter Romeo.
ROMEO
Can I go forward when my heart is here?Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.
He climbs the wall and leaps down within it.
Enter Benvolio and Mercutio.
BENVOLIO
Romeo! My cousin Romeo! Romeo!
MERCUTIO
He is wise,And on my life hath stol’n him home to bed.
BENVOLIO
He ran this way, and leap’d this orchard wall:Call, good Mercutio.
MERCUTIO
Nay, I’ll conjure too.Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover!Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh,Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied;Cry but ‘Ah me!’ Pronounce but Love and dove;Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,One nickname for her purblind son and heir,Young Abraham CupidCupid fancifully given the patriarch Abraham’s name, suggesting an old or oddly solemn archer., he that shot so trimWhen King CophetuaA legendary African king who fell in love with and married a beggar woman. lov’d the beggar-maid.He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not;The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes,By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh,And the demesnesland belonging to and occupied by its lord, or a sovereign's territory. that there adjacent lie,That in thy likeness thou appear to us.
BENVOLIO
An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.
MERCUTIO
This cannot anger him. ’Twould anger himTo raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle,Of some strange nature, letting it there standTill she had laid it, and conjur’d it down;That were some spite. My invocationIs fair and honest, and, in his mistress’ name,I conjure only but to raise up him.
BENVOLIO
Come, he hath hid himself among these treesTo be consorted with the humorous night.Blind is his love, and best befits the dark.
MERCUTIO
If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.Now will he sit under a medlara small brown fruit which is eaten when softened by decay and is associated with bawdy jokes about its shape. tree,And wish his mistress were that kind of fruitAs maids call medlars when they laugh alone.O Romeo, that she were, O that she wereAn open-arsea medlar fruit, named for the shape of its open end. and thou a poperin peara pear of an elongated variety associated with Poperinge in Flanders.!Romeo, good night. I’ll to my truckle-bed.This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep.Come, shall we go?
BENVOLIO
Go then; for ’tis in vainTo seek him here that means not to be found.