The streets of Verona were beginning to clear of civilians, the wounded with aid, the dead pulled forth on carts. For a third time, the households Capulet and Montague had failed to uphold a peaceful state within the city, causing Verona's ruler, Prince Escalus, to declare a death sentence on the heads of both should they falter a fourth. Trustworthy Benvolio Montague, an attractive young man with wavy brown hair and merry, gray eyes, had just finished explaining the goings-on, and Lady Montague, his aunt, seemed distraught. She asked him of him, "O, where is Romeo? Saw you him to-day? Right glad I am he was not at this fray."
He recalled an event of that morning. "Madam," he replied, "an hour before the worshipp'd sun peer'd forth the golden window of the east, a troubled mind drave me to walk abroad; where, underneath the grove of sycamore that westward rooteth from the city's side, so early walking did I see your son: towards him I made, but he was ware of me and stole into the covert of the wood: I, measuring his affections by my own, that most are busied when they're most alone, pursued my humour not pursuing his, and," he added," gladly shunn'd who gladly fled from me." Benvolio's look grew distant as he relived the scene in his mind's eye.
"Many a morning hath he there been seen, with tears augmenting the fresh morning dew, adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs; but all so soon as the all-cheering sun should in the furthest east begin to draw the shady curtains from Aurora's bed, away from the light steals home my heavy son, and private in his chamber pens himself, shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out, and makes himself an artificial night: black and portentous must this humour prove, unless good counsel may the cause remove." said Lord Montague gravely.
Benvolio wrung his hands in worry. "My noble uncle, do you know the cause?" he asked hopefully.
Romeo's father shook his head. "I neither know it nor can learn of him."
"Have you importuned him by any means?" he pressed.
"Both by myself and many other friends:" said the lord,
"But he, his own affections' counsellor, is to himself--I will not say how true—but to himself so secret and so close, so far from sounding and discovery, as is the bud bit with an envious worm, ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, or dedicate his beauty to the sun. Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow, we would as willingly give cure as know?" Speak of the devil and the devil shall come. Down the cobbled street lumbered Romeo in a most dismal state. His blonde tresses, matted from neglect, fell limply over his face, partially hiding crystalline, blue eyes, red-rimmed from a prolonged flow of tears.
"See, where he comes:" whispered Benvolio to the lord and lady, "so please you," he
appealed, "step aside; I'll know his grievance, or be much denied."
Lord Montague turned to his wife. "I would thou wert so happy by thy stay, To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let's away." They exited promptly via the direction opposite from which Romeo now came.
"Good-morrow, cousin." chirped Benvolio, clapping Romeo on the shoulder and guiding him to sit with him on a stone bench in the alcove between two nearby buildings, their grime-blackened bricks thick with moss and creeping vines.
Romeo sighed, eyeing the man next to him through lids heavy with fatigue. "Is the day so young?"
Benvolio nodded. "But new struck nine."
"Ay me! Sad hours seem long.
Was that my father that went hence so fast?" inquired the Montague heir, tilting his face towards the smoke-peppered patch of bold blue between the building-tops.
"It was." He confirmed. "What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?"
"Not having that, which, having, makes them short." shrugged the blonde idly.
"In love?" Benvolio suggested.
"Out--" answered Romeo, blue orbs still reflecting a rectangular expanse of the same
hue.
Benvolio, trying to affirm some aspect of his companion's round-about way of speech,
said "Of love?"
Romeo, throwing up his hands in exasperation, replied "Out of her favour, where I am in love."
He gave Romeo an all-too-knowing look, though the other man seemed to take no notice. "Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!"
"Alas," added Romeo, "that love, whose view is muffled still, should, without eyes, see pathways to his will! Where shall we dine?" he wondered aloud. Taking notice of his surrounding's state he continued, "O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not," he implored, "for I have heard it all. Here's much to do with hate, but more with love. Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Dost thou not laugh?"
"No, coz, I rather weep." came Benvolio's reply. He exhaled rather audibly, brushing the sharp, stone fragments from his hands which had collected as he leaned back on them upon the seat. His cousin's behavior worried him. He cared deeply for him.
"Good heart, at what?" Romeo questioned him in astonishment.
Benvolio's gaze remained stern "At thy good heart's oppression." Was not that evident?
Romeo asked "Why, such is love's transgression. Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my
breast, which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest with more of thine: this love that thou hast shown doth add more grief to too much of mine own." Benvolio's heart sank. He had not meant to burden his kinsman further. "Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; being vex'd a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears: what is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet. Farewell, my coz." With that, he up and made to leave, but the brunette caught him by the wrist.
"Soft! I will go along; and if you leave me so, you do me wrong." He stated stubbornly.
Romeo would not look him in the eye. "Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here;
This is not Romeo," he declared, "He's some other where."
Internally, Benvolio recoiled at the sorrowful pang in his voice. "Tell me in sadness, who is that you love?" Whilst anticipating the answer, he felt an odd sort of tightening in his chest.
"What, shall I groan and tell thee?" Romeo's acquaintance could hear an edge in his
voice and wondered, Romeo's face hidden, whether that edge were one of woe or fury.
"Groan!" bellowed Benvolio. "Why, no, but sadly tell me who." he beseeched.
"Bid a sick man in sadness make his will:" cried Romeo, wrenching his arm away and
flinging himself back down onto the bench, "Ah, word ill urged to one that is so ill!
In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman."
Benvolio rolled his eyes. "I aim'd so near, when I supposed you loved." He
laughed though a seemingly-causeless was beginning to form in his stomach.
"A right good mark-man! And she's fair I love." sniveled Romeo pathetically.
Benvolio reasoned "A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit."
Romeo turned to him with a look of distress and displeasure. "Well, in that hit you miss:
she'll not be hit with Cupid's arrow; she hath Dian's wit;" he explained, "and, in strong proof of chastity well arm'd, from love's weak childish bow she lives unharm'd. She will not stay the siege of loving terms," lamented he," nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes, nor", Romeo emphasized, "ope her lap to saint-seducing gold: o, she is rich in beauty, only poor, that when she dies with beauty dies her store." He laid his head back against the wall, allowing clumped dirt and moss and shriveled vines to fell upon his hair and shoulders.
Letting go a breathe he hadn't realized he'd held and brushing away the debris
from Romeo's shoulders, Benvolio asked "Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?"
Romeo confirmed "She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste, for beauty starved with her severity cuts beauty off from all posterity. She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair, to merit bliss by making me despair: she hath forsworn to love, and in that vow do I live dead that live to tell it now."
In a swift movement, Benvolio had pulled them both up from the bench. Pressing Romeo to the soiled brick, he put a hand on either side of his face, forcing him to him in the eyes. Seas of grey spoke to Romeo, they commanded him slowly, somberly, in what was almost a growl "Be ruled by me, forget to think of her."
An eternity could have passed in that one silent moment. Then, suddenly, almost madly,
Romeo gave a short sort of laugh. "O," he cackled sarcastically, "teach me how I should forget to think."
Moving his hands down to Romeo's shoulders, the intensity of moments ago as though
melted, he explained "By giving liberty unto thine eyes; examine other beauties.
Again the hopeless young man sighed. "'Tis the way to call hers exquisite, in question
more: these happy masks that kiss fair ladies' brows being black put us in mind they hide the fair; he that is stricken blind cannot forget the precious treasure of his eyesight lost: show me a mistress that is passing fair, what doth her beauty serve, but as a note where I may read who pass'd that passing fair? Farewell:" He ducked beneath Benvolio's arms and was nearly clear of the building's shadow before calling back over his shoulder "thou canst not teach me to forget!" After which he rounded the corner and was out of sight.
The gray-eyed youth watched him go. To himself alone he pledged "I'll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt."
Comments:
This is the child of an idle brain forced to take too many tests over the uses of irony in Shakespeare. This came to mind a few days ago while thumbing through Act I of Romeo and Juliet during 5th period. I thought about it again during several heavily-weighted tests today, so for the sake of my grades, I figure I better finish this soon. All of the dialogue is original, I just added the settings, character descriptions, and varying emotions. Yes, I realize Romeo and Benvolio are cousins. Do I care? Obviously not. Oh, geez, 4a.m.? I'm going to go to sleep now. By the way, things in this chapter will be pretty (extremely) tame. It's mostly an introduction. I do not own "Romeo and Juliet" or any of its characters/settings/affiliations. I they belong to the grand bard, William Shakespeare.