The terrified Juliet was in a sad perplexity at her father’s offer.  She pleaded her youth unsuitable to marriage, the recent death of Tybalt which had left her spirits too weak to meet a husband with any face of joy, and how indecorous it would shew for the family of the Capulets to be celebrating a nuptial-feast, when his funeral solemnities were hardly over:  she pleaded every reason against the match, but the true one, namely, that she was married already.  But lord Capulet was deaf to all her excuses, and in a peremptory manner ordered her to get ready, for by the following Thursday she should be married to Paris:  and having found her a husband rich, young, and noble, such as the proudest maid in Verona might joyfully accept, he could not bear that out of an affected coyness, as he construed her denial, she should oppose obstacles to her own good fortune.

In this extremity Juliet applied to the friendly friar, always her counsellor in distress, and he asking her if she had resolution to undertake a desperate remedy, and she answering that she would go into the grave alive, rather than marry Paris, her own dear husband living, he directed her to go home, and appear merry, and give her consent to marry Paris, according to her father’s desire, and on the next night, which was the night before the marriage, to drink of the contents of a phial which he then gave her, the effect of which would be, that for two-and-forty hours after drinking it she should appear cold and lifeless; that when the bridegroom came to fetch her in the morning, he would find her to appearance dead; that then she would be borne, as the manner in that country was, uncovered, on a bier, to be buried in the family vault; that if she could put off womanish fear, and consent to this terrible trial, in forty-two hours after swallowing the liquid (such was its certain operation) she would be sure to awake, as from a dream; and before she should awake, he would let her husband know their drift, and he should come in the night, and bear her thence to Mantua.  Love, and the dread of marrying Paris, gave young Juliet strength to undertake this horrible adventure; and she took the phial of the friar, promising to observe his directions.

Going from the monastery, she met the young count Paris, and, modestly dissembling, promised to become his bride.  This was joyful news to the lord Capulet and his wife.  It seemed to put youth into the old man:  and Juliet, who had displeased him exceedingly by her refusal of the count, was his darling again, now she promised to be obedient.  All things in the house were in a bustle against the approaching nuptials.  No cost was spared to prepare such festival rejoicings, as Verona had never before witnessed.