- [first lines]
- Narrator: Long ago, in Verona, there lived two families, the Montagues and the Capulets, who hated each other worse than death.
- [last lines]
- Prince: Capulet. Montague. See what a scourge is laid upon your hate that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
- Capulet: Brother Montague, give me thy hand.
- Montague: But I can give thee more, for I will raise her statue in pure gold, that while Verona by that name is known there shall be no figure at such rate be set, as that of true and faithful Juliet.
- Capulet: As rich shall Romeo by his lady lie, poor sacrifices of our enmity.
- Prince: Never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
- [a bird sings]
- Juliet: Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale and not the lark.
- Romeo: It was the lark, the herald of the morn. I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
- Juliet: Yond light is not daylight. I know it, I.
- Romeo: Come, death, and welcome. Juliet wills it so. It is not day.
- Juliet: [relenting] It is. It is. Hie hence, be gone, away. It is the lark that sings so out of tune.