Romeo and Juliet Potion and Poison Quotes

With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 3. The wise Friar Laurence makes his appearance with a soliloquy about the power of herbs and flowers to both heal and poison. He says that he must fill up his basket with poisonous herbs and flowers with precious juices. This is so that he can make up medicines that will help to heal people. The flowers and herbs represent the good and evil in the world, including the love between Romeo and Juliet and the poisonous feud between their warring families. Foreshadowed here are Juliet later drinking a sleeping potion to fake her own death, and Romeo taking poison.

O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 3. As Friar Laurence gathers herbs in his garden, he speaks about the great power in herbs and plants. This can be a force for good or ill, depending on how it is handled. There is nothing on earth that is so evil it cannot provide the earth some good, he says. The friar is speaking about how herbs can be used to make medicine or poison. But is also referring to the human condition. Situations have the potential for good or evil, bounty or disaster. Virtue if misused can turn into vice, and vice can become virtue through incorrect action. This theme of the duality of all things is found throughout the play, it’s evident in many situations and characters. One example is the love between Romeo and Juliet. This is a good thing and transformative, but it is also dangerous and destructive, leading to their deaths following some rash decisions. Their deaths in turn also lead to good, bringing an end to the feud between their warring families. The friar’s speech is foreshadowing of the tragic events that happen at the end of the play.

Within the infant rind of this small flower
Poison hath residence and medicine power.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 3. As Friar Laurence tends to his medicinal herbs, he speaks of the competing powers of good and evil contained within the tiny flowers. They can be used to produce poison or medicine. The plants are a metaphor for human nature. The passage is foreshadowing of the wrong decisions that the lovers Romeo and Juliet make leading to their deaths. This is the poison the friar speaks about. The passage also highlights the theme of appearance vs reality, a flower may appear pretty but if you eat it it can poison you.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 3. Friar Laurence says that the dual nature of poison and medicine found in herbs, is also present in people. People have two sides to their nature, one evil and the other good. A metaphor compares this duality to "opposed kings." The friar also warns that where the evil side is stronger that becomes a cancer that kills. This is foreshadowing of how Romeo and Juliet, though they love each other, will be destroyed by the hatred surrounding them.

Hath Romeo slain himself? say thou but "I,"
And that bare vowel "I" shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 2. Juliet tells her Nurse that if Romeo has killed himself that will be more poisonous to her than the deadly gaze of a cockatrice. This is a mythical beast with two legs, wings and a rooster’s head, whose looks could kill. Juliet puns on "I" and "eye" – the affirmative particle "ay," meaning yes, was commonly written "I" in Shakespeare’s time.

Take thou this vial, being then in bed,
And this distilled liquor drink thou off;
When presently through all thy veins shall run
A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse
Shall keep his native progress, but surcease:
No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Scene 1. Friar Laurence offers Juliet a way out of her father’s forced marriage to Paris. He gives her a vial of potion, which will put her in a deep sleep and mimic the appearance of death, making her appear dead to others. This is a reckless plan on the part of the Friar, which will lead to a tragic fate for both Juliet and Romeo.

The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade
To paly ashes, thy eyes’ windows fall,
Like death, when he shuts up the day of life.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Scene 1. The theme of appearance vs reality and symbol of poison are contained in this speech by Friar Laurence to Juliet. He is explaining the death-like state that will be induced when she drinks the Friar’s potion. Metaphors compare lips to roses, and cheeks to ashes. In a simile falling eyelids are likened to death. Death is also personified when "he shuts up" life.

What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister’d to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour’d,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is: and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Scene 3. Juliet voices doubts about the potion Friar Laurence gives her to induce a deep death-like sleep. In this monalogue at the end of this scene, she has concerns that it may be a poison set to kill her, to cover up the Friar’s disgrace for marrying her and Romeo in secret. Yet Juliet finds reasons to justify her decision to go ahead and drink the potion. This is a reckless decision, one which will end in tragedy for Romeo and herself.

In a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed:
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 4, Scene 3. Juliet is scared about taking Friar Laurence’s sleeping potion to induce a death-like state. When she thinks of wakening up in the family vault, her imagination goes on overdrive. She conjures up frightening images of the bones of her ancestors and the bloody corpse of the recently slain Tybalt.
Imagery. What if she wakes up and sees Tybalt who recently died.

Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.
Let’s see for means: O mischief, thou art swift
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
I do remember an apothecary, –

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 1. Mistakingly informed by Balthasar that Juliet is dead, Romeo impulsively decides to return to Verona to kill himself with poison and join her in death. He feels that he has nothing left to live for. Romeo’s impulsive nature leads him to make hasty and rash decisions which can have tragic and fatal consequences.

Famine is in thy cheeks,
Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,
Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back;
The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 1. Romeo persuades the Apothecary to ignore the law forbidding the sale of poisons and to sell some to him. He tells him that he lives in destitution and starvation, the law is not his friend, and Romeo’s money can help lift him out of poverty. Words personified in this passage are "need and oppression" (said to be starving) and "world" and "law" (described as no friend of the Apothecary).

There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 1. As Romeo pays the poor Apothecary for the poison, he says that money and greed are a worse poison to men and their souls. Romeo sees money as a kind of evil that causes more murders that any amount of poison sold. Comparing gold to poison is an example of a metaphor.

Here’s to my love!
O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3. Romeo’s final words are a declaration of his love for Juliet, whom he wrongly thinks is dead. His decision to speed to an Apothecary and acquire poison, then rush to the Capulet tomb to drink it is reckless and hasty. Had he stopped to think and waited a while longer, he would have learned that Juliet was not dead, but in a sleep from which she awakens after he kills himself. Appearance vs Reality, a theme found throughout the play, leads to Romeo’s impulsive decision to take his own life because he mistakingly thought he could not be with the person he loved.

Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end:
O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after? I will kiss thy lips;
Haply some poison yet doth hang on them,
To make die with a restorative.
[Kisses him] Thy lips are warm.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3. Juliet awakens in the tomb and discovers Romeo dead. Overcome by sorrow, she kisses his lips in the hope that the poison he took will take her life too. Deciding that she cannot live without him, she sees the poison as a "restorative" – a medicine that will heal her by allowing her to be with her love in death. This fits in with the play’s theme of the relationship between and inseparability of good and evil, in this case the poison also containing the cure.
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