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What is a quote from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet showing Juliet's determination?

In Act III, Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet learns that her father has promised her in marriage to Count Paris. Unknown to Lord Capulet, Juliet has already married Romeo. When Juliet refuses the commitment, Capulet becomes enraged and threatens to throw her out on the street. Despite her father's anger, Juliet is determined to avoid the marriage to Paris and to remain loyal to Romeo. She initially turns to the Nurse for advice,...

In Act III, Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet learns that her father has promised her in marriage to Count Paris. Unknown to Lord Capulet, Juliet has already married Romeo. When Juliet refuses the commitment, Capulet becomes enraged and threatens to throw her out on the street. Despite her father's anger, Juliet is determined to avoid the marriage to Paris and to remain loyal to Romeo. She initially turns to the Nurse for advice, but when the Nurse counsels her to forget Romeo and marry Paris, she privately curses the woman. She then turns to Friar Laurence, and in Act IV, Scene 1, puts her determination into words.


At first she is willing to kill herself if the Friar has no solution to her problem. She is carrying a dagger to prove her willingness to die rather than submit to her father's decree:



Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it.
If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help,
Do thou but call my resolution wise,
And with this knife I’ll help it presently.



She further shows her determination when she reveals to the Friar, who has a potential plan, that she would do anything, even endure the most frightening things she can think of:




O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
From off the battlements of any tower,
Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk
Where serpents are. Chain me with roaring bears,
Or hide me nightly in a charnel house,
O’ercovered quite with dead men’s rattling bones,
With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls.
Or bid me go into a new-made grave
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud
(Things that to hear them told have made me
tremble),
And I will do it without fear or doubt,
To live an unstained wife to my sweet love.





Juliet is fearless in this scene and agrees to a plan that must have been extremely terrifying to a thirteen year old girl, involving drinking a potion which would bring on a deathlike sleep. Of course, through her loyalty to Romeo and her determination not to be married to Paris, she shows maturity far beyond her years.


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