In the Friar's opening soliloquy in Romeo and Juliet, what does he say about the flower that he inspects?

In
, whenis introduced, he is holding a basket in his hand (into which he
places his medicinal herbs), and this action establishes a core aspect to hisand his role in the
within the play. Indeed, the dual nature by which these plants an herbs can simultaneously serve
as curative and poison is a key theme across the , along with the dualistic nature of life and
death, all of which are significantwithin the larger arc of and
.

While inspecting the flower, he states:

"Within the infant rind of this small flower / Poison hath
residence, and medicine power: / For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part; / Being
tasted, slays all senses with the heart. / Two such opposed kings encamp them still / In man as
well as herbsgrace and rude will/ And where the worser is predominant, / Full soon the canker
death eats up that plant."

However, these lines
intertwine with larger themes within the play and within the soliloquy itself. This example
illustrates a far larger pattern. Earlier, as part of that same soliloquy, he says:

"I must up-fill this osier cage of ours / With baleful weeds
and precious-juiced flowers. / The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb; / What is her
burying gave, that is her womb."

There is
illustrated here a kind of dualism about life and death, poison and curative, one which is
present at the heart of medicine and at the heart of nature itself. Laurence himself is well
aware of this tension, and his example of the plant serves to illustrate that tension, through
which the beneficial and harmful properties exist side-by-side. In so doing, he is alsolater
events in the story, and the role he himself and his medicinal knowledge will play within theof
Romeo and Juliet.