A Street.
Enterย Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio,ย with five or sixย Maskers; Torch-bearersย and others.
ROMEO.
What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
Or shall we on without apology?
BENVOLIO.
The date is out of such prolixity:
Weโll have no Cupid hoodwinkโd with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartarโs painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
After the prompter, for our entrance:
But let them measure us by what they will,
Weโll measure them a measure, and be gone.
ROMEO.
Give me a torch, I am not for this ambling;
Being but heavy I will bear the light.
MERCUTIO.
Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.
ROMEO.
Not I, believe me, you have dancing shoes,
With nimble soles, I have a soul of lead
So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
MERCUTIO.
You are a lover, borrow Cupidโs wings,
And soar with them above a common bound.
ROMEO.
I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,
I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.
Under loveโs heavy burden do I sink.
MERCUTIO.
And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
Too great oppression for a tender thing.
ROMEO.
Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.
MERCUTIO.
If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
Give me a case to put my visage in: [Putting on a mask.]
A visor for a visor. What care I
What curious eye doth quote deformities?
Here are the beetle-brows shall blush for me.
BENVOLIO.
Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in
But every man betake him to his legs.
ROMEO.
A torch for me: let wantons, light of heart,
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;
For I am proverbโd with a grandsire phrase,
Iโll be a candle-holder and look on,
The game was neโer so fair, and I am done.
MERCUTIO.
Tut, dunโs the mouse, the constableโs own word:
If thou art dun, weโll draw thee from the mire
Or save your reverence love, wherein thou stickest
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho.
ROMEO.
Nay, thatโs not so.
MERCUTIO.
I mean sir, in delay
We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day.
Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits
Five times in that ere once in our five wits.
ROMEO.
And we mean well in going to this mask;
But โtis no wit to go.
MERCUTIO.
Why, may one ask?
ROMEO.
I dreamt a dream tonight.
MERCUTIO.
And so did I.
ROMEO.
Well what was yours?
MERCUTIO.
That dreamers often lie.
ROMEO.
In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
MERCUTIO.
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairiesโ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Over menโs noses as they lie asleep:
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinnersโ legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
Her traces, of the smallest spiderโs web;
The collars, of the moonshineโs watery beams;
Her whip of cricketโs bone; the lash, of film;
Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prickโd from the lazy finger of a maid:
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out oโ mind the fairiesโ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through loversโ brains, and then they dream of love;
Oโer courtiersโ knees, that dream on curtsies straight;
Oโer lawyersโ fingers, who straight dream on fees;
Oโer ladiesโ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops oโer a courtierโs nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pigโs tail,
Tickling a parsonโs nose as a lies asleep,
Then dreams he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth oโer a soldierโs neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes;
And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night;
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them, and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she,โ
ROMEO.
Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace,
Thou talkโst of nothing.
MERCUTIO.
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being angerโd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.
BENVOLIO.
This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves:
Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
ROMEO.
I fear too early: for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this nightโs revels; and expire the term
Of a despised life, closโd in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But he that hath the steerage of my course
Direct my suit. On, lusty gentlemen!
BENVOLIO.
Strike, drum.
[Exeunt.]