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The Same. A Street. | |
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Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six Masquers, Torch-Bearers, and Others. | |
| Rom. What! shall this speech be spoke for our excuse, | |
| Or shall we on without apology? | |
| Ben. The date is out of such prolixity: | 5 |
| We’ll have no Cupid hood-wink’d with a scarf, | |
| Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath, | |
| Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper; | |
| Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke | |
| After the prompter, for our entrance: | 10 |
| But, let them measure us by what they will, | |
| We’ll measure them a measure, and be gone. | |
| Rom. Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling; | |
| Being but heavy, I will bear the light. | |
| Mer. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance. | 15 |
| Rom. 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. | |
| Mer. You are a lover; borrow Cupid’s wings, | |
| And soar with them above a common bound. | 20 |
| Rom. 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 love’s heavy burden do I sink. | |
| Mer. And, to sink in it, should you burden love; | 25 |
| Too great oppression for a tender thing. | |
| Rom. Is love a tender thing? it is too rough, | |
| Too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn. | |
| Mer. If love be rough with you, be rough with love; | |
| Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. | 30 |
| Give me a case to put my visage in: [Putting on a masque. | |
| A visor for a visor! what care I, | |
| What curious eye doth quote deformities? | |
| Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me. | |
| Ben. Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in, | 35 |
| But every man betake him to his legs. | |
| Rom. A torch for me; let wantons, light of heart, | |
| Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels, | |
| For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase; | |
| I’ll be a candle-holder, and look on. | 40 |
| The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done. | |
| Mer. Tut! dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word: | |
| If thou art Dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire, | |
| Of—save your reverence—love, wherein thou stick’st | |
| Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho! | 45 |
| Rom. Nay, that’s not so. | |
| Mer. I mean, sir, in delay | |
| We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. | |
| Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits | |
| Five times in that ere once in our five wits. | 50 |
| Rom. And we mean well in going to this masque; | |
| But ’tis no wit to go. | |
| Mer. Why, may one ask? | |
| Rom. I dream’d a dream to-night. | |
| Mer. And so did I. | 55 |
| Rom. Well, what was yours? | |
| Mer. That dreamers often lie. | |
| Rom. In bed asleep, while they do dream things true. | |
| Mer. O! then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you. | |
| Ben. Queen Mab! What’s she? | 60 |
| Mer. She is the fairies’ 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 | |
| Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep: | 65 |
| Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs; | |
| The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; | |
| The traces, of the smallest spider’s web; | |
| The collars, of the moonshine’s watery beams; | |
| Her whip, of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film; | 70 |
| Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat, | |
| Not half so big as a round little worm | |
| Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid; | |
| Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut, | |
| Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, | 75 |
| Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coach-makers. | |
| And in this state she gallops night by night | |
| Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; | |
| O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight; | |
| O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees; | 80 |
| O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream; | |
| Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, | |
| Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. | |
| Sometimes she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose, | |
| And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; | 85 |
| And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail, | |
| Tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep, | |
| Then dreams he of another benefice; | |
| Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, | |
| And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, | 90 |
| Of breaches, ambuscadoes, 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 | 95 |
| 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, | 100 |
| Making them women of good carriage: | |
| This is she— | |
| Rom. Peace, peace! Mercutio, peace! | |
| Thou talk’st of nothing. | |
| Mer. True, I talk of dreams, | 105 |
| 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, | 110 |
| And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence, | |
| Turning his face to the dew-dropping south. | |
| Ben. This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves; | |
| Supper is done, and we shall come too late. | |
| Rom. I fear too early; for my mind misgives | 115 |
| Some consequence yet hanging in the stars | |
| Shall bitterly begin his fearful date | |
| With this night’s revels, and expire the term | |
| Of a despised life clos’d in my breast | |
| By some vile forfeit of untimely death. | 120 |
| But he, that hath the steerage of my course, | |
| Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen. | |
| Ben. Strike, drum. [Exeunt. | |
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