The Tragedy Of Romeo And Juliet

1 Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six Maskers;
2 Torch-bearers and others.
3 ROMEO.
4 What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
5 Or shall we on without apology?
6 BENVOLIO.
7 The date is out of such prolixity:
8 We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,
9 Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,
10 Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
11 Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
12 After the prompter, for our entrance:
13 But let them measure us by what they will,
14 We’ll measure them a measure, and be gone.
15 ROMEO.
16 Give me a torch, I am not for this ambling;
17 Being but heavy I will bear the light.
18 MERCUTIO.
19 Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.
20 ROMEO.
21 Not I, believe me, you have dancing shoes,
22 With nimble soles, I have a soul of lead
23 So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
24 MERCUTIO.
25 You are a lover, borrow Cupid’s wings,
26 And soar with them above a common bound.
27 ROMEO.
28 I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
29 To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,
30 I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.
31 Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.
32 MERCUTIO.
33 And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
34 Too great oppression for a tender thing.
35 ROMEO.
36 Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
37 Too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.
38 MERCUTIO.
39 If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
40 Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
41 Give me a case to put my visage in: [_Putting on a mask._]
42 A visor for a visor. What care I
43 What curious eye doth quote deformities?
44 Here are the beetle-brows shall blush for me.
45 BENVOLIO.
46 Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in
47 But every man betake him to his legs.
48 ROMEO.
49 A torch for me: let wantons, light of heart,
50 Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;
51 For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase,
52 I’ll be a candle-holder and look on,
53 The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done.
54 MERCUTIO.
55 Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word:
56 If thou art dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire
57 Or save your reverence love, wherein thou stickest
58 Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho.
59 ROMEO.
60 Nay, that’s not so.
61 MERCUTIO.
62 I mean sir, in delay
63 We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day.
64 Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits
65 Five times in that ere once in our five wits.
66 ROMEO.
67 And we mean well in going to this mask;
68 But ’tis no wit to go.
69 MERCUTIO.
70 Why, may one ask?
71 ROMEO.
72 I dreamt a dream tonight.
73 MERCUTIO.
74 And so did I.
75 ROMEO.
76 Well what was yours?
77 MERCUTIO.
78 That dreamers often lie.
79 ROMEO.
80 In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
81 MERCUTIO.
82 O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
83 She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
84 In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
85 On the fore-finger of an alderman,
86 Drawn with a team of little atomies
87 Over men’s noses as they lie asleep:
88 Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs;
89 The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
90 Her traces, of the smallest spider’s web;
91 The collars, of the moonshine’s watery beams;
92 Her whip of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film;
93 Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
94 Not half so big as a round little worm
95 Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid:
96 Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
97 Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
98 Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
99 And in this state she gallops night by night
100 Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
101 O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight;
102 O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees;
103 O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
104 Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
105 Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
106 Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
107 And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
108 And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail,
109 Tickling a parson’s nose as a lies asleep,
110 Then dreams he of another benefice:
111 Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
112 And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
113 Of breaches, ambuscados, Spanish blades,
114 Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
115 Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes;
116 And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
117 And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
118 That plats the manes of horses in the night;
119 And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
120 Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
121 This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
122 That presses them, and learns them first to bear,
123 Making them women of good carriage:
124 This is she,—
125 ROMEO.
126 Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace,
127 Thou talk’st of nothing.
128 MERCUTIO.
129 True, I talk of dreams,
130 Which are the children of an idle brain,
131 Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
132 Which is as thin of substance as the air,
133 And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
134 Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
135 And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
136 Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.
137 BENVOLIO.
138 This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves:
139 Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
140 ROMEO.
141 I fear too early: for my mind misgives
142 Some consequence yet hanging in the stars,
143 Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
144 With this night’s revels; and expire the term
145 Of a despised life, clos’d in my breast
146 By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
147 But he that hath the steerage of my course
148 Direct my suit. On, lusty gentlemen!
149 BENVOLIO.
150 Strike, drum.
151 [_Exeunt._]