Lady Capulet tells Juliet that Paris wishes to marry her and praises him as a suitable husband. Juliet promises to observe Paris at the feast but will not commit herself beyond her mother’s wishes.
SCENE IV. A Street.
Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six Maskers; Torch-bearers 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:We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,Scaring the ladies like a crow-keepera person or scarecrow employed to frighten birds from crops.;Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spokeAfter the prompter, for our entrance:But let them measure us by what they will,We’ll 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 leadSo stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
MERCUTIO
You are a lover, borrow Cupid’s wings,And soar with them above a common bound.
ROMEO
I am too sore enpiercedto pierce through or penetrate. with his shaftTo soar with his light feathers, and so bound,I cannot bound a pitchthe height to which a falcon soars before swooping. above dull woe.Under love’s 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:A visor for a visor. What care IWhat curious eye doth quote deformities?Here are the beetle-brows shall blush for me.
BENVOLIO
Come, knock and enter; and no sooner inBut 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 proverb’d with a grandsire phrase,I’ll be a candle-holder and look on,The game was ne’er so fair, and I am done.
MERCUTIO
Tut, dun’s the mouseA proverbial expression calling for silence or stillness., the constable’s own word:If thou art dun, we’ll draw thee from the mireOr save your reverencean apologetic phrase used before saying something potentially disrespectful or indecent. love, wherein thou stickestUp to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho.
ROMEO
Nay, that’s not so.
MERCUTIO
I mean sir, in delayWe waste our lightsThe lungs, especially those of an animal used as food. in vain, light lights by day.Take our good meaning, for our judgment sitsFive times in that ere once in our five witsThe five mental faculties: common sense, imagination, fantasy, judgement and memory..
ROMEO
And we mean well in going to this mask;But ’tis 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 MabQueen Mab, a tiny fairy imagined as bringing sleepers their dreams. hath been with you.She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comesIn shape no bigger than an agate-stoneOn the fore-finger of an alderman,Drawn with a team of little atomiesA tiny creature or diminutive being.Over men’s noses as they lie asleep:Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs;The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;Her 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;Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,Not half so big as a round little wormPrick’d from the lazy finger of a maid:Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.And in this state she gallops night by nightThrough 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;O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail,Tickling a parson’s nose as a lies asleep,Then dreams he of another beneficea church living or ecclesiastical office carrying an income from endowed property.:Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,Of breaches, ambuscadosAn ambush: a concealed position from which to make a surprise attack., Spanish blades,Of healths five fathom deep; and then anonDrums 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 MabThat plats the manes of horses in the night;And bakes the elf-locksA tangled lock of hair supposedly knotted by elves or fairies. 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,—
ROMEO
Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace,Thou talk’st 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 woosEven now the frozen bosom of the north,And, being anger’d, 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 misgivesSome consequence yet hanging in the stars,Shall bitterly begin his fearful dateWith this night’s revels; and expire the termOf a despised life, clos’d in my breastBy some vile forfeit of untimely death.But he that hath the steerage of my courseDirect my suit. On, lusty gentlemen!