Romeo and Juliet

ACT I 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 a apology?
BENVOLIO	The date is out of such prolixity:
	We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf,	5
	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:
	But let them measure us by what they will;	10
	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	15
	With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead
	So 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 enpierced with his shaft	20
	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.
MERCUTIO	And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
	Too great oppression for a tender thing.	25
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:	30
	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.	35
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.	40
MERCUTIO	Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word:
	If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire
	Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'st
	Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!
ROMEO	Nay, that's not so.	45
MERCUTIO	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.
ROMEO	And we mean well in going to this mask;	50
	But 'tis no wit to go.
MERCUTIO	Why, may one ask?
ROMEO	I dream'd a dream to-night.
MERCUTIO	And so did I.
ROMEO	Well, what was yours?	55
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 fairies' midwife, and she comes
	In shape no bigger than an agate-stone	60
	On the fore-finger of an alderman,
	Drawn with a team of little atomies
	Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
	Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
	The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,	65
	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,
	Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
	Not so big as a round little worm	70
	Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
	Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
	Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
	Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
	And in this state she gallops night by night	75
	Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
	O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies 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,	80
	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,	85
	Then dreams, he of another benefice:
	Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
	And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
	Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
	Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon	90
	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 elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,	95
	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--	100
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,	105
	Which is as thin of substance as the air
	And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
	Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
	And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
	Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.	110
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	115
	With this night's revels and expire the term
	Of a despised life closed in my breast
	By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
	But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
	Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.	120
BENVOLIO	Strike, drum.
	Exeunt

Next: Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5