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 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 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 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.
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; 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?
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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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.
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 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.
BENVOLIO:
Strike, drum.
Exeunt
Scene 5
A hall in Capulet’s house.
Musicians waiting. Enter Servingmen with napkins
First Servant:
Where’s Potpan, that he helps not to take away? He shift a trencher? he scrape a trencher!
Second Servant:
When good manners shall lie all in one or two men’s hands and they unwashed too, ’tis a foul thing.
First Servant:
Away with the joint-stools, remove the court-cupboard, look to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane; and, as thou lovest me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell. Antony, and Potpan!
Second Servant:
Ay, boy, ready.
First Servant:
You are looked for and called for, asked for and sought for, in the great chamber.
Second Servant:
We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys; be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all.
Enter CAPULET, with JULIET and others of his house, meeting the Guests and Maskers
CAPULET:
Welcome, gentlemen! ladies that have their toes Unplagued with corns will have a bout with you. Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all Will now deny to dance? she that makes dainty, She, I’ll swear, hath corns; am I come near ye now? Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day That I have worn a visor and could tell A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear, Such as would please: ’tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone: You are welcome, gentlemen! come, musicians, play. A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls.
Music plays, and they dance
More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up, And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.
