chidd’st me oft for loving Rosaline.
For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.
And bad’st me bury love.
Not in a grave
To lay one in, another out to have.
I pray thee chide me not, her I love now
Doth grace for grace and love for love allow.
The other did not so.
O, she knew well
Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell.
But come young waverer, come go with me,
In one respect I’ll thy assistant be;
For this alliance may so happy prove,
To turn your households’ rancour to pure love.
O let us hence; I stand on sudden haste.
Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.
[Exeunt.]
Scene IV
A Street. Enter Benvolio and Mercutio.
Where the devil should this Romeo be? Came he not home tonight?
Not to his father’s; I spoke with his man.
Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline, torments him so that he will sure run mad.
Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, hath sent a letter to his father’s house.
A challenge, on my life.
Romeo will answer it.
Any man that can write may answer a letter.
Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how he dares, being dared.
Alas poor Romeo, he is already dead, stabbed with a white wench’s black eye; run through the ear with a love song, the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft. And is he a man to encounter Tybalt?
Why, what is Tybalt?
More than Prince of cats. O, he’s the courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion. He rests his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom: the very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist; a gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal passado, the punto reverso, the hay.
The what?
The pox of such antic lisping, affecting phantasies; these new tuners of accent. By Jesu, a very good blade, a very tall man, a very good whore. Why, is not this a lamentable thing, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardon-me’s, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old bench? O their bones, their bones!
Enter Romeo.
Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo!
Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in. Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench, – marry, she had a better love to berhyme her: Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gypsy; Helen and Hero hildings and harlots; Thisbe a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bonjour! There’s a French salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.
Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?
The slip sir, the slip; can you not conceive?
Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great, and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy.
That’s as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams.
Meaning, to curtsy.
Thou hast most kindly hit it.
A most courteous exposition.
Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.
Pink for flower.
Right.
Why, then is my pump well flowered.
Sure wit, follow me this jest now, till thou hast worn out thy pump, that when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain after the wearing, solely singular.
O single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness!
Come between us, good Benvolio; my wits faint.
Swits and spurs, swits and spurs; or I’ll cry a match.
Nay, if thy wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done. For thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits, than I am sure, I have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the goose?
Thou wast never with me for anything, when thou wast not there for the goose.
I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.
Nay, good goose, bite not.
Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting, it is a most sharp sauce.
And is it not then well served in to a sweet goose?
O here’s a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch narrow to an ell broad.
I stretch it out for that word broad, which added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.
Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature. For this drivelling love is like a great natural, that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.
Stop there, stop there.
Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.
Thou
