Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Act 1 - Scene 4
A street.
Romeo : What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
[p]Or shall we on
without a apology?
Benvolio : The date is out of such prolixity:
[p]We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd
with a scarf,
[p]Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath,
[p]Scaring
the ladies like a crow-keeper;
[p]Nor no without-book prologue,
faintly spoke
[p]After the prompter, for our entrance:
[p]But let them
measure us by what they will;
[p]We'll measure them a measure, and be
gone.
Romeo : Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling;
[p]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
[p]With nimble soles: I have
a soul of lead
[p]So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
Mercutio : You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,
[p]And soar with them above a
common bound.
Romeo : I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
[p]To soar with his light
feathers, and so bound,
[p]I cannot bound a pitch above dull
woe:
[p]Under love's heavy burden do I sink.
Mercutio : And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
[p]Too great oppression
for a tender thing.
Romeo : Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,
[p]Too rude, too boisterous,
and it pricks like thorn.
Mercutio : If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
[p]Prick love for
pricking, and you beat love down.
[p]Give me a case to put my visage
in:
[p]A visor for a visor! what care I
[p]What curious eye doth quote
deformities?
[p]Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.
Benvolio : Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in,
[p]But every man betake him
to his legs.
Romeo : A torch for me: let wantons light of heart
[p]Tickle the senseless
rushes with their heels,
[p]For I am proverb'd with a grandsire
phrase;
[p]I'll be a candle-holder, and look on.
[p]The game was ne'er
so fair, and I am done.
Mercutio : Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word:
[p]If thou art dun,
we'll draw thee from the mire
[p]Of this sir-reverence love, wherein
thou stick'st
[p]Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!
Romeo : Nay, that's not so.
Mercutio : I mean, sir, in delay
[p]We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by
day.
[p]Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits
[p]Five times in
that ere once in our five wits.
Romeo : And we mean well in going to this mask;
[p]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.
[p]She is the fairies'
midwife, and she comes
[p]In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
[p]On
the fore-finger of an alderman,
[p]Drawn with a team of little
atomies
[p]Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
[p]Her wagon-spokes
made of long spiders' legs,
[p]The cover of the wings of
grasshoppers,
[p]The traces of the smallest spider's web,
[p]The
collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
[p]Her whip of cricket's
bone, the lash of film,
[p]Her wagoner a small grey-coated
gnat,
[p]Not so big as a round little worm
[p]Prick'd from the lazy
finger of a maid;
[p]Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
[p]Made by the
joiner squirrel or old grub,
[p]Time out o' mind the fairies'
coachmakers.
[p]And in this state she gallops night by
night
[p]Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
[p]O'er
courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
[p]O'er lawyers'
fingers, who straight dream on fees,
[p]O'er ladies ' lips, who
straight on kisses dream,
[p]Which oft the angry Mab with blisters
plagues,
[p]Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted
are:
[p]Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
[p]And then
dreams he of smelling out a suit;
[p]And sometime comes she with a
tithe-pig's tail
[p]Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies
asleep,
[p]Then dreams, he of another benefice:
[p]Sometime she
driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
[p]And then dreams he of cutting
foreign throats,
[p]Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
[p]Of
healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
[p]Drums in his ear, at which
he starts and wakes,
[p]And being thus frighted swears a prayer or
two
[p]And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
[p]That plats the manes
of horses in the night,
[p]And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish
hairs,
[p]Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
[p]This is the
hag, when maids lie on their backs,
[p]That presses them and learns
them first to bear,
[p]Making them women of good carriage:
[p]This is
she--
Romeo : Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
[p]Thou talk'st of nothing.
Mercutio : True, I talk of dreams,
[p]Which are the children of an idle
brain,
[p]Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
[p]Which is as thin of
substance as the air
[p]And more inconstant than the wind, who
wooes
[p]Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
[p]And, being
anger'd, puffs away from thence,
[p]Turning his face to the
dew-dropping south.
Benvolio : This wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves;
[p]Supper is done,
and we shall come too late.
Romeo : I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
[p]Some consequence yet
hanging in the stars
[p]Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
[p]With
this night's revels and expire the term
[p]Of a despised life closed
in my breast
[p]By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
[p]But He,
that hath the steerage of my course,
[p]Direct my sail! On, lusty
gentlemen.
Benvolio : Strike, drum.
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Next: Act 1 - Scene 5
