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-keeper];

[Nor no] without-book prologue, faintly spoke

After the prompter, for our [entrance]

But let them measure us by what they will,

We'll measure them and be gone.

Romeo. Give me ; 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 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

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.

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; [Putting on a mask]

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 dreamt 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 waggon-spokes made of long [spinners'] 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 waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,

Not half 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 lover's 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 ,

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 [elf-locks] in foul sluttish hairs,

[Which] once untangled much misfortune bodes.

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 [clos'd] 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].