He jests at scars that never felt a wound, —
[Juliet appears above at a window.
But soft! what light from yonder window breaks!
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.
This conceit leads to others about the sun, and moon, and stars, and Juliet’s eyes, which occupy the whole speech, and the remainder of the scene is either of a similar character, or distinguished by sudden revulsions of feeling, which I shall notice hereafter. The whole scene is highly illustrative of the theme.
Beautiful as some of the “conceits” of the garden scene are, Mercutio’s description of Queen Mab caps the climax of fantastical analogies:
Her wagon-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, etc. etc.