BENVOLIO.
Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet, hath sent a letter to his father’s house.
MERCUTIO.
A challenge, on my life.
BENVOLIO.
Romeo will answer it.
MERCUTIO.
Any man that can write may answer a letter.
BENVOLIO.
Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how he dares, being dared.
MERCUTIO.
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?
BENVOLIO.
Why, what is Tybalt?
MERCUTIO.
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.
BENVOLIO.
The what?
MERCUTIO.
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!