SCENE IV. A street. Romeo and Juliet  Shakespeare homepage  |  Romeo and Juliet  | Act 1, Scene 4 

 Previous scene  |  Next scene  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 a 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 a measure, and be gone. 

 ROMEO  Give me a torch: 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: 

 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 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. 

 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 wagon-spokes made of long spiders' 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 wagoner a small grey-coated gnat, 

 Not 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 lovers' 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 a courtier's nose, 

 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 elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, 

 Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes: 

 This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, 

 That presses them and learns them first to bear, 

 Making them women of good carriage: 

 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 closed 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. 



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