MERCUTIO

Nay gentle Romeo, we must have you dance. You are a Lover, borrow Cupid's wings, And soar with them above a common bound. If love be rough with you, be rough with love, Prick love for pricking, and you Beatrice love down, Give me a Case to put my visage in, A Visor for a Visor, what care I What curious eye does quote deformities: Here are the Beetle-brows shall blush for me. Tut, duns the Mouse, the Constables own word, If thou art Don, weel draw thee from the mire. Or save your reverence love, wherein thou stickest Up to the ears, come we burn daylight ho. I mean sir I delay, We wast our lights in vain, lights, lights, by day; Take our good meaning, for our Judgement sits Five times in that, ere once in our fine wits. Why may one ask? And so did I. That dreamers often lie. Oh then I see Queen Mab hath been with you: She is the Fairies Midwife, & she comes in shape no big her then Agat-stone, on the forefinger of and Alderman, drawn with a teem of little Atomies, over men's noses as they lie asleep: her Wagon Spokes made of long Spin ners legs: the Cover of the wings of Grasshoppers, her Traces of the smallest Spiders web, her coullers of the Moonshines watery Beams, her Whip of Crickets bone, the Lash of Philome, her Wagoner, a small gray-coated Gnat, not half so big as a round little Worm, pricked from the Lazie-finger of a man. Her Chariot is and empty Haselnut, made by the Joiner Squirrel or old Grub, time out a mind, the Fairies Coach-makers: & in this state she gallops night by night, through Lovers brains: and then they dream of Love. On Courtiers knees, that dream on Curtsies strait: over Lawyers fingers, who strait dreamed on Fees, over Ladies lips, who strait on kisses dream, which oft athe angry Mab with blisters plagues, because their breath with Sweet meats tainted are. Sometime she Gall lops over a Courtiers nose, & then dreams he of smelling out asute: & sometime comes she with Tith pigs tale, tick ling a Parsons nose as a lies asleep, then he dreams of another Benefice. Sometime she driveth over a Soldiers neck, & then dreams he of cutting Foreign throats, of Breaches, Ambuscados, Spanish Blades: Of Healths five Fathom deep, and then anon drums in his ears, at which he starts and wakes; and being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two & sleeps again: this is that very Mab that plaits the manes of Horses in the night: & bakes the Elk-locks 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. True, I talk of dreams: Which are the children of and idle brain, Begotten of nothing, but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant then the wind, who wooes Even now the frozen bosom of the North: And being angered, puffs away from thence, Turning his side to the Due dropping South. Romeo, Humours, Madman, Passion, Lover, Appear thou in the likeness of a sighs, Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied: Cry me but ay me, Provant, but Love and day, Speak to my goship Venus one fair word, One Nickname for her purblind Son and her, Young Abraham Cupid he that shot so true, When King Cophet a loved the beggar Maid, He hears not, he stirs not, he moves not, The Ape is dead, I must conjure him, I conjure thee by Rosalines bright eyes, By her High forehead, and her Scarlet lip, By her Fine foot, Straight leg, and Quivering thigh, And the Demeans, that there Adjacent lie, That in thy likeness thou appear to us. This cannot anger him, to would anger him To raise a spirit in his Mistress circle, Of some strange nature, letting it stand Till she had laid it, and conjured it down, That were some spite. My invocation is fair and honest, & in his Mistress name, I conjure only but to raise up him. If Love be blind, Love cannot hit the mark, Now will he fit under a Meddler tree, And wish his Mistress were that kind of Fruit, As Maids call Meddlers when they laugh alone, Oh Romeo that she were, Oh that she were And open, or thou a Poprin Pear, Romeo goodnight, I'll to my Truckle bed, This Fieldbed is to cold for me to sleep, Come shall we go? Where the deum le should this Romeo be? came he not home to night? Why that same pale hardhearted wench, that Ro saline torments him so, that he will sure run mad. A challenge on my life. Any man that can write, may answer a Letter. Alas poor Romeo, he is already dead stabbed with a white wench black eye, run through the ear with a Love song, the very pin of his heart, cleft with the blind Bowe-boyes but-shaft, and is he a man to encounter Tybalt ? More then Prince of Cats. O he's the Couragi ous Captain of Compliments: he fights as you sing pricksong, keeps time, distance, and proportion, he rests his minum, one, two, and the third in your bosom: the we ry butcher of a silk button, a Dualist, a Dualist: a Gentleman of the very first house of the first and second cause: ah the immortal Passado, the Punto reverso, the Hay. The Pox of such antique lisping affecting phan tacies, these new tuners of accent: Jesu a very good blade, a very tall man, a very good whore. Why is not this a la mentable thing Grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange flies: these fashion Mongers, these par don-mee's, who stand so much on the new from, that they cannot fit at ease on the old bench. Oh their bones, their bones. Without his Roe, Like a dried Hearing. Oh flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified? Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in: Laura to his Lady, was a kitchen wench, marry she had a better Love to be rhyme her: Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a Gipsy, Hellen and Hero, hildinsgs and Harlots: Thisbe a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, Bon jour, there's a French salutation to your French slop: you gave us the the counterfeit fairly last night. The slip sir, the slip, can you not conceive? That's as much as to say, such a case as yours con strains a man to bow in the hams. Thou hast most kindly hit it. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy. Right. Sure wit, follow me this jest, now till thou hast worn out thy Pump, that when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may remain after the wearing, sole-singular. Come between us good Benuolio, my wits faints. Nay, if our wits run the Wildgoose chase, I am done: For thou hast more of the Wildgoose in one of thy wits, then I am sure I have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the Goose? I will bite thee by the ear for that jest. Thy wit is a very Bitter-sweeting, It is a most sharp sauce. O here's a wit of Cheuerell, that stretches from and ynch narrow, to and ell broad. Why is not this better now, then groaning for Love, now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo : now art thou what thou art, by Art as well as by Nature, for this drivelling Love is Like a great Natural, that runs lolling up and down to hid his babble in a hold. Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair. Oh thou art deceived, I would have made it short, or I was come to the whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy the argument no longer. Two, two: a Shirt and a Smock. Good Peter to hide her face? For her Fans the fairer face? God you gooden fair Gentlewoman. It's no less I tell you: for the bawdy hand of the Dial is now upon the prick of Noon. Yea is the worst well, Very well took: I faith, wisely, wisely. A baud, a baud, a baud. So no. No Hare sir, unless a Hare sir in a Lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent. And old Hare hoar, and and old Hare hoar is very good meat in Lent. But a Hare that is hoar is too much for a score when it hoars ere it be spent, Romeo will you come to your Father's? Weel to dinner thither. Farewell ancient Lady: Farewell Lady, Lady, Lady. Thou art Like one of these fellows, that when he enters the confines of a Tavern, claps me his Sword upon the Table, and says, God send me no needs of thee: and by the operation of the second cup, draw him on the Draw er, when indeed there is no needs. Come, come, thou art as hight a Jack in thy mood, as any in Italy : and assoon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be moved. Nay, and there were two such, we should have none shortly, for one would kill the other: thou, why thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more, or a hair less in his beard, then thou hast: thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking Nuts, having no other reason, but be cause thou hast hasell eyes: what eye, but such and eye, would spy out such a quarrel? thy head is as full of quar rels, as and egg is full of meat, and yet thy head hath been beaten as addle as and egg for quarreling: thou hast quar rel'd with a man for coffing in the street, because he hath wakened thy Dog that hath lain asleep in the Sun. Didst thou not fallen out with a Tailor for wearing his new Doub let before Easter? with another, for tying his new shoes with old Ribbon, and yet thou wilt Tutor me from quar relling? The Fee-simple? Oh simple. By my heel I care not. And but one word with one of us? couple it with something, make it a word and a blow. Consort? what dost thou make us Minstrels? & thou make Minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but dis cords: here's my fiddlestick, here's that shall make you dance. Come consort. Men's eyes were made to look, and let them gaze. I will not budge for no men pleasure I. But I'll be hanged sir if he wear your Livery. Marry go before to field, heel be your follower, Your worship in that sense, may call him man. Oh calm, dishonourable, vile submission: Alla stucatho carries it away. Tybalt, you Ratcatcher, will you walk? Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives, that I mean to make bold withal, and as you shall use me hereafter dry beat the rest of the eight. Will you pluck your Sword out of his Pilchard by the ears? Make hast, least mine be about your ears ere it be out. Come sir, your Passado. I am hurt. A plague a both the Houses, I am sped: Is he gone and hath nothing? I, I, a scratch, a scratch, marry it's enough, Where is my Page? go Villain fetch a Surgeon. No: it's not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a Church door, but it's enough, it'll serve: ask for me to morrow, and you shall find me a graven man. I am peppered I warrant, for this world: a plague a both your houses. What, a Dog, a Rat, a Mouse, a Cat to scratch a man to death: a Braggart, a Rogue, a Villain, that fights by the book of Arithmetic, why the deu'le came you be tween us? I was hurt under your arm. Help me into some house Benuolio, Or I shall faint: a plague a both your houses. They have made worms meat of me, I have it, and soundly to your Houses. He is wise, And on my life hath stolen him home to bed. Could you not take some occasion without giving? And to sink in it should you burden love, Too great oppression for a tender thing.