Romeo & Juliet - Act 1 Scene 4
A street outside Capulet’s house.
Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six Maskers,
Torch-bearers, and others
Masking (or "masquing") was a Renaissance custom that involved not only putting on disguises, but setting them to a theme, with a kind of introductory story. That's the "speech" that Romeo proposes, which Benvolio explains is no longer fashionable.
ROMEO
What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
Or shall we on without an apology?
BENVOLIO
The date is out of such prolixity;
We'll have no Cupid hoodwinked 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.
The argument between Romeo and Mercutio takes place in puns and wordplay, but it also articulates their opposing views of love: Romeo's is poetic and romantic, while Mercutio's is practical and sexual.
MERCUTIO
You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,
And soar with them above a common bound.
ROMEO
I am too sore enpiercèd 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's approach to the party reflects his attitude as a lover: he wants to be observing but uninvolved, watching from the sidelines without taking part.
ROMEO
A torch for me. Let wantons light of heart
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels,
For I am proverbed 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?
This is the first articulation of the play's "star-crossed" theme, the idea that the lovers' tragic fate is determined by some kind of supernatural force, rather than by human agency.
ROMEO
I dreamt a dream tonight.
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.
This speech starts out playful, satirizing conventions of love, but it later turns ominous, picking up the theme of malicious supernatural forces meddling with people's fates.
In performance, there are numerous options for the others' responses to this speech. Romeo and Benvolio don’t interrupt, so they may be amused, or fascinated, or shocked, and their reactions may change over the course of the speech.
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
Over 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,
Her 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
Pricked 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 curtsies 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 elf-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—
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 woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the North,
And, being angered, 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 separates from the group, so that he can express his ominous thoughts to himself and to the audience. Finally, he entrusts his fate to a higher authority, and agrees to join his friends. From the report later at the party, though, he never does dance.
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 despisèd 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.
Original stage directions suggest that this scene transitions directly into the next, so that the audience momentarily sees the exterior and the interior of the house at once, until the lads enter into the party.
Exeunt