A Street.
 Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six 
 other MASQUERS, and TORCHBEARERS.

Romeo	What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse,
	Or shall we on without 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 crowkeeper;
	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 empiercd 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 boist'rous, 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.
											[Putting on a mask.
	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 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 - save your reverence - love, wherein thou stickest
	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, light lights by day.
	Take our good meaning, for our judgement sits
	Five times in that ere once in our five wits.

Romeo	And we mean well in going to this masque;
	But 'tis no wit to go.

Mercutio						Why, may one ask?

Romeo	I dreamed 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.

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 forefinger of an alderman,
	Drawn with a team of little atomi
	Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep.
	Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
	Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
	Time out o'mind the fairies' coachmakers.
	Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
	The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
	Her traces, of the smallest spider web;
	Her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams;
	Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;
	Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
	Not half so big as a round little worm
	Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid.
	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, ambuscados, 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 plaits 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 side 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 despisd 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!

                       They march about the stage.
