Act 1, Scene 4

A Street.

[Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six Maskers; Torch-bearers, and others.]
Romeo
465 What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
466 Or shall we on without apology?
Benvolio
467 The date is out of such prolixity:
468 We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf,
469 Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath,
470 Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
471 Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
472 After the prompter, for our entrance:
473 But, let them measure us by what they will,
474 We'll measure them a measure, and be gone.
Romeo
475 Give me a torch,—I am not for this ambling;
476 Being but heavy, I will bear the light.
Mercutio
477 Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.
Romeo
478 Not I, believe me: you have dancing shoes,
479 With nimble soles; I have a soul of lead
480 So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
Mercutio
481 You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,
482 And soar with them above a common bound.
Romeo
483 I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
484 To soar with his light feathers; and so bound,
485 I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe:
486 Under love's heavy burden do I sink.
Mercutio
487 And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
488 Too great oppression for a tender thing.
Romeo
489 Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,
490 Too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.
Mercutio
491 If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
492 Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.—
493 Give me a case to put my visage in:
[Putting on a mask.]
Mercutio
494 A visard for a visard! what care I
495 What curious eye doth quote deformities?
496 Here are the beetle-brows shall blush for me.
Benvolio
497 Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in
498 But every man betake him to his legs.
Romeo
499 A torch for me: let wantons, light of heart,
500 Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;
501 For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase,—
502 I'll be a candle-holder and look on,—
503 The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done.
Mercutio
504 Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word:
505 If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire
506 Of this—sir-reverence—love, wherein thou stick'st
507 Up to the ears.—Come, we burn daylight, ho.
Romeo
508 Nay, that's not so.
Mercutio
509 I mean, sir, in delay
510 We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.
511 Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits
512 Five times in that ere once in our five wits.
Romeo
513 And we mean well, in going to this mask;
514 But 'tis no wit to go.
Mercutio
515 Why, may one ask?
Romeo
516 I dreamt a dream to-night.
Mercutio
517 And so did I.
Romeo
518 Well, what was yours?
Mercutio
519 That dreamers often lie.
Romeo
520 In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
Mercutio
521 O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
522 She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
523 In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
524 On the fore-finger of an alderman,
525 Drawn with a team of little atomies
526 Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:
527 Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
528 The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
529 The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
530 The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams;
531 Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;
532 Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
533 Not half so big as a round little worm
534 Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid:
535 Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
536 Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
537 Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
538 And in this state she gallops night by night
539 Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
540 O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight;
541 O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;
542 O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,—
543 Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
544 Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
545 Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
546 And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
547 And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail,
548 Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,
549 Then dreams he of another benefice:
550 Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
551 And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
552 Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
553 Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon
554 Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes;
555 And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two,
556 And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
557 That plats the manes of horses in the night;
558 And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
559 Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
560 This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
561 That presses them, and learns them first to bear,
562 Making them women of good carriage:
563 This is she,—
Romeo
564 Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace,
565 Thou talk'st of nothing.
Mercutio
566 True, I talk of dreams,
567 Which are the children of an idle brain,
568 Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;
569 Which is as thin of substance as the air,
570 And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
571 Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
572 And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
573 Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
Benvolio
574 This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves:
575 Supper is done, and we shall come too late.
Romeo
576 I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
577 Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
578 Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
579 With this night's revels; and expire the term
580 Of a despised life, clos'd in my breast,
581 By some vile forfeit of untimely death:
582 But He that hath the steerage of my course
583 Direct my sail!—On, lusty gentlemen!
Benvolio
584 Strike, drum.
[Exeunt.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 468cultural context
“Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf, Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath”
Benvolio describes the standard equipment of a masking 'presenter' — the character who entered ahead of the maskers to deliver a scripted excuse or welcome speech. He typically wore a blindfolded Cupid costume and carried a stage bow made of lath (thin wood) painted to look like the short, curved bow used by Tatars. Benvolio says this convention is stale and they will skip it.
TLN 475wordplay
“I am not for this ambling; Being but heavy, I will bear the light”
Romeo puns on two senses of 'heavy' and 'light.' 'Heavy' means both 'weighed down with grief' and 'too dull to dance'; 'light' means both 'the torch he volunteers to carry' and 'the lighthearted mood he lacks.' He is saying: because I am heavy-hearted, I will carry the literal light — the one who is lightless inside will bear the light outside.
TLN 478wordplay
“you have dancing shoes, With nimble soles; I have a soul of lead”
Romeo puns on 'soles' (the bottoms of dancing shoes) and 'soul' (his inner self). The two words were pronounced identically in Elizabethan English. Mercutio's feet are light-soled and agile; Romeo's soul is made of lead — the heaviest of metals, and by alchemical tradition the metal farthest from gold and therefore from perfection.
TLN 481classical allusion
“borrow Cupid's wings, And soar with them above a common bound”
Mercutio tells Romeo to borrow Cupid's wings and use them to rise above his misery. 'A common bound' means an ordinary leap in dancing, but also the ordinary limits of a love-sick man. Romeo then extends the image: Cupid's arrow ('shaft') has already pierced him so deeply that Cupid's own feathers cannot lift him — he is too 'sore' (wounded) to 'soar.' The pun on 'sore/soar' and the whole flight-of-love conceit derive from the classical image of winged Cupid, the god of erotic desire.
classical Cupid's golden and leaden arrows
TLN 499archaic vocab
“let wantons, light of heart, Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels”
'Wantons' are people who are playful and carefree (not necessarily immoral — the word's primary sense here is simply 'the lighthearted ones'). 'Rushes' are the dried reeds strewn on the floors of Elizabethan great halls as a covering before wooden flooring became common; dancing on them would make a rustling sound with each footfall. Romeo is saying: let the lighthearted dance on the rush-covered floor while I stand aside with a torch.
TLN 504archaic vocab
“dun's the mouse, the constable's own word: If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire”
'Dun's the mouse' was a proverb meaning 'keep quiet and still' — dun (dull grayish-brown, the colour of a mouse) was the word a constable might use for lying low, staying inconspicuous. Mercutio seizes on Romeo's 'I am done' (finished, reluctant) and twists it to 'dun' (dark and motionless), then pivots to 'Dun the horse,' a game in which players tried to lift a heavy log representing a horse stuck in the mire. 'Sir-reverence' at TLN 506 is a polite apology before saying something crude — equivalent to 'begging your pardon.'
TLN 521cultural context
“Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife”
Queen Mab is Mercutio's name for a tiny fairy queen who gallops over sleeping people's faces and causes them to dream of whatever they most desire: lovers dream of love, lawyers dream of fees, soldiers dream of battle. She is 'the fairies' midwife' in the sense that she delivers — or gives birth to — the dreams that sleepers carry. The whole speech is Mercutio's way of dismissing Romeo's dream: dreams are wish-fulfilment, nothing more.
historical Queen Mab and the fairies
TLN 547historical topical
“a tithe-pig's tail, Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice”
A 'tithe-pig' was a pig given to the parish priest as part of the tithe — the compulsory ten-percent levy of produce that every householder owed the Church. A 'benefice' is a church living: a salaried appointment to a parish. Mab tickles the sleeping parson with a tithe-pig's tail so he dreams of getting another church living, i.e., more income. The joke is anti-clerical: parsons dream of pigs (payment) and job promotions, not spiritual matters.
TLN 557cultural context
“plats the manes of horses in the night; And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs”
Two beliefs from Elizabethan fairy lore: fairies plaited ('platted') horses' manes overnight into tangled knots that were bad luck to comb out; and 'elf-locks' were matted tangles in a person's hair, thought to be caused by fairies and dangerous to untangle (it would 'bode misfortune'). 'Sluttish' here means merely slovenly or untidy, not sexually immoral — the hair of a person who has neglected to comb it.
historical Queen Mab and the fairies
TLN 576cultural context
“my mind misgives Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars”
Romeo fears that tonight's party will start a chain of events ('consequence') whose outcome has already been written in the stars — that is, fixed by astrology. Elizabethans took astrology seriously as a science: the positions of planets at one's birth and at key moments were believed to shape or even determine what would happen. The Prologue already called Romeo and Juliet 'star-cross'd lovers,' and Romeo here intuits that a fatal pattern is set in motion.