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A street in Verona at night. The stage is mostly dark, illuminated only by a pale light from the moon. |
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Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six Maskers, Torch-bearers, and others |
| Romeo |
What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse? |
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Or shall we on without a apology? |
| Benvolio |
The date is out of such prolixity: |
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We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf, |
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Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath, |
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Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper; |
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Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke |
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After the prompter, for our entrance: |
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But let them measure us by what they will; |
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We'll measure them a measure, and be gone. |
| Romeo |
Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling; |
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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 |
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With nimble soles: I have a soul of lead |
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So stakes me to the ground I cannot move. |
| Mercutio |
You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings, |
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And soar with them above a common bound. |
| Romeo |
I am too sore enpierced with his shaft |
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To soar with his light feathers, and so bound, |
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I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe: |
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Under love's heavy burden do I sink. |
| Mercutio |
And, to sink in it, should you burden love; |
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Too great oppression for a tender thing. |
| Romeo |
Is love a tender thing? it is too rough, |
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Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn. |
| Mercutio |
If love be rough with you, be rough with love; |
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Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. |
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Give me a case to put my visage in: |
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A visor for a visor! what care I |
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What curious eye doth quote deformities? |
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Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me. |
| Benvolio |
Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in, |
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But every man betake him to his legs. |
| Romeo |
A torch for me: let wantons light of heart |
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Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels, |
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For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase; |
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I'll be a candle-holder, and look on. |
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The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done. |
| Mercutio |
Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word: |
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If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire |
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Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'st |
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Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho! |
| Romeo |
Nay, that's not so. |
| Mercutio |
I mean, sir, in delay |
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We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. |
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Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits |
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Five times in that ere once in our five wits. |
| Romeo |
And we mean well in going to this mask; |
| Mercutio |
Why, may one ask? |
| Romeo |
I dream'd a dream to-night. |
| 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. |
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She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes |
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In shape no bigger than an agate-stone |
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On the fore-finger of an alderman, |
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Drawn with a team of little atomies |
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Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep; |
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Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs, |
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The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, |
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The traces of the smallest spider's web, |
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The collars of the moonshine's watery beams, |
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Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film, |
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Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat, |
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Not so big as a round little worm |
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Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid; |
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Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut |
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Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, |
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Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers. |
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And in this state she gallops night by night |
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Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; |
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O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight, |
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O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees, |
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O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream, |
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Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, |
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Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are: |
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Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, |
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And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; |
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And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail |
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Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep, |
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Then dreams, he of another benefice: |
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Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, |
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And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, |
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Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, |
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Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon |
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Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, |
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And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two |
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And sleeps again. This is that very Mab |
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That plats the manes of horses in the night, |
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And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, |
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Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes: |
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This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, |
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That presses them and learns them first to bear, |
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Making them women of good carriage: |
| Romeo |
Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace! |
| Mercutio |
True, I talk of dreams, |
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Which are the children of an idle brain, |
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Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, |
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Which is as thin of substance as the air |
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And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes |
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Even now the frozen bosom of the north, |
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And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, |
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Turning his face to the dew-dropping south. |
| Benvolio |
This wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves; |
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Supper is done, and we shall come too late. |
| Romeo |
I fear, too early: for my mind misgives |
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Some consequence yet hanging in the stars |
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Shall bitterly begin his fearful date |
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With this night's revels and expire the term |
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Of a despised life closed in my breast |
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By some vile forfeit of untimely death. |
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But He, that hath the steerage of my course, |
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Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen. |
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