Rom.
What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?

Or shall we on without apology?

Ben.
^{5 note}

We'll measure them a measure, and be gone.

Rom.
^{8 note}

Mer.
Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.

Rom.
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.

^{9 note}Mer.
You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,
And soar with them above a common bound.

Rom.
I am too sore enpearced with his shaft,
To soar with his light feathers; and ^{1 note}



so bound,
I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe:

Under love's heavy burden do I sink.

Mer.
And, to sink in it, should you burden love?
Too great oppression for a tender thing.

Rom.
Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,
Too rude, too boist'rous; and it pricks like thorn.

Mer.
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^{2 note}

?
Here are the beetle-brows, shall blush for me.

Ben.
Come, knock, and enter; and no sooner in,
But every man betake him to his legs.

Rom.
A torch for me: ^{3 note}


let wantons, light of heart,
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels^{4 note}

I'll be a candle-holder, and look on.—
The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done.

Mer.
^{6 note}

If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire,
^{7 note}

Rom.
Nay, that's not so.

Mer.
I mean, sir, in delay
We waste our lights in vain, ^{9 note}like lamps by day.

Take our good meaning; for our judgment sits
Five times in that^{1 note}, ere once in our fine wits. 9Q1102

Rom.
And we mean well, in going to this mask;
But 'tis no wit to go.

Mer.
Why, may one ask?

Rom.
I dreamt a dream to-night.

Mer.
And so did I.

Rom.
Well, what was yours?

Mer.
That dreamers often lye.

Rom.
In bed asleep; while they do dream things true^{2 note}.

Mer.
^{3 note}

She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agat stone
^{4 note}


On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies^{5 note}

Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grashoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's watry 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
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid:
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub,
Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love:
On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies 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 sweet-meats tainted are.
^{6 note}

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, ^{7 note}

Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs^{9 note}

Rom.
Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace;
Thou talk'st of nothing.

Mer.
True, I talk of dreams;
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain phantasy;
Which is as thin of substance as the air;
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence^{1 note},
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

Ben.
This wind, you talk of, blows us from our selves;
Supper is done, and we shall come too late.

Rom.
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 despised life, clos'd in my breast,
By some vile forfeit of untimely death:
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,

^{2 note}

Ben.
Strike, drum^{3 note}. [Exeunt.

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