Enter [CAPULET, LADY CAPULET, JULIET, TYBALT, and his PAGE, NURSE, and] all the GUESTS and GENTLEWOMEN to the Maskers. CAPULET        Welcome, gentlemen! Ladies that have their toes                         Unplagued with corns will walk a bout with you.                         Ah, my mistresses, which of you all                         Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty, […]

SERVINGMEN come forth with napkins. FIRST SERVINGMAN             Where’s Potpan, that he helps not to take away? He shift a trencher? he scrape a trencher? SECOND SERVINGMAN         When good manners shall lie all in one or two men’s hands, and they unwashed too, ’tis a foul thing. FIRST SERVINGMAN             Away with the join-stools, remove the court-cupboard, […]

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 […]

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 […]

MERCUTIO                             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 […]

MERCUTIO     Sometimes she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,                         And then he dreams 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 he dreams of another benefice.                         Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,                         And then dreams […]

MERCUTIO     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 cur’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 […]

MERCUTIO     Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,                         Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,                         Time out a’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, […]

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                         Over men’s noses as they lie asleep. (1.4.53-58) Mercutio completes […]

MERCUTIO     Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word.                         If thou art Dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire,                         Or (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 […]