Enter a Servant.

Serv. Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity. I must hence to wait; I beseech you, follow straight.

La. Cap. We follow thee.-Juliet, the county stays. Nurse. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

A Street.

Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six Maskers, Torch-bearers, and Others.

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

Or shall we on without apology?

Ben. The date is out of such prolixity: 8

We'll have no Cupid hood-wink'd with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
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.

Rom. Give me a torch1, — I am not for this ambling; Being but heavy, I will bear the light.

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

*The date is out of such prolixity:] Introductory speeches are out of date or fashion.

9 We'll measure them a measure,] i. e. a dance.

1 Give me a torch,] A torch-bearer seems to have been a constant appendage on every troop of masks, and was not reckoned a degrading office.

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.

Mer. You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,
And soar with them above a common bound.
Rom. I am too sore enpierced 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.

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.

What curious eye doth quote deformities? 2
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: let wantons, light of heart,
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels; 3
For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase,—
I'll be a candle-holder, and look on,-

The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done. 4

Mer. Tut! dun's the mouse, the constable's own

word:

If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire

2

doth quote deformities?] To quote is to observe.

3 Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels ;] It has been already observed, that it was anciently the custom to strew rooms with rushes, before carpets were in use.

4 I'll be a candle-holder, and look on,

The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done.] An allusion to an old proverbial saying, which advises to give over when the game is at the fairest.

Of this (save reverence) love, wherein thou stick'st
Up to the ears. - Come, we burn day-light, ho.
Rom. Nay, that's not so.

Mer.

I mean, sir, in delay We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day. Take our good meaning: for our judgment sits Five times in that, ere once in our five wits.

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.

Rom. Well, what was yours?
Mer.

And so did I.

That dreamers often lie.

Rom. In bed, asleep, while they do dream things true. Mer. 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 fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies"
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep :

5 She is the fairies' midwife ;] I apprehend, and with no violence of interpretation, that by "the fairies' midwife," the poet means, the midwife among the fairies, because it was her peculiar employment to steal the new-born babe in the night, and to leave another in its place. The poet here uses her general appellation, and character, which yet has so far a proper reference to the present train of fiction, as that her illusions were practised on persons in bed or asleep; for she not only haunted women in child-bed, but was likewise the incubus or night-mare. Shakspeare, by employing her here, alludes at large to her midnight pranks performed on sleepers: but denominates her from the most notorious one, of her personating the drowsy midwife, who was insensibly carried away into some distant water, and substituting a new birth in the bed or cradle. It would clear the appellation to read the fairy midwife. The poet avails himself of Mab's appropriate province, by giving her this nocturnal agency.

T. WARTON.

6 of little atomies-] An obsolete substitute for atoms.

A

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 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
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.
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit:7
And sometimes 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, 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 plats the manes of horses in the night;

7 And then dreams he of smelling out a suit, &c.] In our author's time, a court solicitation was called, simply, a suit, and a process, a suit at law, to distinguish it from the other.

8 Spanish blades,] A sword is called a toledo, from the excellence of the Toletan steel.

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, this is she

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 fantasy;
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,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

Ben. This wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves; 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,
Direct my sail!-On, lusty gentlemen.
Ben. Strike, drum.

SCENE V.

[Exeunt.

A Hall in Capulet's House. Musicians waiting.

Enter Servants.

1 Serv. Where's Potpan, that he helps not to take away? he shift a trencher! he scrape a trencher!

9 And bakes the elf-locks, &c.] This was a common superstition; and seems to have had its rise from the horrid disease called the Plica Polonica.