Muse for Hire.

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

ROMEO
48 And we mean well in going to this mask;
49 But ‘tis no wit to go.

MERCUTIO
49 Why, may one ask?

ROMEO
50 I dream’d a dream to-night.

MERCUTIO
50 And so did I.

ROMEO
51 Well, what was yours?

MERCUTIO
51 That dreamers often lie.

ROMEO
52 In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
Summary

MERCUTIO
53 O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
54 She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
55 In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
56 On the fore-finger of an alderman,
57 Drawn with a team of little atomies
58 Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.
59 Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
60 Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
61 Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
62 Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
63 The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
64 The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
65 The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
66 Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
67 Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
68 Not so big as a round little worm
69 Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid.
70 And in this state she gallops night by night
71 Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
72 O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on cur’sies straight,
73 O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,
74 O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
75 Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
76 Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.
77 Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
78 And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
79 And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail
80 Tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep,
81 Then dreams, he of another benefice:
82 Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
83 And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
84 Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
85 Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
86 Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
87 And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
88 And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
89 That plats the manes of horses in the night,
90 And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
91 Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
92 This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
93 That presses them and learns them first to bear,
94 Making them women of good carriage.
95 This is she—

ROMEO
95 Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
96 Thou talk’st of nothing.

MERCUTIO
96 True, I talk of dreams,
97 Which are the children of an idle brain,
98 Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
99 Which is as thin of substance as the air
100 And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
101 Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
102 And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
103 Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

BENVOLIO
104 This wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves;
105 Supper is done, and we shall come too late.

ROMEO
106 I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
107 Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
108 Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
109 With this night’s revels and expire the term
110 Of a despised life closed in my breast
111 By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
112 But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
113 Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen!

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part of:

Romeo and Juliet: Act 1, Scene 4