Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six Maskers, Torchbearers, 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. We'll have no Cupid hoodwinked with a scarf, Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath, Scaring the ladies like a crowkeeper; 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 torch: I am not for this ambling:

Being but heavy, I will bear the light.

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. Mer. You are a lover: borrow Cupid's wings, And soar with them above a common bound.

Rom. I am too sore empiercéd 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 boisterous; 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?
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;
For I am proverbed with a grandsire phrase,--
I'll be a candle-holder, and look on ;-
The game was ne'er so fair, and I am done.
Mer. Tut! dun's the mouse, the constable's own
word:

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

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 atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep :
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams:
Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash, of film :
Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Pricked 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 sweetmeats tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit:
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:
Sometimes 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;

Mer.

True, I talk of dreans,

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 angered, 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, closed 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.

[Exeunt.

SCENE V.-A Hall in CAPULET'S House.

Musicians waiting. Enter Servants.

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

2nd Serv. When good manners shall lie all in one or two men's hands, and they unwashed too, 't is a foul thing.

1st Serv. Away with the joint-stools, remove the court-cupboard, look to the plate:-good thou, save me a piece of marchpane; and, as thou lovest me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell.-Antony and Potpan!

2nd Serv. Ay, boy; ready.

1st Serv. You are looked for and called for, asked for and sought for, in the great chamber.

2nd Serv. We cannot be here and there too. -Cheerly, boys; be brisk a while, and the longer liver take all. [They retire behind.

Enter CAPULET, &c., with the Guests and the Maskers.

Cap. Welcome, gentlemen! ladies that have their toes

Unplagued with corns will have a bout with you :

Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all
Will now deny to dance? she that makes dainty, she
I'll swear hath corns :-am I come near you now?
You are welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the
day

That I have worn a visor, and could tell
A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear,
Such as would please :-'t is gone, 't is gone,
't is gone.

You are welcome, gentlemen!-Come, musicians, play.

A hall! a hall! give room, and foot it, girls.
[Music plays, and they dance.
More light, ye knaves; and turn the tables up,
And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.-
Ah, sirrah, this unlooked-for sport comes well.
Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet;
For you and I are past our dancing days:
How long is 't now since last yourself and I
Were in a mask?
2nd Cap.

By 'r lady, thirty years.

1st Cap. What, man! 't is not so much, 't is not so much :

'Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,

Come Pentecost as quickly as it will,

Some five and twenty years; and then we masked. 2nd Cap. "Tis more, 't is more: his son is elder, sir; His son is thirty.

1st Cap.

Will you tell me that? His son was but a ward two years ago.

Rom. What lady's that, which doth enrich the hand

Of yonder knight?

Serv. I know not, sir.

Rom. O, she doth teach the torches to burn

bright!

Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear:
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shews a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shews.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blesséd my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

Tyb. This, by his voice, should be a Montague:-
Fetch me my rapier, boy:-What! dares the slave
Come hither, covered with an antick face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?
Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,
To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.

1st Cap. Why, how now, kinsman; wherefore storm you so?

Tyb. Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe;
A villain, that is hither come in spite,
To scorn at our solemnity this night.

1st Cap. Young Romeo is 't? Tyb.

"T is he, that villain Romeo.

1st Cap. Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone; He bears him like a portly gentleman; And, to say truth, Verona brags of him, To be a virtuous and well-governed youth: I would not, for the wealth of all this town, Here in my house do him disparagement: Therefore be patient, take no note of him: It is my will; the which if thou respect, Shew a fair presence, and put off these frowns, An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast. Tyb. It fits, when such a villain is a guest : I'll not endure him.

Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.
I will withdraw: but this intrusion shall,
Now seeming sweet, convert to bitter gall. [Exit.
Rom. If I profane with my unworthy hand
[TO JULIET.
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this,-
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. Jul. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shews in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
Rom. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Jul. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in
prayer.

Rom. O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do:

They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to

despair.

Jul. Saints do not move, though grant for

prayers' sake.

Jul. Go, ask his name :-if he be married, My grave is like to be my wedding bed.

Nurse. His name is Romeo, and a Montague; The only son of your great enemy.

Jul. My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, That I must love a loathéd enemy. Nurse. What's this; what's this? Jul. A rhyme I learned even now Of one I danced withal.

He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not:
The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.-
I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes,
By her high forehead, and her scarlet lip,
By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh,
And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,
That in thy likeness thou appear to us.

Ben. An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him. Mer. This cannot anger him; 't would anger him

To raise a spirit in his mistress' circle
Of some strange nature, letting it there stand
Till she had laid it and conjured it down;
That were some spite: my invocation
Is fair and honest; and, in his mistress' name,
I conjure only but to raise up him.

Ben. Come, he hath hid himself among these

trees,

To be consorted with the humorous night:
Blind is his love, and best befits the dark.

Mer. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
Now will he sit under a medlar-tree,
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.—