ROMEO	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.

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

ROMEO	Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,
	Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

MERCUTIO	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:
	A visor for a visor! what care I
	What curious eye doth quote deformities?
	Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.

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

ROMEO	A torch for me: let wantons light of heart
	Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels,
	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.

MERCUTIO	Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word:
	If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire
	Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'st
	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 in vain, like lamps by day.
	Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits
	Five times in that ere once in our five wits.

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

MERCUTIO	Why, may one ask?

ROMEO	I dream'd a dream to-night.

MERCUTIO	And so did I.

ROMEO	Well, what was yours?

MERCUTIO	That dreamers often lie.

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

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 fore-finger of an alderman,
	Drawn with a team of little atomies
	Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
	Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' 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 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 o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
	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 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:
	Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
	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, 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,
	And bakes the elflocks 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 is she--

ROMEO	                  Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!
	Thou talk'st of nothing.