Original Text |
Translated Text |
| Source: Folger Shakespeare Library |
|
Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six other
Maskers, Torchbearers, and a Boy with a drum. ROMEO
What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
Or shall we on without apology? BENVOLIO
The date is out of such prolixity.
We’ll have no Cupid hoodwinked with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath, 5
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. 10 | Romeo and his posse are getting ready to crash the Capulets's party. Luckily, it's a costume party, so they can wear masks. Still, Romeo is worried about how they'll get in and what excuse they'll give for being there. Benvolio assures him that having guests names announced when they arrive is out of style these days. No one's going to care. They'll just walk in, have a dance or two, and leave. |
ROMEO
Give me a torch. I am not for this ambling.
Being but heavy I will bear the light. MERCUTIO
Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance. ROMEO
Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes
With nimble soles. I have a soul of lead 15
So stakes me to the ground I cannot move. MERCUTIO
You are a lover. Borrow Cupid’s wings
And soar with them above a common bound. | Romeo offers to carry the torch, since he's too depressed to dance anyway, but Mercutio says no way. Romeo has to dance. |
ROMEO
I am too sore enpiercèd with his shaft
To soar with his light feathers, and so bound 20
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, 25
Too rude, too boist’rous, 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 30
What curious eye doth cote deformities?
Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me. | Romeo says the weight of his love is too heavy for dancing, and Mercutio chastises him for being such a downer about something as tender as love. When Romeo says love pricks like a thorn, Mercutio says he should prick it back. Translation: The solution to heartache is to go out and have sex. |
BENVOLIO
Come, knock and enter, and no sooner in
But every man betake him to his legs. | At the door, Benvolio gives everyone a last pep talk: they'll knock, enter, and immediately start dancing—all of them. |
ROMEO
A torch for me. Let wantons light of heart 35
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. | Guess who's not on board? Yep. Mr. Sunshine, a.k.a., Romeo. |
MERCUTIO
Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word. 40
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. 45 MERCUTIO I mean, sir, in delay
We waste our lights; in vain, light lights 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 masque, 50
But ’tis no wit to go. MERCUTIO Why, may one ask? ROMEO
I dreamt a dream tonight. | Mercutio puns on Romeo's words and tries to cheer him up, but apparently Romeo has had a premonition. He tells them all he had a dream before they met up. |
MERCUTIO And so did I. ROMEO
Well, what was yours? 55 MERCUTIO That dreamers often lie. | Mercutio makes a joke out of this, too. He says he had a dream, too, and it was that dreamers often "lie." The double meaning is that a) dreams are often untrue, and b) people usually have them lying down. Ba-DUM-bum! |
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 60
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomi
Over men’s noses as they lie asleep.
Her wagon spokes made of long spinners’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, 65
Her traces of the smallest spider web,
Her collars of the moonshine’s wat’ry beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small gray-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm 70
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid.
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night 75
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
On 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 plagues 80
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 he lies asleep; 85
Then he dreams 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 90
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, 95
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— 100 | Romeo says that sometimes dreams come true, though he definitely doesn't seem to see that as a good thing in this case. Before he can go into the details of his dream, Mercutio interrupts and delivers a long, crazy speech about "Queen Mab," a tiny fairy who visits people at night. She rides in an itty bitty carriage made from an empty hazelnut and led by a team of atoms. People's dreams are affected by what part of their bodies she rides over. When she rides over courtiers' knees, they dream of curtsying; when she gallops over ladies' lips, they dream of kissing; and so on. Further on, he says Queen Mab is the one who makes pubic hair so curly (yes, he had to go there). She also makes virgins dream of sex and childbearing so they'll know how to do both. |
ROMEO Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace.
Thou talk’st of nothing. | Romeo tells Mercutio to be quiet—he's talking nonsense. |
MERCUTIO True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, 105
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 away from thence,
Turning his side to the dew-dropping south. 110 | Exactly, says Mercutio. Dreams don't mean a thing. This might be his way of suggesting that Romeo should probably let his bad dream go, and stop being such a killjoy. |
BENVOLIO
This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves.
Supper is done, and we shall come too late. | Benvolio says there's been enough talk. They've already missed dinner, and if they don't hurry up the whole party's going to be over. |
ROMEO
I fear too early, for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date 115
With this night’s revels, and expire the term
Of a despisèd 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. 120 BENVOLIO Strike, drum. They march about the stage
and then withdraw to the side. | Romeo, on the other hand, is afraid they're too early. What he means is that he doesn't think they should be here at all. He has a feeling that something bad is going to start here tonight, something that might end in his death. But...hey, might as well leave that to fate, right? He and his buddies head inside to face whatever life has in store for them. |