NURSE.
Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.
LADY CAPULET.
She’s not fourteen.
NURSE.
I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth,
And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four,
She is not fourteen. How long is it now
To Lammas-tide?
LADY CAPULET.
A fortnight and odd days.
NURSE.
Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she,—God rest all Christian souls!—
Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;
She was too good for me. But as I said,
On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen;
That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
And she was wean’d,—I never shall forget it—,
Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall;
My lord and you were then at Mantua:
Nay, I do bear a brain. But as I said,
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug!
Shake, quoth the dovehouse: ’twas no need, I trow,
To bid me trudge.
And since that time it is eleven years;
For then she could stand alone; nay, by th’rood
She could have run and waddled all about;
For even the day before she broke her brow,
And then my husband,—God be with his soul!
A was a merry man,—took up the child:
‘Yea,’ quoth he, ‘dost thou fall upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;
Wilt thou not, Jule?’ and, by my holidame,
The pretty wretch left crying, and said ‘Ay’.
To see now how a jest shall come about.
I warrant, and I should live a thousand years,
I never should forget it. ‘Wilt thou not, Jule?’ quoth he;
And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said ‘Ay.’
LADY CAPULET.
Enough of this; I pray thee hold thy peace.
NURSE.
Yes, madam, yet I cannot choose but laugh,
To think it should leave crying, and say ‘Ay’;
And yet I warrant it had upon it brow
A bump as big as a young cockerel’s stone;
A perilous knock, and it cried bitterly.
‘Yea,’ quoth my husband, ‘fall’st upon thy face?
Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;
Wilt thou not, Jule?’ it stinted, and said ‘Ay’.
JULIET.
And stint thou too, I pray thee, Nurse, say I.
NURSE.
Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace
Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nurs’d:
And I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish.
LADY CAPULET.
Marry, that marry is the very theme
I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,
How stands your disposition to be married?
JULIET.
It is an honour that I dream not of.
NURSE.
An honour! Were not I thine only nurse,
I would say thou hadst suck’d wisdom from thy teat.
LADY CAPULET.
Well, think of marriage now: younger than you,
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are made already mothers. By my count
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid. Thus, then, in brief;
The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.
NURSE.
A man, young lady! Lady, such a man
As all the world—why he’s a man of wax.
LADY CAPULET.
Verona’s summer hath not such a flower.
NURSE.
Nay, he’s a flower, in faith a very flower.
LADY CAPULET.
What say you, can you love the gentleman?
This night you shall behold him at our feast;
Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face,
And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen.
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content;
And what obscur’d in this fair volume lies,
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover:
The fish lives in the sea; and ’tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him, making yourself no less.
NURSE.
No less, nay bigger. Women grow by men.
LADY CAPULET.
Speak briefly, can you like of Paris’ love?
JULIET.
I’ll look to like, if looking liking move:
But no more deep will I endart mine eye
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
Enter a Servant.
SERVANT.
Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the Nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in extremity. I must hence to wait, I beseech you follow straight.
LADY CAPULET.
We follow thee.
[Exit Servant.]
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.
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 hoodwink’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.
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
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.
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: [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.
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
Or save your reverence love, wherein thou stickest
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, 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 mask;
But ’tis no wit to go.
MERCUTIO.
Why, may one ask?
ROMEO.
I dreamt a dream tonight.
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
Over men’s noses as they lie asleep:
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
Her 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 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 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
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies 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, ambuscados, 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 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 is she,—
ROMEO.
Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace,
Thou talk’st of nothing.
MERCUTIO.
True, I talk of dreams,
