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• 1 2017-02-11T22:25:39-08:00 1.4 Queen Mab Speech 8 plain 2017-03-18T17:41:39-07:00
  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 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,
  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
  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
  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
  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;
  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
  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.
  MERCUTIO  True, I talk of dreams,
  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 woos
  Even now the frozen bosom of the north
  And, being angered, puffs away from thence,
  Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.
  (1.4.58-110)