ROMEO AND JULIET DRAMATIS PERSONAE ESCALUS: prince of ...

LADY CAPULET: [Back to business] We follow thee.[Exit SAMPSON, 1]Juliet, the county stays.NURSE [Embracing Juliet] Go, girl, seek happy nightsto happy days.BLACKOUT, strike chair, street flats up.ACT I SCENE IV A street. [Enter ROMEO,MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, ABRAHAM, five or sixMaskers, others, dressed spectacularly elegantly, withmasks for a Mardi Gras soiree. Romeo stands out insharp contrast to his friends; all of them are passing abottle of vodka, laughing and having a good time.Mercutio takes a spoonful of coke from her necklaceand snorts it.]ROMEO: [Sullenly; his friends are dragging himalong so he can watch them act like idiots while hesuffers mightily] Give me a torch: I am not for thisambling; being but heavy, I will bear the light.MERC [Wrapping herself around Romeo teasingly]Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.ROMEO: [Gently; he did love her once, and theirdeep friendship suffered not at all for the days theyspent as lovers] Not I, believe me: you have dancingshoes with nimble soles: I have a soul of leadSo stakes me to the ground I cannot move.MERC You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings,And soar with them above a common bound.ROMEO: I am too sore enpierced with his shaftTo soar with his light feathers, and so bound,I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe:Under love's heavy burden do I sink.MERC 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.MERC If love be rough with you, [wraps her armsaround him and pulls his hair mock-seductively, stillintent on teasing him out of his black mood] be roughwith love; prick love for pricking, and you beat lovedown.BENVOLIO [Trying to nudge the party along]Come,knock and enter; and no sooner in, but every manbetake him to his legs.ROMEO: [Ordinarily, he’d find all this funny, butright now it’s falling flat for him.] A torch for me: letwantons light of heartTickle the senseless rushes with their heels,I'll be a candle-holder, and look on.MERC Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's ownword: If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mireOf this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick'stUp to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho! [The partystarts moving again, DC, but Romeo takes hold ofMercutio’s arm before she can start walking.]ROMEO [Somberly, quietly] I dream'd a dream to-night.MERCUTIO And so did I.ROMEO Well, what was yours?MERCUTIO [Pivoting around him teasingly] Thatdreamers often lie.ROMEO: [Very faintly annoyed that he can’t make her beserious even for a moment, but matching her wit with wit]In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.MERC [Delighted; now he’s playing, finally.] O, then, Isee Queen Mab hath been with you. [Stoned; this tripalternates between humor, intensity and sheer scariness, andthe others find it increasingly unsettling.]She is the fairies' midwife, and she comesIn shape no bigger than an agate-stoneOn the fore-finger of an alderman,Drawn with a team of little atomiesAthwart 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 wormPrick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;Her chariot is an empty hazel-nutMade by the joiner squirrel or old grub,Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.And in this state she gallops night by nightThrough lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,Of hells five-fathoms deep; and then anonDrums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,And being thus frighted swears a prayer or twoAnd sleeps again. This is that very MabThis 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. [Holds her gently from behind,trying to bring her out of it. She almost loses it, and it takesher a minute to collect herself.]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 airAnd more inconstant than the wind, who wooesEven now the frozen bosom of the north,And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.5