Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall,
My lord and you were then at Mantua :-
Nay, I do bear a brain :-But, as I said,

When it did taste the worm-wood 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 dove-house: '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 the 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 holy-dam,
The pretty wretch left crying, and said—Ay :
To see now, how a jest shall come about!

I warrant, an 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.

La. Cap. 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 its brow
A bump as big as a young cockrel's stone;
A parlous knock; and it cried bitterly.

Yea, quoth my husband, fall'st upon thy face?.
Thou wilt fall backward, when thou com'st to age;
Wilt thou not, Jule? it stinted, and said—Ay.
Jul. And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I.
Nur. Peace, I have done: God mark thee to his grace!
Thou wast the prettiest babe that e'er I nurs'd.
An I might live to see thee married once,
I have my wish.

La. Cap. Marry, that marry is the very theme
I came to talk of :-Tell me, daughter Juliet,
How stands your disposition to be married?

Jul. It is an honour that I dream not of.

Nurse. An honour! were not I thine only nurse, I'd say, thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat. La. Cap. Well, think of marriage now: younger than you,

[6] Stinted-stopped, forbore from weeping.

STEEVENS.

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.7

La. Cap. Verona's summer hath not such a flower.
Nurse. Nay, he's a flower; in faith, a very flower.
La. Cap. 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 margin of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover. 8

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.9
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.
La. Cap. Speak briefly, can you like of Paris' love?
Jul. I'll look to like, if looking liking move :
But no more deep will I endart mine eye,
Than your consent give strength to make it fly.
Enter a Servant.

Serv. Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the nurse cursed in the pantry, and every thing in extremity. I must hence to wait; I beseech you, follow straight.

La. Cap. We follow thee.-Juliet, the county stays.

[7] So, in Wily Beguiled:

"Why he's a man as one should picture him in wax." STEEVENS. [8] This ridiculous speech is full of abstruse quibbles. The unbound lover, is a quibble on the binding of a book, and the binding in marriage; and the word cover is a quibble on the law phrase for a married woman, who is styled a femme couverte in law french. MASON.

[9] The golden story is perhaps the golden legend, a book in the darker ages of popery much read, and doubtless often exquisitely embellished, but of which Canus, one of the popish doctors, proclaims the author to have been homo ferrei oris, plumbei cordis. JOHNSON.

The poet may mean nothing more than to say, that those books are most esteemed by the world, where valuable contents are embellished by as valuable binding. STEEVENS.

Nurse. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.

SCENE IV.

[Exeunt.

A Street. Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO, with five or six Maskers, Torch-bearers, and others.

Rom. What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse? Or shall we on without apology?

Ben. The date is out of such prolixity.1
We'll have no Cupid hood-wink'd with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;2
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.

Rom. Give me a torch, 3-I am not for this ambling. Being but heavy, I will bear the light.

Mer. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance. Rom. 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. Mer. You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings, And soar with them above a common bound. Rom. 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.

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

Rom. Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boist'rous; and it pricks like thorn. Mer. If love be rough with you, be rough with love;

[1] In Henry VIII. where the king introduces himself to the entertainment given by Wolsey, he appears like Romeo and his companions in a mask, and sends a messenger before, to make an apology for his intrusion. This was a custom observed by those who came uninvited, with a desire to conceal themselves for the sake of intrigue, or to enjoy the greater freedom of conversation. Their entry on these occasions was always prefaced by some speech in praise of the beauty of the ladies, or the generosity of the entertainer; and to the prolixity of such introductions I believe Romeo is made to allude. STEEVENS.

[2] See King Lear, p. 89.

[3] To hold a torch was anciently no degrading office. Queen Elizabeth's gentlemen pensioners attended her to Cambridge, and held torches while a play was acted before her in the chapel of King's college, on a sunday evening. Before the invention of chandeliers all rooms of state were illuminared by flambeaux which attendants held upright in their hands. STEEV.

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 ?4
Here are the beetle-brows shall blush for me.

Ben. Come, knock, and enter; and no sooner in,

But every man betake him to his legs.

Rom. 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.5

Mer. Tut! dun's the mouse, the constable's own word If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire Of this (save reverence) love, wherein thou stick'st Up to the ears.-Come, we burn day-light, ho. Rom. Nay, that's not so.

Mer. 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.

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

Mer. Why, may one ask?

Rom. I dreamt a dream to-night.

Mer. And so did I.

Rom. Well, what was yours?

Mer. That dreamers often lie.

Rom. In bed, asleep, while they do dream things true. Mer. 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 waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs;
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
The traces, of the smallest spider's web;
The collars, of the moonshine's watry 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

[4] To quote is to observe. STEEVENS.

[5] An allusion to an old proverbial saying, which advises to give over, when the game is at the fairest. RITSON.

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 of mind the fairies' coach-makers.

And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
On 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 sweet-meats6 tainted are.
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit :
And sometimes 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, 7
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, this is she-

Rom. Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace;
Thou talk'st of nothing.

Mer. 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;

8

And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,

And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,

[6] Kissing-comfits. These artificial aids to perfume the breath are men. tioned by Falstaff in the Merry Wives of Windsor.

MALONE.

[7] A sword is called a toledo from the excellence of the Toledan steel. So Grotius, -Glaudius Toletanus

"Unda Tagi non est uno celebranda metallo;

"Utilis in cives est ibi lamna sucs." JOHNSON.

[8] This was a common superstition; and seems to have had its rise from the horrid disease called Plica Polonica. WARBURTON..