No Fear Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet

Act 1, Scene 4

ROMEO, MERCUTIO, and BENVOLIO enter dressed as maskers, along with five or six otherMASKERS , carrying a drum and torches.

ROMEO

What will we say is our excuse for being here? Or should we enter without apologizing?

BENVOLIO

It’s out of fashion to give lengthy explanations like that. We’re not going to introduce our dance by having someone dress up as Cupid, blindfolded and carrying a toy bow to frighten the ladies like a scarecrow. Nor are we going to recite a memorized speech to introduce ourselves. Let them judge us however they please. We’ll give them a dance and then hit the road.

ROMEO

Give me a torch. I don’t want to dance. I feel sad, so let me be the one who carries the light.

MERCUTIO

No, noble Romeo, you’ve got to dance.

ROMEO

Not me, believe me. You’re wearing dancing shoes with nimble soles. My soul is made out of lead, and it’s so heavy it keeps me stuck on the ground so I can’t move.

MERCUTIO

You’re a lover. Take Cupid’s wings and fly higher than the average man.

ROMEO

His arrow has pierced me too deeply, so I can’t fly high with his cheerful feathers. Because this wound keeps me down, I can’t leap any higher than my dull sadness. I sink under the heavy weight of love.

MERCUTIO

If you sink, you’re dragging love down. It’s not right to drag down something as tender as love.

ROMEO

Is love really tender? I think it’s too rough, too rude, too rowdy, and it pricks like a thorn.

MERCUTIO

If love plays rough with you, play rough with love. If you prick love when it pricks you, you’ll beat love down. Give me a mask to put my face in. A mask to put over my other mask. What do I care if some curious person sees my flaws? Let this mask, with its black eyebrows, blush for me. (they put on masks)

BENVOLIO

Come on, let’s knock and go in. The minute we get in let’s all start dancing.

ROMEO

I’ll take a torch. Let playful people with light hearts dance. There’s an old saying that applies to me: you can’t lose if you don’t play the game. I’ll just hold a torch and watch you guys. It looks like a lot of fun, but I’ll sit this one out.

MERCUTIO

Hey, you’re being a stick in the mud, as cautious as a policemen on night patrol. If you’re a stick in the mud, we’ll pull you out of the mud—I mean out of love, if you’ll excuse me for being so rude—where you’re stuck up to your ears. Come on, we’re wasting precious daylight. Let’s go!

ROMEO

No we’re not—it’s night.

MERCUTIO

I mean, we’re wasting the light of our torches by delaying, which is like wasting the sunshine during the day. Use your common sense to figure out what I mean, instead of trying to be clever or trusting your five senses.

ROMEO

We mean well by going to this masquerade ball, but it’s not smart of us to go.

MERCUTIO

Why, may I ask?

ROMEO

I had a dream last night.

MERCUTIO

So did I.

ROMEO

Well, what was your dream?

MERCUTIO

My dream told me that dreamers often lie.

ROMEO

They lie in bed while they dream about the truth.

MERCUTIO

Oh, then I see you’ve been with Queen Mab.

BENVOLIO

Who’s Queen Mab?

MERCUTIO

She’s the fairies' midwife. She’s no bigger than the stone on a city councilman’s ring. She rides around in a wagon drawn by tiny little atoms, and she rides over men’s noses as they lie sleeping. The spokes of her wagon are made of spiders' legs. The cover of her wagon is made of grasshoppers' wings. The harnesses are made of the smallest spiderwebs. The collars are made out of moonbeams. Her whip is a thread attached to a cricket’s bone. Her wagon driver is a tiny bug in a gray coat; he’s not half the size of a little roundworm that comes from the finger of a lazy young girl.

Her chariot is a hazelnut shell. It was made by a carpenter squirrel or an old grubworm; they’ve made wagons for the fairies as long as anyone can remember. In this royal wagon, she rides every night through the brains of lovers and makes them dream about love. She rides over courtiers' knees, and they dream about curtsying. She rides over lawyers' fingers, and right away, they dream about their fees. She rides over ladies' lips, and they immediately dream of kisses. Queen Mab often puts blisters on their lips because their breath smells like candy, which makes her mad. Sometimes she rides over a courtier’s lips, and he dreams of making money off of someone. Sometimes she tickles a priest’s nose with a tithe-pigs tail, and he dreams of a large donation. Sometimes she rides over a soldier’s neck, and he dreams of cutting the throats of foreign enemies, of breaking down walls, of ambushes, of Spanish swords, and of enormous cups of liquor. And then, drums beat in his ear and he wakes up. He’s frightened, so he says a couple of prayers and goes back to sleep. She is the same Mab who tangles the hair in horses' manes at night and makes the tangles hard in the dirty hairs, which bring bad luck if they’re untangled. Mab is the old hag who gives false sex dreams to virgins and teaches them how to hold a lover and bear a child. She’s the one—

ROMEO

Enough, enough! Mercutio, be quiet. You’re talking nonsense.

MERCUTIO

True. I’m talking about dreams, which are the products of a brain that’s doing nothing. Dreams are nothing but silly imagination, as thin as air, and less predictable than the wind, which sometimes blows on the frozen north and then gets angry and blows south.

BENVOLIO

The wind you’re talking about is blowing us off our course. Dinner is over, and we’re going to get there too late.

ROMEO

I’m worried we’ll get there too early. I have a feeling this party tonight will be the start of something bad, something that will end with my own death. But whoever’s in charge of where my life’s going can steer me wherever they want. Onward, lover boys!

BENVOLIO

Beat the drum.

They march about the stage and exit.