Off to the Ball and Mercutio's Speech

Scene summary

On the way to the Capulets' ball, Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio go masked, with torchbearers and other attendants. Benvolio dispenses with the apology speech that was customary on entering a masked party: it is enough for the three to enter and dance. Romeo asks for a torch because he is too heavy to dance: he says he has a soul of lead that holds him to the ground. Mercutio tells him to borrow Cupid's wings, and Romeo answers that Cupid's arrow has wounded him too deeply to fly and that love is rough and pricks like a thorn. Mercutio advises treating love with the same brutality, puts on his mask and jokes that her protruding brow will blush for him. Romeo insists on being only the torchbearer, and Mercutio says they are wasting time. Romeo answers that going to the party is not sensible, because he had a dream during the night, and Mercutio retorts that dreamers lie.

To mock Romeo's dream, Mercutio describes Queen Mab, the midwife of the fairies: no bigger than the stone of a ring, in a chariot made of a hazelnut shell, she passes over sleepers at night and makes each one dream of what they desire. Lovers dream of love, courtiers of bows, lawyers of fees, the priest of a new benefice, the soldier of cutting enemies' throats. Romeo interrupts him and says he talks of nothing, and Mercutio agrees that he speaks of dreams, the children of an idle brain, as thin as air and more fickle than the wind.

Benvolio warns that the wind of this talk blows them away from themselves and that, when they arrive, supper will be over. Romeo answers that he fears arriving too early: his spirit senses that some consequence still hanging in the stars will begin at that party and end, before its time, in a death. Even so, he surrenders the course to whoever holds the helm of his voyage and tells the group to go on, and Benvolio orders the drum to sound.