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courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing

pricksong-keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me his

minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom! the very

butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist! a gentleman of

the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the

immortal passado! the punto reverse! the hay.

Ben. The what?

Mer. The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes- these

new tuners of accent! 'By Jesu, a very good blade! a very tall

man! a very good whore!' Why, is not this a lamentable thing,

grandsir, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange

flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardona-mi's, who stand so

much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old

bench? O, their bones, their bones!

Enter Romeo.

Ben. Here comes Romeo! here comes Romeo!

Mer. Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art

thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed

in. Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench (marry, she had a

better love to berhyme her), Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy,

Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, This be a gray eye or so,

but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bon jour! There's a French

salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night.

Rom. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?

Mer. The slip, sir, the slip. Can you not conceive?

Rom. Pardon, good Mercutio. My business was great, and in such a

case as mine a man may strain courtesy.

Mer. That's as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a

man to bow in the hams.

Rom. Meaning, to cursy.

Mer. Thou hast most kindly hit it.

Rom. A most courteous exposition.

Mer. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.

Rom. Pink for flower.

Mer. Right.

Rom. Why, then is my pump well-flower'd.

Mer. Well said! Follow me this jest now till thou hast worn out thy

pump, that, when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may

remain, after the wearing, solely singular.

Rom. O single-sold jest, solely singular for the singleness!

Mer. Come between us, good Benvolio! My wits faint.

Rom. Swits and spurs, swits and spurs! or I'll cry a match.

Mer. Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done; for thou

hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am

sure, I

have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the goose?

Rom. Thou wast never with me for anything when thou wast not there for the goose.

Mer. I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.

Rom. Nay, good goose, bite not!

Mer. Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce.

Rom. And is it not, then, well serv'd in to a sweet goose?

Mer. O, here's a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch

narrow to an ell broad!

Rom. I stretch it out for that word 'broad,' which, added to the

goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.

Mer. Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art

thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by

art as well as by nature. For this drivelling love is like a

great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole.

Ben. Stop there, stop there!

Mer. Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.

Ben. Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.

Mer. O, thou art deceiv'd! I would have made it short; for I was

come to the whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy

the argument no longer.

Rom. Here's goodly gear!

Enter Nurse and her Man [Peter].

Mer. A sail, a sail!

Ben. Two, two! a shirt and a smock.

Nurse. Peter!

Peter. Anon.

Nurse. My fan, Peter.

Mer. Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan's the fairer face of the two.

Nurse. God ye good morrow, gentlemen.

Mer. God ye good-den, fair gentlewoman.

Nurse. Is it good-den?

Mer. 'Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now

upon the prick of noon.

Nurse. Out upon you! What a man are you!

Rom. One, gentlewoman, that God hath