BENVOLIO.

Nay, he will answer the letter’s master, how he

dares, being dared.


MERCUTIO.

Alas poor Romeo, he is already dead, stabbed with a white wench’s black

eye; run through the ear with a love song, the very pin of his heart cleft with

the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft. And is he a man to encounter Tybalt?


BENVOLIO.

Why, what is Tybalt?


MERCUTIO.

More than Prince of cats. O, he’s the courageous captain of compliments.

He fights as you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion. He

rests 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 reverso, the

hay.


BENVOLIO.

The what?


MERCUTIO.

The pox of such antic lisping, affecting phantasies; 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, grandsire, that we should be thus afflicted with

these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardon-me’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.
BENVOLIO.

Here comes Romeo, here comes Romeo!


MERCUTIO.

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; Thisbe a grey

eye or so, but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bonjour! There’s a

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

night.


ROMEO.

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


MERCUTIO.

The slip sir, the slip; can you not conceive?


ROMEO.