Page 3150 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, [25]
Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

MERCUT IO

If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.
Give me a case to put my visage in:
A visor for a visor. What care I [30]
What curious eye doth quote deformities?
Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.

BENVOLIO

Come, knock and enter, and no sooner in
But every man betake him to his legs.

ROMEO

A torch for me. Let wantons light of heart [35]
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.

MERCUT IO

Tut, dun’s the mouse, the constable’s own word. [40]
If thou art dun, we’ll draw thee from the mire
Of - save your reverence - love, wherein thou stickest
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho.

ROMEO

Nay, that’s not so.

MERCUT IO

I mean sir, in delay
We waste our lights in vain, light lights by day. [45]
Take our good meaning, for our judgement sits
Five times in that ere once in our five wits.

ROMEO

And we mean well in going to this masque,
But ’tis no wit to go.