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From “Romeo and Juliet,” Act I. Sc. 4.
O, THEN, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you. | |
| She is the fairies’ midwife; and she comes | |
| In shape no bigger than an agate-stone | |
| On the fore-finger of an alderman, | |
| Drawn with a team of little atomies | 5 |
| Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep: | |
| Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs; | |
| The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; | |
| The traces, of the smallest spider’s web; | |
| The collars, of the moonshine’s watery beams; | 10 |
| Her whip, of cricket’s bone; the lash, of film; | |
| Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat, | |
| Not half so big as a round little worm | |
| Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid: | |
| Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut, | 15 |
| Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, | |
| Time out of mind the fairies’ coach-makers. | |
| And in this state she gallops night by night | |
| Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; | |
| On courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies straight; | 20 |
| O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees; | |
| O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream,— | |
| Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, | |
| Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are: | |
| Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose, | 25 |
| And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; | |
| And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail, | |
| Tickling a parson’s nose as ’a lies asleep, | |
| Then dreams he of another benefice: | |
| Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, | 30 |
| And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, | |
| Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, | |
| Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon | |
| Drums in his ear, at which he starts, and wakes; | |
| And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, | 35 |
| And sleeps again. This is that very Mab | |
| That plats the manes of horses in the night; | |
| And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, | |
| Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes: | |
| This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, | 40 |
| That presses them, and learns them first to bear, | |
| Making them women of good carriage. | |
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