Queen Mab

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

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

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;

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,

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;

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,

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,

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,

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,

That presses them, and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage.