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Lady Capulet:
Speak briefly, can you like of Paris’ love?
Juliet:
I’ll look to like, if looking liking move:
But no more deep will I endart mine eye
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
Enter a Servant.
Servant:
Madam, the guests are come, supper served up, you called, my young lady asked for, the Nurse cursed in the pantry, and everything in extremity. I must hence to wait, I beseech you follow straight.
Lady Capulet:
We follow thee.
(Exit Servant.)
Juliet, the County stays.
Nurse:
Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.
(Exeunt.)
Scene Four. A Street.
Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six Maskers; Torch-bearers and others.
Romeo:
What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?
Or shall we on without apology?
Benvolio:
The date is out of such prolixity:
We’ll have no Cupid hoodwink’d with a scarf,
Bearing a Tartar’s painted bow of lath,
Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper;
Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke
After the prompter, for our entrance:
But let them measure us by what they will,
We’ll measure them a measure, and be gone.
Romeo:
Give me a torch, I am not for this ambling;
Being but heavy I will bear the light.
Mercutio:
Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.
Romeo:
Not I, believe me, you have dancing shoes,
With nimble soles, I have a soul of lead
So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
Mercutio:
You are a lover, borrow Cupid’s wings,
And soar with them above a common bound.
Romeo:
I am too sore enpierced with his shaft
To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,
I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.
Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.
Mercutio:
And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
Too great oppression for a tender thing.
Romeo:
Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.
Mercutio:
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: (Putting on a mask.)
A visor for a visor. What care I
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.