Page 26
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:
Pardon, good Mercutio, my business was great, and in such a case as mine a man may strain courtesy.
Mercutio:
That’s as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a man to bow in the hams.
Romeo:
Meaning, to curtsy.
Mercutio:
Thou hast most kindly hit it.
Romeo:
A most courteous exposition.
Mercutio:
Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.
Romeo:
Pink for flower.
Mercutio:
Right.
Romeo:
Why, then is my pump well flowered.