74
ROMEO AND JULIET
[ACT II.
| Mer. | O, here's a wit of cheveril,[E 1] that stretches from90 an inch narrow to an ell broad! |
| Rom. | I stretch it out for that word "broad"; which added to the goose, proves thee far and wide a broad[C 1] goose.[E 2] |
| Mer. | Why, is not this better now than groaning for95 love? now art thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature: for this drivelling love is like a great natural,[E 3] that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble[E 4] in a hole.100 |
| Ben. | Stop there, stop there. |
| Mer. | Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.[E 5] |
| Ben. | Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.[E 6] |
| Mer. | O, thou art deceived; I would have made it105 short; for[C 2] I was come to the whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy[E 7] the argument no longer. |
- ↑ 90. cheveril] kid leather (Fr. cuir de chevreuil); so Twelfth Night, iii. i. 13: "A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit."
- ↑ 94. a broad goose] Broad may mean plain, obvious; used of words it often means gross, indecent; it also means unrestrained. Other forms of spelling were broode and brood. Hence there is probably a play on brood goose, which we find in Fletcher, Humorous Lieutenant, ii. i.: "To make us cuckolds, They have no more burden than a brood-goose." Collier and Delius, retaining F abroad, read "far and wide abroad—goose," which may be right.
- ↑ 99. natural] fool, idiot, as in As You Like It, i. ii. 52, 57.
- ↑ 100. bauble] The fool's short stick, ornamented with a fool's head, doll, or puppet; an inflated skin or bladder, for belabouring those who offended him, was often attached (Douce and Dyce).
- ↑ 102, 103. against the hair] as we say, against the grain. See Merry Wives, ii. iii. 41, and "merry against the hair," Troilus and Cressida, i. ii. 28.
- ↑ 104. large] licentious; "large jests," Much Ado, ii. iii. 206.
- ↑ 107. occupy] with a quibble on the meaning alluded to in 2 Henry IV. ii. iv. 161.
