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SC IV.]
ROMEO AND JULIET
31
SCENE IV.—The Same. A Street.
Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six other Maskers, Torch-bearers, and Others.
| Rom. | What, shall this speech[E 1] be spoke for our excuse, Or shall we on without apology? |
| Ben. | The date is out of such prolixity:[E 2] We'll have no Cupid hoodwink'd with a scarf,[E 3] Bearing a Tartar's painted bow[E 4] of lath, 5 Scaring the ladies like a crow-keeper[E 5]; Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke After the prompter, for our entrance:[C 1][E 6][E 7] But, let them measure us by what they will, We'll measure them a measure[E 8], and be gone. 10 |
- ↑ 7, 8. Nor … entrance] Q1; omitted Q, F.
- ↑ 1. this speech] Furness suggests the speech. Capell conjectures that Benvolio and Mercutio are the speakers, assigning conjecturally 1, 2 to Ben., 3–10 to Mer., and 13 to Ben.
- ↑ 3. prolixity] Benvolio says that the apology of masqueraders for their entrance is out of date. Moth's apologetic or explanatory speech, introducing the maskers in Love's Labours Lost, V. ii. 158, is an example. See also Cupid's speech in Timon, I. ii. 128, and the Chamberlain's speech in Henry VIII. I. iv. 65. "In Histriomastix a man wonders that the maskers come in so blunt, without device" (Steevens).
- ↑ 4. hoodwink'd … scarf] So "hood-winked in this scarf," Jonson, Silent Woman, IV. ii.
- ↑ 5. bow] Douce: "The Tartarian bows … resembled in their form the old Roman or Cupid's bow, such as we see on medals and bas-reliefs. Shakespeare uses the epithet to distinguish it from the English bow, whose shape is the segment of a circle."
- ↑ 6. crow-keeper] a boy employed to scare crows; also a scare-crow. So Lear, IV. vi. 88: "That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper." Steevens quotes Drayton, Idea, 48:
"And when corn's sown, or grown into the ear,
Practise thy quiver like a crow-keeper." - ↑ 7, 8.] White conjectures that these lines, found only in Q1, were omitted on account of their disparagement of prologue speakers on the stage.
- ↑ 8. entrance] a trisyllable here, as in Macbeth, I. v. 40. Hanmer in place of for read 'fore.
- ↑ 10. a measure] a grave and dignified dance. Compare Much Ado, II. i. 80: "the wedding mannerly-modest, as a measure full of state and ancientry." The play on the word occurs in Richard II. III. iv. 7.
