Romeo and Juliet Queen Mab Quotes

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 spiders’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider’s web.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. The pragmatic and cynical Mercutio dismisses the dreams of love of his dreamer friend Romeo as unreal. In his famous Queen Mab speech, he relates Romeo’s dream to the fairies’ midwife, who assists with the birth of people’s dreams. Queen Mab is described as a tiny figure who travels in a carriage made of insects’ wings and spiders’ webs. While Romeo is obsessed with Rosaline, Mercutio is trying to tell him that his love for her is mere infatuation and his romantic dreams are insubstantial and illusory.

She gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er 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.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. Mercutio describes how Queen Mab nightly brings dreams to sleepers in answer to their deepest desires. She brings love to lovers, curtsies to courtiers, fees to lawyers, and kisses to the ladies. But everything is fantasy and illusion, according to Mercutio.

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.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. Queen Mab shows her vindictive side in this description of her by Mercutio. He tells how she causes blisters on the lips of ladies because their breaths smell of candy. She also encourages courtiers and parsons to dream of wealth and money.

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.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. Queen Mab becomes a very dark figure here, as Mercutio explains how the dream-maker brings soldiers nightmares that give them urges for violence. This taste for violence is echoed in the play, with the young men of Verona all too ready and willing to fight and even kill.

This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks 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.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. Queen Mab is portrayed as a mean-spirited, mischief-maker by Mercutio, using terms like "foul," "sluttish" and "hag." We hear how she tangles the hair of horses manes and brings dreams of sex to virgins. "Good carriage" has a double meaning, meaning women who can equally carry a man’s weight or a pregnancy.
Close