Romeo and Juliet Quotes

Well, think of marriage now; younger than you,
Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,
Are made already mothers: by my count,
I was your mother much upon these years
That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief:
The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 3. Lady Capulet, who wants Juliet to marry Paris, tells her that there are mothers younger than Juliet in Verona. She reminds her daughter that she was already her mother at Juliet’s age of almost 14 years.

This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 3. Lady Capulet uses a vivid metaphor to compare Paris to a "precious book of love" that needs only a cover – Juliet – to complete him and make him more beautiful. She is trying to persuade her daughter Juliet to marry Paris. The lines that precede this with an extended book metaphor are: "Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face, And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen; Examine every married lineament, And see how one another lends content And what obscured in this fair volume lies Find written in the margent of his eyes."

That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him, making yourself no less.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 3. Speaking to Juliet before the Capulet ball, Lady Capulet tries to get her daughter to notice Paris so that she will marry him. She metaphorically compares Paris to a book and Juliet to the "gold clasps" or cover. She says that by becoming Paris’s wife, Juliet will share in his wealth and status.

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.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 3. Juliet quibbles and refuses a straight answer when Lady Capulet asks if she can love Paris. Juliet’s mother wants her to agree to her father’s plan for her to marry the young nobleman. But in Juliet’s clever noncommittal response, she agrees to look at Paris with the intention of liking him, if looking can cause her to like him. She uses a Cupid-like metaphor to say that her eye won’t fly flirtatious darts of love at Paris beyond what her mother consents. She puts on the appearance of obeying her parents, but at the same time she is keeping her options open and in effect disobeying them.

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.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. Mercutio tries to persuade Romeo to dance at the Capulets’ party to forget his lovesick troubles. Romeo responds with a metaphor saying that he is weighed down with a soul made of lead. He uses a pun when he refers to his friend’s "nimble soles" and then speaks to his own heavy "soul."

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.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. Mercutio tries his best to talk Romeo out of his gloom and not be a party pooper when they are at the Capulets’ ball. He advises him to metaphorically "borrow Cupid’s wings" and soar because he is in love. But Romeo, whose love is unrequited, puns that he is too "sore" to "soar." In another pun, "bound" is used in two different senses, first to mean constraint, and secondly to mean leap. This reflects the conflicting aspects to romantic love.

If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. The playful and cynical Mercutio makes light of Romeo’s moaning about love being rough and pricking "like thorn." He uses pun and sexual innuendo to advise Romeo to have sex ("prick love" and "beat love down") to get over his sexual frustration ("pricking") because of Rosaline’s chastity vow. Mercutio personifies love as if it were a person who can be beaten down, speaking of it in aggressive and violent terms.

ROMEO: I dream’d a dream to-night.
MERCUTIO: And so did I.
ROMEO: What was yours?
MERCUTIO: Dreamers often lie.
ROMEO: In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. Romeo and Mercutio engage in banter about dreams as they walk through the streets on the way to the Capulets’ household. The skeptical Mercutio mockingly says of Romeo’s dreaming, that people who dream often lie. Romeo quickly retorts with a pun that they lie in bed asleep, as they dreams true things.

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.

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. The cynical Mercutio, on the way to the Capulet party with his dreamer friend Romeo, dismisses dreams as meaningless. In a metaphor, he tells Romeo that they are born like children from a lazy mind. He uses simile to say that they are an empty fantasy, which lacks substance like the air and is changeable like the wind. The wind is personified as being able to woo and get angry, while it also has a face.

I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4. Romeo agrees to gatecrash the Capulets’ ball with Benvolio and Mercutio, but fears that it will lead to tragic and deadly consequences. He is responding to Benvolio’s claim that they will be too late for the party. This passage reflects the theme of fate and free will found throughout the play. The stars are a metaphor for fate, with people then believing that their movements determined the course of their lives. The passage, with its sense of fear and foreboding, also foreshadows the tragic deaths that are to come.

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5. These lines tell us how Romeo is smitten by Juliet when he first lays eyes on her at the Capulets’ ball. In the first line Romeo uses a metaphor to compare Juliet to a torch lighting up the room. Then in a simile he compares her shining beauty against the night to an jeweled earring sparkling on the ear of an Ethiopian. Another metaphor likens Juliet to a magnificent "snowy dove" in a room full of "crows." Romeo uses the imagery of light against the dark to describe the radiance of Juliet’s loveliness. His speech indicates a love-at-first-sight moment for the young man. But Romeo’s ominous statement that Juliet has "beauty too rich to use, for earth too dear" is foreshadowing of how she will be laid out in the tomb too early and of the tragic events that follow. We also see here an example of Romeo’s impetuous and impulsive behavior. From being depressed before this over his unrequited love for Rosaline, he instantly falls for Juliet the moment he sets eyes on her. This is a case of situational irony, since Romeo came to the Capulet party hoping to see Rosaline, so one wouldn’t expect him to instantly fall in love with another girl.

Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5. There are two kinds of irony here in Romeo’s soliloquy, as the young Montague meets Juliet for the first time and is immediately smitten. He instantaneously and unexpectedly forgets his love for Rosaline and falls hopelessly and completely for Juliet. This is an example of situational irony. There is also dramatic irony, because what he doesn’t know and the audience does is that Juliet is a Capulet, making their love impossible because of the long-standing feud between the two families. This quote also provides evidence of Romeo’s immaturity and impulsivity.

This, by his voice, should be a Montague.
Fetch me my rapier, boy. What dares the slave
Come hither, cover’d with an antic face.

– William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5. Tybalt shows that he is an impulsive person ready to resort to violence without having to think about it. As soon as he hears Romeo’s voice at the Capulet ball he calls on his servant to fetch him his sword. He uses insulting language to describe Romeo a "slave" covered with an odd face mask. The aggressive Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, is the villain of the play and acts on emotions.
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