MERCUTIO.
Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! stabbed with a white
wench's black eye; shot 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, I can tell you. O, he's the
courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing
prick-song — keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me 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 fantasticoes; these
new tuners of accents! — '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 pardonnez-moi's, who stand so
much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old
bench? O, their bons, their bons!
