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-fadom 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.
Mercutio
Romeo and Juliet Act I, Scene iv, Line 85
It may seem as though I’ve given you quite a bit this morning, but in fact this is only a small part of Mercutio’s speech. And the thing is that this is the third time I’ve come across this speech in my travels, and I’ve yet to do a post on it. So here we go.
Romeo, Mercutio, and a bunch of buddies are on their way to a masquerade dance where Romeo’s going to meet Juliet for the first time (though he’s not aware of this now). Romeo’s hesitant about going to this dance because of a dream he had last night. He’s just about to tell them about the dream when Mercutio interrupts and goes into this long ramble about dreams. He talks about Queen Mab, the midwife of fairies who is no bigger than an agate-stone and she goes riding in her carriage made of an empty hazel nut. He tells about all the different types of people she rides over and what she makes them dream of: courtiers, lawyers, ladies, and sometimes soldiers. Today’s Totally Random lines tell of what she makes the soldier dream of. Mercutio keeps droning on further until Romeo interrupts him to shut him up. And the thing is, after this distraction of Mercutio we never get to hear what Romeo’s dream was about. We just know that apparently it was not good. And, of course, the whole deal for Romeo, and Juliet, will not turn out good in the end. So maybe he should have listened to his own dream instead of Mercutio’s treatise on dreams. Could’a, should’a, would’a.
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