Courtesty All Shakespeare

Queen Mab Courtesty All Shakespeare

Mercutio’s speech about Queen Mab in Act I, scene iv, seems to have nothing to do with Romeo and Juliet whatsoever. In fact, some Shakespearean scholars have argued that it was added to the script during the printing of the Second Quarto and was not, therefore, a part of the play as it was originally written. Other scholars argue that even if the speech was in the original script, it contradicts what we know of Mercutio: a hot-tempered and lusty youth who has no patience for the dreams and visions discussed in the Queen Mab speech. The Queen Mab speech, however, does hold consistent with Mercutio’s character in some ways, and it also points to some important aspects of the play in general. Let’s begin with a summary of the speech itself. When Romeo is reluctant to attend the Capulet ball because he has had a bad dream (probably because he has been pining for Rosaline), Mercutio makes fun of him for it by telling him that \“Dreamers often lie” (l. 51). Romeo puts out a witty retort to Mercutio’s joke, and Mercutio replies with a 42-line speech about Queen Mab, the “fairies’ midwife,\” or the fairy responsible for bringing dreams that fulfill the wishes of the dreamer (l. 54). It should be noted that the name \“Mab\” was an insult in Shakespeare’s time because it was synonymous with \“prostitute.\” Queen Mab’s name is also different from Titania, the name Shakespeare used for the fairy queen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was written during the same period as Romeo and Juliet. Once he identifies Queen Mab, Mercutio then describes her appearance and carriage. She is the size of a stone in a ring, and she rides in a coach pulled by atomies, or tiny creatures. This indicates Queen Mab’s importance because during Shakespeare’s time, only the rich had coaches. The coach itself is made of natural things: spider legs, grasshopper wings, spider webs, moonbeams, cricket bone, and filament. All of these items draw a connection between Queen Mab and nature, although coaches are artificial. We also learn that her driver is a gnat and that the seat is a hazelnut made by a \“joiner squirrel\” or a \“grub,\” whose job it has traditionally been to make these coaches for fairy royalty (l. 68).

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Queen Mab

In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio jests with Romeo, musing that Mab, the bringer of dreams, has visited his lovesick friend:

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 (60) 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, (65) The traces of the smallest spider's web, The collars of the moonshine's watery beams, Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film, Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat, Not so big as a round little worm (70) Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid; Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night... (1.4.58-100) Shakespeare's reference to Queen Mab, the well-known fairy in Celtic (Irish) folklore famous centuries before Shakespeare, was the first known reference to her in English literature. After Shakespeare introduced Mab to English poets, she became much loved, inspiring other great authors.

Ben Jonson recounted the tale of Queen Mab during his performance before James I's queen as she journeyed from Scotland to England in 1603 (his performance was later printed as Jonson's Entertainment at Althorpe). The following is an excerpt relating to Mab:

This is Mab, the mistris-Faerie, That doth nightly rob the dayrie; And she can hurt, or helpe the cherning, (As shee please) without discerning...

In 1627, Michael Drayton wrote a fairy poem called Nimphidia. Nimphidia, an attendant on Queen Mab, tells the poet everything that happens at Mab's court:

And thou, Nymphidia, gentle fay, Which meeting me upon the way These secrets didst to me bewray, Which I now am in telling; My pretty light fantastic maid, I here invoke thee to my aid, That I may speak what thou hast said, In numbers smoothly swelling. This palace standeth in the air, By necromancy placed there, That it no tempests needs to fear, Which way soe'er it blow it. And somewhat southward toward the noon, Whence lies a way up to the moon, And thence the Fairy can as soon Pass to the earth below it. The walls of spiders' legs are made, Well mortised and finely laid; He was the master of his trade It curiously builded;

The most famous work to feature Queen Mab is by the Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. In 1813, Shelley wrote a poem in nine cantos called Queen Mab. Cantos I and II focus on Mab in her time-chariot:

'I am the Fairy Mab: to me 'tis given The wonders of the human world to keep; The secrets of the immeasurable past, In the unfailing consciences of men, Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find; The future, from the causes which arise In each event, I gather; not the sting Which retributive memory implants In the hard bosom of the selfish man, Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day, Are unforeseen, unregistered by me; And it is yet permitted me to rend The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit, Clothed in its changeless purity, may know How soonest to accomplish the great end For which it hath its being, and may taste That peace which in the end all life will share. This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul, Ascend the car with me!' (Canto I 167-86)

------Beware the Ides In the ancient Roman calendar the "ides" was the fifteenth day of March, May, July, and October, and the thirteenth day of the other months. On March 15, 44 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar was assassinated by conspirators in the Senate House in Rome. ------