ACT I

Scene four

Enter Roxton, Robert, and Malone with five or six other Maskers, Torchbearers, and others on the rode to the house Summerlee.

"Should we tell them of our arrival, we are without formal invitation?" asked Roxton courteously.

"The date is out of such wordiness: we'll have no Cupid hoodwinked with a scarf, bearing a Tartar's painted bow of lath, scaring the ladies like scarecrow; Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke after the prompter, for our entrance: But let them measure us by what they will; we'll measure them a measure, and be gone." He said assuring his friend of the lack of harm it would do not to say anything.

"Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling; Being but heavy, I will bear the light." Said Roxton somberly regretting agreeing to this farce.

 " Oh no, gentle Roxton, we must have you dance!" Robert said trying to lighten his broken spirit doing a little jig of his own.

"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." Roxton replied looking at Robert saddened.

Robert decides to pick on what is troubling him in hopes of provoking some type of reaction, "You are a lover; borrow Cupid's wings, and soar with them above a common bound." He moved his hand skyward to animate his words.

"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." Roxton answered more sorrowfully than before.

Robert stared a bit dumbfounded at him a moment blinking his face unbelieving this man's heartache over a woman, over love!

"And, to sink in it, should you burden love; too great oppression for a tender thing," Robert grumbled turning away from Roxton almost giving up, his thoughts of love bringing cold memories to his mind. Memories that stirred fury in his very soul.

"Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn. " Roxton responded to Robert's remarked having it been directed to him or not.

Robert's head came up a bolt of inspiration cutting through his brain. He turned around a cocky grin on his face,

"If love be rough with you, be rough with love!! Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. Give me a case to put my visage in: A mask for a mask! What care I what curious eye doth quote deformities? Here are the beetle brows that shall blush for me. " He said regarding his mask that he pulled over his head pushing it up so his friends could still see his face.

"Come," said Malone placing a hand on Roxton's back, "Knock and enter; and no sooner in, every man may begin dancing!"

"A torch for me: let wantons light of heart tickle the senseless rushes with their heels, for I am proverb's with a old man's phrase; I'll be a candle-holder, and look on. The game was never so fair, and I am done.

"Roxton stated stubbornly.

"Tsk, We'll save you from if you pardon me saying-love-Come, we burn daylight, ho!" Robert demanded staying firm.

"Nay, that's not so." Roxton said seeming to be found quite disagreeable this night.

"I mean, sir," he said irritably  "In our delay we waste our torches in vain, like lamps by day. Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits five times in our good meaning before once in our five wits." Robert responded tactfully.

"And we mean well in going to this mask; but 'tis not a good idea. " Roxton shook his head.

Robert snorted once becoming quite agitated with his friends procrastinating. 

"Why, may one ask?" he asked containing himself.

"I dreamt a dream last night." He responded without further explanation.

"As did I," Robert responded crossing his arms sitting back onto a large bolder.

"Well what was yours?" Roxton asked for once truly interested in his response.

"That dreamers often lie," he replied smoothly.

"In bed asleep, while they dream things true," Roxton brushed off moving to turn, having enough of the idle bantering of he and his friend.

"Oh, then I see Queen Mab has been with you." Robert said a large mischievous grin on his face standing on the rock he had previously been reclining on holding his arms out so all could see and listen.

"Oh dear," Malone sighed putting his face in his hand, seeing that Robert was about to go off into a one of his lectures of insight or wisdom, as he liked to so 'humbly' call them. He wiped his face and looked back up upon the scene. 

"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,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her Wagoner a small gray-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Pricked 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' coach makers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on courtesies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
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:
Sometime she drives over a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscades, foreign blades,
Of health's five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighten swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. 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:
This is she—"He cries going off into a rant

 (SIDE NOTE: I left the speech practically untouched because it is very famous and should be read in it's original form, please continue)

"Peace, peace, Robert, peace! You talk of nothing!" Roxton cried almost laughing yet disturbed at his friends rooted emotion behind the whole thing.

"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 woos even now the frozen bosom of the north, and, being angered, puffs away from there, turning his face to the dew-dropping south." He spat jumping down from the bolder thinking angrily of the person who still bitterly haunts his dreams.

"This wind, you talk of, blows us from ourselves; supper is done, and we shall come too late." Malone chimed in feeling that they had each had enough of their own voices for a while, 'if not them then I!' he thought.

"I fear, too early: for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall I bitterly begin my 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. But He, that hath the steerage of my course, Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen!" Roxton laughs the last part slapping Malone on the back, making a futile attempt to be merry.

They exist.

End of Scene IV

Late these guests travel to their supper,

But better late than forever with empty stomachs and hearts,

Who prove wanting.

Like the bees so great a part of their thriving hive,

We will find these men causing much to happen in Scene Five . . .