Sorry it's taken so long to update. Blame school. I do not own anything. Not Spring Awakening, not Romeo and Juliet, just this story. A lot of Romeo and Juliet in this chapter, as they have started the play. All lines are from Act I, from the Prologue and Scene iv. Gets into both Melchior and Wendla's relationship as well as Hanschen and Ernst.

Romeo and Juliet

Ernst stood silently in the wings as Bobby Mahler, who had been chosen to read the parts of the chorus, began.

"Two houses both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life,

Whose misadventur'd piteous overthrows,

Doth with their death bury their parents strife.

The fearful passage of their death-mark's love

And the continuance of their parents' rage

Which but their children's end nought could remove

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage,

The which if you with patient ears attend

What here shall miss our toil shall strive to mend."

And there was no turning back. The play had officially begun, and nothing could stop it now. Off-stage, Ernst watched Otto and Georg, as the servants, roughhousing and exchanging jokes and insults. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. Ernst just waited expectantly.

Of the lovers. Hanschen made the first entrance. The bright lights shone down, illuminating his face and build. The light seemed ironically cheerful for the situation, as he explained his pining for Rosaline. Ernst refused to look away from Hanschen, as he stood, clutching the very edge of the curtain.

Hanschen walked off stage right to where Ernst stood. The small young man looked down straightening his costume for his entrance, so he was startled when his faced was forced upward and met with Hanschen's. He would have emitted a cry had Hanschen's mouth not silenced him, reducing the sound to a muffled gasp.

They broke apart just in time for Ernst to make his entrance. Half the audience was rather shocked at how oddly beautiful Ernst looked in a dress. His slight figure and boyish face gave him an effeminate appearance and the light glowing above him rendered him the appearance more like an angel than any earthly being.

Hanschen watched and felt a tear fall from his eye.

As the play progressed, Melchior made an outlandish entrance and enthusiastically read each line. With a smirk he began his Queen Mab speech.

"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 waggon-spokes made of long spinners' 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 waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,

Not so big as a round little worm

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"

He leapt on a table that constituted part of the set. As he read his lines, he looked directly at various members of the audience, occasionally motioning toward them.

"Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;" He looked at the police chief's wife who was known to be a woman of questionable devotion.

"O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight," To the mayor, who wished he were royalty.

"O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees," He motioned to Hanschen's father, a lawyer, and the wealthiest man in the town without political office.

"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:" Melchior made a larger gesture than normal toward the town's pastor. Off to the side, Herr Sonnenstitch felt his temper rising.

"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." Two of Otto's older brothers were on leave from the military, and Melchior made an ironical bow and salute to them.

"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." He grinned at Wendla, although few other than she and her mother noticed. Frau Bergmann shot him the dirtiest look that she could muster, and Wendla looked down to avoid Melchior's eyes. A reaction he had not anticipated, he was thrown slightly.

"This is she—"

Fortunately the speech had ended. Hanschen steadied Melchior by touching his shoulder. "Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!

Thou talk'st of nothing."