Quoted By:
>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 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 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
>Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
>O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies 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 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. 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 carr-
