MERCUTIO
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 spinners' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's wat'ry beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film;
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
The Queen Mab monologue is often pushed aside by analysts as a moment of disorder and madness by Mercutio. Joseph Pearce, who advocates that Shakespeare was Catholic, takes a different approach. This monologue allows the audience to see the disorder that love in a nonreligious sense assumes. It sees passion, but not anything that lasts or is constructive. Mercutio, the most sexually heedless character, presents love as a pleasant dream or a nightmare, but nothing solid to be built upon as a Sacramental love would offer.
Queen Mab Speech