Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech is one of the most famous in the play. Queen Mab, who brings dreams to sleeping people, seems to be loosely based on figures in the pagan Celtic mythology that predated Christianity’s arrival in England. Yet the name holds a deeper meaning. The words “quean” and “mab” were references to whores in Elizabethan England. In Queen Mab, then, Mercutio creates a sort of conceptual pun: he alludes to a mythological tradition peopled with fairies and attaches it to a reference to prostitutes. He yokes the childish fun of fairies to a much darker vision of humanity. The speech itself reveals this dichotomy. A child would love Mercutio’s description of a world of fairies replete with walnut carriages and insect steeds, its stories of a fairy bringing dreams to sleeping people. But take a closer look at those dreams. Queen Mab brings dreams suited to each individual, and each dream she brings seems to descend into deeper depravity and brutality: lovers dream of love; lawyers dream of law cases and making money; soldiers dream of “cutting foreign throats” (I.iv.83). By the end of the speech, Queen Mab is the “hag” who teaches maidens to have sex. The child’s fairy tale has spun into something much, much darker, though this dark vision is an accurate portrayal of society. Mercutio, as entertaining as he is, can be seen as offering an alternative vision of the grand tragedy that is Romeo and Juliet. “Thou talk’st of nothing,” Romeo says to Mercutio in order to force Mercutio to end the Queen Mab speech (I.iv.96). Mercutio agrees, saying that dreams “are the children of an idle brain” (I.iv.98). But don’t Romeo’s visions of love qualify as dreams? Don’t Tybalt’s fantasies of perfect proprietary and social standing count as dreams? And what about Friar Lawrence’s dreams of bringing peace to Verona? In Mercutio’s assessment, all of these desires “are the children of an idle brain.” All are delusions. Mercutio’s comment can be seen as a single pinprick in the grand idealistic passions of love and family loyalty that animate the play. The Queen Mab speech by no means deflates the great tragedy and romantic ideals of Romeo and Juliet, but it adds to them the subtext of a pun, that dark flipside which offers an alternative view of reality.