Who is Queen Mab, according to Mercutio?

In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio says Queen Mab is the “fairies’ midwife,” a tiny fairy figure who visits people while they sleep and shapes their dreams.

Mercutio brings her up when Romeo says he had a troubling dream before going to the Capulet feast. In Mercutio’s wild speech, Mab travels at night in a tiny chariot and passes through people’s minds, giving them dreams that match their desires. She rides “through lovers’ brains,” making all sorts of people—courtiers, lawyers, ladies, soldiers—dream about the love that already preoccupies them.

As Mercutio keeps talking, Queen Mab becomes stranger and darker. She does not simply bring sweet dreams. She can punish or disturb people too, as when she “plagues” ladies’ lips with blisters or makes soldiers dream “of healths five fathom deep” and wake in fear. So, for Mercutio, Queen Mab is a supernatural explanation for dreams, but his speech also suggests that dreams reveal people’s hidden wishes, appetites, and anxieties.

Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech turns Romeo’s anxieties about romance into dazzling wordplay, yet the speech grows unsettling as it moves from love to violence. His Queen Mab fantasy makes dreams seem playful, sexual, and dangerous all at once.