SARAH:   So far, Benvolio has been sympathetic to his cousin Romeo’s heartbreak, but now their friend, Mercutio, appears to have a very different attitude towards Romeo’s problems.

RALPH:   Mercutio says that Romeo should borrow Cupid’s wings so that he can soar “above a common bound.”

SARAH:  Bound is used here in two senses – first, as a constraint, because without wings we are bound to the earth ...

RALPH: But also, a bound is a leap or jump: Romeo is soaring higher than one can ordinarily bound or leap.

SARAH:   In his reply, Romeo not only uses bound in those two senses, but he adds a pun of his own on the word “soar”.

RALPH:

“I am too sore empierced with his shaft

To soar with his light feathers, and so bound,

I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.

Under love's heavy burden do I sink.”

SARAH: Romeo is too “sore” -- in pain -- from being pierced by Cupid’s arrow to “soar” -- or fly -- with his feathers; being so bound and constrained, he can’t bound, or leap, above a dull woe, above his heavy heartache.

RALPH:  And, too bound to “soar with his light feathers,” Romeo sinks under “love’s heavy burden.”

SARAH: And here’s an interesting expression: “bound a pitch.”

RALPH:   Shakespeare is playing with the expression “to fly a pitch”. A pitch is the arc in the sky that a hawk makes as it soars up in order to swoop down on its prey.

SARAH: To bound a pitch is then to jump, or leap, in an arc, like a hawk.

RALPH:  This sense of “pitch” is the origin of the terms in American baseball –

SARAH:   and British cricket –

RALPH:  for tossing the ball toward the batter: a pitch, thrown by a pitcher.

SARAH:   Romeo cannot bound a pitch higher than his love’s heavy burden will allow. All of which is to say, no dancing for our Romeo.