you, For fair Hermia, look you arm yourself Come, my Hippolyta; what cheer, my love ? I must employ you in some business Lys. How now, my love? why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there do fade so fast? Her. Belike for want of rain; which I could well Beteem them from the tempest of mine eyes. Lys. Ah me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth: But either it was different in blood: Her. O cross! too high to be enthralled to low! Lys. Or else misgrafféd, in respect of years: Her. O spite! too old to be engaged to young! Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends : Her. O hell! to choose love by another's eye! Lys. Or if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it; Making it momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, "Behold!" The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion. Her. If then true lovers have been ever crossed, As due to love as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs, I have a widow aunt, a dowager I swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow; Enter HELENA. Her. God speed fair Helena! Whither away? Hel. Call you me fair! that fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair: O, happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn-buds appear! Sickness is catching; O, were favour so, Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, IHer. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. Ilel. O, that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill! Her. I give him curses, yet he gives me love. Hel. O, that my prayers could such affection move! Her. The more I hate, the more he follows me. Hel. The more I love, the more he hateth me. Her. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine. Hel. None; but your beauty: 'would that fault were mine! Her. Take comfort; he no more shall see my face; Lysander and myself will fly this place. Lys. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold : Her. And in the wood where often you and I Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie, [Exit LYSANDER. Hel. How happy some o'er other some can be! Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so; He will not know what all but he do know. And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes, So I, admiring of his qualities. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind : Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste: And therefore is Love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguiled. As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, So the boy Love is perjured everywhere: For ere Demetrius looked on Hermia's eyne, He hailed down oaths that he was only mine; And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt. I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight : Then to the wood will he, to-morrow night, Pursue her and for this intelligence, If I have thanks, it is a dear expense: But herein mean I to enrich my pain, To have his sight thither and back again. [Exit. SCENE II.-The same. A Room in a Cottage. Enter SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, QUINCE, and STARVELING. Quin. Is all our company here? Bot. You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip. Quin. Here is the scroll of every man's name, which is thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our interlude before the duke and duchess, on his wedding-day at night. Bot. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so grow on to a point. Quin. Marry, our play is—“The most lament able comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby." Bot. A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry.-Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll: masters, spread yourselves. Quin. Answer as I call you.-Nick Bottom, the weaver. Bot. Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed. Quin. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Py ramus. Bot. What is Pyramus; a lover, or a tyrant? Quin. A lover, that kills himself most gallantly for love. Bot. That will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some measure. To the rest. Yet my chief humour is for a tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split: “The raging rocks, And shivering shocks, Shall break the locks Of prison-gates: And Phibbus' car Shall shine from far, And make and mar The foolish fates." This was lofty!-Now name the rest of the players. This is Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein; a lover is more condoling. Quin. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender. Quin. You must take Thisby on you. Quin. That's all one; you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will. Bot. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too. I'll speak in a monstrous little voice: "Thisne, Thisne!"—". "Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear; thy Thisby dear! and lady dear!" Quin. No, no; you must play Pyramus; and Flute, you Thisby. Bot. Well, proceed. Quin. Robin Starveling, the tailor. Quin. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby's mother. Tom Snout, the tinker. Snout. Here, Peter Quince. Quin. You, Pyramus's father; myself, Thisby's father; Snug, the joiner, you the lion's part:and I hope there is a play fitted. Snug. Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study. Quin. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring. Bot. Let me play the lion too. I will roar that I will do any man's heart good to hear me; I will roar that I will make the duke say, "Let him roar again, Let him roar again." Quin. An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all. All. That would hang us every mother's son. Bot. I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us: but I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an 't were any nightingale. Quin. You can play no part but Pyramus: for Pyramus is a sweetfaced man; a proper man as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely, gentlemanlike man; therefore you must needs play Pyramus. Bot. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in? Quin. Why, what you will. Bot. I will discharge it in either your strawcoloured beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crowncoloured beard, your perfect yellow. Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play barefaced.— But, masters, here are your parts: and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace-wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse: for if we meet in the city, we shall be dogged with company, and our devices known. In the mean time, I will draw a bill of properties, such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not. Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse more obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect; adieu. Quin. At the duke's oak we meet. [Exeunt. SCENE I.-A Wood near Athens. Thorough bush, thorough brier, Thorough flood, thorough fire, Take heed the queen come not within his sight. And now they never meet in grove or green, I am that merry wanderer of the night. Fai. And here my mistress. 'Would that he were gone! SCENE II. Enter OBERON, at one door, with his Train; and TITANIA, at another, with hers. Obe. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania. Tita. What, jealous Oberon? Fairy, skip hence; I have forsworn his bed and company. Obe. Tarry, rash wanton. Am not I thy lord? Tita. Then I must be thy lady. But I know When thou hast stolen away from fairy land, And in the shape of Corin sat all day, Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here, Come from the farthest steep of India? But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon, Your buskined mistress and your warrior love, To Theseus must be wedded; and you come To give their bed joy and prosperity. Obe. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania, Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, Knowing I know thy love to Theseus? Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night From Perigenia, whom he ravishéd? And make him with fair Æglé break his faith, With Ariadne, and Antiopa? Tita. These are the forgeries of jealousy: Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, Obe. Do you amend it, then; it lies in you: Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy, henchman. Set your heart at rest; To be my squire), Would imitate; and sail upon the land Tita. Perchance till after Theseus' wedding day. If you will patiently dance in our round, Tita. Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies away: We shall chide downright, if I longer stay. [Exeunt TITANIA and her Train. Obe. Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove Till I torment thee for this injury.— My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberst |