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A Midsummer Night's Dream

William Shakespeare

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 wing’d 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 beguil’d. As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, So the boy Love is perjur’d everywhere. For, ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne, He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine; And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, So he dissolv’d, and showers of oaths did melt. I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight. Then to the wood will he tomorrow 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 Helena._] SCENE II. The Same. A Room in a Cottage Enter Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout and Starveling. QUINCE. Is all our company here? BOTTOM. You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip. QUINCE. 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. BOTTOM. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so grow to a point. QUINCE. Marry, our play is _The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe_. BOTTOM. 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. QUINCE. Answer, as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver. BOTTOM. Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed. QUINCE. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus. BOTTOM. What is Pyramus—a lover, or a tyrant? QUINCE. A lover, that kills himself most gallantly for love. BOTTOM. 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. QUINCE. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender. FLUTE. Here, Peter Quince. QUINCE. Flute, you must take Thisbe on you. FLUTE. What is Thisbe? A wandering knight? QUINCE. It is the lady that Pyramus must love. FLUTE. Nay, faith, let not me play a woman. I have a beard coming. QUINCE. That’s all one. You shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will. BOTTOM. And I may hide my face, let me play Thisbe too. I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice; ‘Thisne, Thisne!’—‘Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear! thy Thisbe dear! and lady dear!’ QUINCE. No, no, you must play Pyramus; and, Flute, you Thisbe. BOTTOM. Well, proceed. QUINCE. Robin Starveling, the tailor. STARVELING. Here, Peter Quince. QUINCE. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisbe’s mother. Tom Snout, the tinker. SNOUT Here, Peter Quince. QUINCE. You, Pyramus’ father; myself, Thisbe’s father; Snug, the joiner, you, the lion’s part. And, I hope here 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. QUINCE. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring. BOTTOM. 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.’ QUINCE. If 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. BOTTOM. I grant you, friends, if 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 ’twere any nightingale. QUINCE. You can play no part but Pyramus, for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man as one shall see in a summer’s day; a most lovely gentleman-like man. Therefore you must needs play Pyramus. BOTTOM. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in? QUINCE. Why, what you will. BOTTOM. I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow. QUINCE. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced. But, masters, here are your parts, and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to con them by tomorrow 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 dogg’d with company, and our devices known. In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties, such as our play wants. I pray you fail me not. BOTTOM. We will meet, and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains, be perfect; adieu. QUINCE. At the Duke’s oak we meet. BOTTOM. Enough. Hold, or cut bow-strings. [_Exeunt._] ACT II SCENE I. A wood near Athens Enter a Fairy at one door, and Puck at another. PUCK. How now, spirit! Whither wander you? FAIRY Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon’s sphere; And I serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her orbs upon the green. The cowslips tall her pensioners be, In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours. I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone. Our Queen and all her elves come here anon. PUCK. The King doth keep his revels here tonight; Take heed the Queen come not within his sight, For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, Because that she, as her attendant, hath A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king; She never had so sweet a changeling. And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild: But she perforce withholds the lovèd boy, Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy. And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But they do square; that all their elves for fear Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there. FAIRY Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call’d Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he That frights the maidens of the villagery, Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern, And bootless make the breathless housewife churn, And sometime make the drink to bear no barm, Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck. Are not you he? PUCK. Thou speak’st aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal; And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl In very likeness of a roasted crab, And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her withered dewlap pour the ale. The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough; And then the whole quire hold their hips and loffe And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there. But room, fairy. Here comes Oberon. FAIRY And here my mistress. Would that he were gone! Enter Oberon at one door, with his Train, and Titania at another, with hers. OBERON. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania. TITANIA. What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence; I have forsworn his bed and company. OBERON. Tarry, rash wanton; am not I thy lord? TITANIA. Then I must be thy lady; but I know When thou hast stol’n away from fairyland, 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 buskin’d mistress and your warrior love, To Theseus must be wedded; and you come To give their bed joy and prosperity? OBERON. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania, Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, Knowing I know thy love to Theseus? Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night From Perigenia, whom he ravished? And make him with fair Aegles break his faith, With Ariadne and Antiopa? TITANIA. These are the forgeries of jealousy: And never, since the middle summer’s spring, Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, By pavèd fountain, or by rushy brook, Or on the beachèd margent of the sea, To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport. Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land, Hath every pelting river made so proud That they have overborne their continents. The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain, The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard. The fold stands empty in the drownèd field, And crows are fatted with the murrion flock; The nine-men’s-morris is fill’d up with mud, And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, For lack of tread, are undistinguishable. The human mortals want their winter here. No night is now with hymn or carol blest. Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air, That rheumatic diseases do abound. And thorough this distemperature we see The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose; And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer, The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, By their increase, now knows not which is which. And this same progeny of evils comes From our debate, from our dissension; We are their parents and original. OBERON. Do you amend it, then. It lies in you. Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy To be my henchman. TITANIA. Set your heart at rest; The fairyland buys not the child of me. His mother was a vot’ress of my order, And in the spicèd Indian air, by night, Full often hath she gossip’d by my side; And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands, Marking th’ embarkèd traders on the flood, When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive, And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind; Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait Following (her womb then rich with my young squire), Would imitate, and sail upon the land, To fetch me trifles, and return again, As from a voyage, rich with merchandise. But she, being mortal, of that boy did die; And for her sake do I rear up her boy, And for her sake I will not part with him. OBERON. How long within this wood intend you stay? TITANIA. Perchance till after Theseus’ wedding-day. If you will patiently dance in our round, And see our moonlight revels, go with us;