The arden shakespeare co.., p.390
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, page 390
When the false Trojan under sail was seen;
By all the vows that ever men have broke
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(In number more than ever women spoke),
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
Tomorrow truly will I meet with thee.
LYSANDER
Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.
Enter HELENA.
HERMIA God speed fair Helena! Whither away?
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HELENA 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.
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Sickness is catching; O were favour so,
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go:
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,
My tongue should catch your tongue’s sweet melody.
Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
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The rest I’d give to be to you translated.
O, teach me how you look, and with what art
You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart.
HERMIA I frown upon him; yet he loves me still.
HELENA
O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!
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HERMIA I give him curses; yet he gives me love.
HELENA O that my prayers could such affection move!
HERMIA The more I hate, the more he follows me.
HELENA The more I love, the more he hateth me.
HERMIA His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.
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HELENA
None but your beauty; would that fault were mine!
HERMIA Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seem’d Athens as a paradise to me.
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O then what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turn’d a heaven unto a hell!
LYSANDER Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:
Tomorrow night, when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the wat’ry glass,
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Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass
(A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal),
Through Athens’ gates have we devis’d to steal.
HERMIA And in the wood, where often you and I
Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie,
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Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,
There my Lysander and myself shall meet;
And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,
To seek new friends, and stranger companies.
Farewell, sweet playfellow; pray thou for us,
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And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius!
Keep word, Lysander; we must starve our sight
From lovers’ food, till morrow deep midnight.
Exit Hermia.
LYSANDER I will, my Hermia. Helena, adieu;
As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!
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Exit Lysander.
HELENA 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,
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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 wing’d Cupid painted blind;
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Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgement 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,
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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 show’rs of oaths did melt.
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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,
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To have his sight thither and back again. Exit.
1.2 Enter QUINCE, the carpenter; and SNUG,
the joiner; and BOTTOM, the weaver; and FLUTE,
the bellows-mender; and SNOUT, the tinker;
and STARVELING, the tailor.
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
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before the Duke and the 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.
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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
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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?
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QUINCE A lover, that kills himself most gallant 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
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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
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Of prison-gates;
And Phibbus’ car
Shall shine from far
And make and mar
The foolish fates.
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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.
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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.
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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
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dear, and lady dear!’
QUINCE No, no, you must play Pyramus; and Flute, you
Thisbe.
BOTTOM Well, proceed.
QUINCE Robin Starveling, the tailor?
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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;
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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
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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!’
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QUINCE And 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
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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 and ’twere any nightingale.
QUINCE You can play no part but Pyramus: for Pyramus
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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?
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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.
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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
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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 meantime I will draw a bill
of properties, such as our play wants. I pray you fail
me not.
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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.
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2.1 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 briar,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
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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,
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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.
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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,
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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:
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But she perforce withholds the loved 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
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Creep into acorn-cups, and hide them there.
FAIRY Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
