<p class="scene"><SPAN name="sceneI_1" id="sceneI_1"></SPAN></p>
<h2><b>ACT I</b></h2>
<h3><b>SCENE I. Athens. A room in the Palace of Theseus</b></h3>
<p class="scenedesc"> Enter <span class="charname">Theseus, Hippolyta,
Philostrate</span> and Attendants.</p>
<p>THESEUS.<br/>
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour<br/>
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in<br/>
Another moon; but oh, methinks, how slow<br/>
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,<br/>
Like to a step-dame or a dowager,<br/>
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.</p>
<p>HIPPOLYTA.<br/>
Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;<br/>
Four nights will quickly dream away the time;<br/>
And then the moon, like to a silver bow<br/>
New bent in heaven, shall behold the night<br/>
Of our solemnities.</p>
<p>THESEUS.<br/>
Go, Philostrate,<br/>
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;<br/>
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;<br/>
Turn melancholy forth to funerals;<br/>
The pale companion is not for our pomp.</p>
<p class="right"> [<i>Exit <span class="charname">Philostrate</span>.</i>]</p>
<p>Hippolyta, I woo’d
thee with my sword,<br/>
And won thy love doing thee injuries;<br/>
But I will wed thee in another key,<br/>
With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.</p>
<p class="scenedesc"> Enter <span class="charname">Egeus, Hermia, Lysander</span> and
<span class="charname">Demetrius</span>.</p>
<p>EGEUS.<br/>
Happy be Theseus, our renownèd Duke!</p>
<p>THESEUS.<br/>
Thanks, good Egeus. What’s the news with thee?</p>
<p>EGEUS.<br/>
Full of vexation come I, with complaint<br/>
Against my child, my daughter Hermia.<br/>
Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,<br/>
This man hath my consent to marry her.<br/>
Stand forth, Lysander. And, my gracious Duke,<br/>
This man hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child.<br/>
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,<br/>
And interchang’d love-tokens with my child.<br/>
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,<br/>
With feigning voice, verses of feigning love;<br/>
And stol’n the impression of her fantasy<br/>
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gauds, conceits,<br/>
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats (messengers<br/>
Of strong prevailment in unharden’d youth)<br/>
With cunning hast thou filch’d my daughter’s heart,<br/>
Turn’d her obedience (which is due to me)<br/>
To stubborn harshness. And, my gracious Duke,<br/>
Be it so she will not here before your grace<br/>
Consent to marry with Demetrius,<br/>
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens:<br/>
As she is mine I may dispose of her;<br/>
Which shall be either to this gentleman<br/>
Or to her death, according to our law<br/>
Immediately provided in that case.</p>
<p>THESEUS.<br/>
What say you, Hermia? Be advis’d, fair maid.<br/>
To you your father should be as a god;<br/>
One that compos’d your beauties, yea, and one<br/>
To whom you are but as a form in wax<br/>
By him imprinted, and within his power<br/>
To leave the figure, or disfigure it.<br/>
Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
So is Lysander.</p>
<p>THESEUS.<br/>
In himself he is.<br/>
But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice,<br/>
The other must be held the worthier.</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
I would my father look’d but with my eyes.</p>
<p>THESEUS.<br/>
Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
I do entreat your Grace to pardon me.<br/>
I know not by what power I am made bold,<br/>
Nor how it may concern my modesty<br/>
In such a presence here to plead my thoughts:<br/>
But I beseech your Grace that I may know<br/>
The worst that may befall me in this case,<br/>
If I refuse to wed Demetrius.</p>
<p>THESEUS.<br/>
Either to die the death, or to abjure<br/>
For ever the society of men.<br/>
Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires,<br/>
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,<br/>
Whether, if you yield not to your father’s choice,<br/>
You can endure the livery of a nun,<br/>
For aye to be in shady cloister mew’d,<br/>
To live a barren sister all your life,<br/>
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.<br/>
Thrice-blessèd they that master so their blood<br/>
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage,<br/>
But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d<br/>
Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,<br/>
Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,<br/>
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up<br/>
Unto his lordship, whose unwishèd yoke<br/>
My soul consents not to give sovereignty.</p>
<p>THESEUS.<br/>
Take time to pause; and by the next new moon<br/>
The sealing-day betwixt my love and me<br/>
For everlasting bond of fellowship,<br/>
Upon that day either prepare to die<br/>
For disobedience to your father’s will,<br/>
Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would,<br/>
Or on Diana’s altar to protest<br/>
For aye austerity and single life.</p>
<p>DEMETRIUS.<br/>
Relent, sweet Hermia; and, Lysander, yield<br/>
Thy crazèd title to my certain right.</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
You have her father’s love, Demetrius.<br/>
Let me have Hermia’s. Do you marry him.</p>
<p>EGEUS.<br/>
Scornful Lysander, true, he hath my love;<br/>
And what is mine my love shall render him;<br/>
And she is mine, and all my right of her<br/>
I do estate unto Demetrius.</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
I am, my lord, as well deriv’d as he,<br/>
As well possess’d; my love is more than his;<br/>
My fortunes every way as fairly rank’d,<br/>
If not with vantage, as Demetrius’;<br/>
And, which is more than all these boasts can be,<br/>
I am belov’d of beauteous Hermia.<br/>
Why should not I then prosecute my right?<br/>
Demetrius, I’ll avouch it to his head,<br/>
Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena,<br/>
And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,<br/>
Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,<br/>
Upon this spotted and inconstant man.</p>
<p>THESEUS.<br/>
I must confess that I have heard so much,<br/>
And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;<br/>
But, being over-full of self-affairs,<br/>
My mind did lose it.—But, Demetrius, come,<br/>
And come, Egeus; you shall go with me.<br/>
I have some private schooling for you both.—<br/>
For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself<br/>
To fit your fancies to your father’s will,<br/>
Or else the law of Athens yields you up<br/>
(Which by no means we may extenuate)<br/>
To death, or to a vow of single life.<br/>
Come, my Hippolyta. What cheer, my love?<br/>
Demetrius and Egeus, go along;<br/>
I must employ you in some business<br/>
Against our nuptial, and confer with you<br/>
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.</p>
<p>EGEUS.<br/>
With duty and desire we follow you.</p>
<p class="right"> [<i>Exeunt all but <span class="charname">Lysander</span> and
<span class="charname">Hermia</span>.</i>]</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale?<br/>
How chance the roses there do fade so fast?</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
Belike for want of rain, which I could well<br/>
Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
Ay me! For aught that I could ever read,<br/>
Could ever hear by tale or history,<br/>
The course of true love never did run smooth.<br/>
But either it was different in blood—</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
O cross! Too high to be enthrall’d to low.</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
Or else misgraffèd in respect of years—</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
O spite! Too old to be engag’d to young.</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends—</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
O hell! to choose love by another’s eyes!</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,<br/>
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,<br/>
Making it momentany as a sound,<br/>
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,<br/>
Brief as the lightning in the collied night<br/>
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,<br/>
And, ere a man hath power to say, ‘Behold!’<br/>
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:<br/>
So quick bright things come to confusion.</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
If then true lovers have ever cross’d,<br/>
It stands as an edict in destiny.<br/>
Then let us teach our trial patience,<br/>
Because it is a customary cross,<br/>
As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,<br/>
Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers.</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
A good persuasion; therefore, hear me, Hermia.<br/>
I have a widow aunt, a dowager<br/>
Of great revenue, and she hath no child.<br/>
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues,<br/>
And she respects me as her only son.<br/>
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee,<br/>
And to that place the sharp Athenian law<br/>
Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then,<br/>
Steal forth thy father’s house tomorrow night;<br/>
And in the wood, a league without the town<br/>
(Where I did meet thee once with Helena<br/>
To do observance to a morn of May),<br/>
There will I stay for thee.</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
My good Lysander!<br/>
I swear to thee by Cupid’s strongest bow,<br/>
By his best arrow with the golden head,<br/>
By the simplicity of Venus’ doves,<br/>
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,<br/>
And by that fire which burn’d the Carthage queen<br/>
When the false Trojan under sail was seen,<br/>
By all the vows that ever men have broke<br/>
(In number more than ever women spoke),<br/>
In that same place thou hast appointed me,<br/>
Tomorrow truly will I meet with thee.</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.</p>
<p class="scenedesc"> Enter <span class="charname">Helena</span>.</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
God speed fair Helena! Whither away?</p>
<p>HELENA.<br/>
Call you me fair? That fair again unsay.<br/>
Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair!<br/>
Your eyes are lode-stars and your tongue’s sweet air<br/>
More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear,<br/>
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.<br/>
Sickness is catching. O were favour so,<br/>
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go.<br/>
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,<br/>
My tongue should catch your tongue’s sweet melody.<br/>
Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,<br/>
The rest I’d give to be to you translated.<br/>
O, teach me how you look, and with what art<br/>
You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart!</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.</p>
<p>HELENA.<br/>
O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
I give him curses, yet he gives me love.</p>
<p>HELENA.<br/>
O that my prayers could such affection move!</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
The more I hate, the more he follows me.</p>
<p>HELENA.<br/>
The more I love, the more he hateth me.</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.</p>
<p>HELENA.<br/>
None but your beauty; would that fault were mine!</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;<br/>
Lysander and myself will fly this place.<br/>
Before the time I did Lysander see,<br/>
Seem’d Athens as a paradise to me.<br/>
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,<br/>
That he hath turn’d a heaven into hell!</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:<br/>
Tomorrow night, when Phoebe doth behold<br/>
Her silver visage in the watery glass,<br/>
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass<br/>
(A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal),<br/>
Through Athens’ gates have we devis’d to steal.</p>
<p>HERMIA.<br/>
And in the wood where often you and I<br/>
Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie,<br/>
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,<br/>
There my Lysander and myself shall meet,<br/>
And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,<br/>
To seek new friends and stranger companies.<br/>
Farewell, sweet playfellow. Pray thou for us,<br/>
And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius!<br/>
Keep word, Lysander. We must starve our sight<br/>
From lovers’ food, till morrow deep midnight.</p>
<p>LYSANDER.<br/>
I will, my Hermia.<br/></p>
<p class="right"> [<i>Exit <span class="charname">Hermia</span>.</i>]</p>
<p>Helena, adieu.<br/>
As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!</p>
<p class="right"> [<i>Exit <span class="charname">Lysander</span>.</i>]</p>
<p>HELENA.<br/>
How happy some o’er other some can be!<br/>
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.<br/>
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;<br/>
He will not know what all but he do know.<br/>
And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,<br/>
So I, admiring of his qualities.<br/>
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,<br/>
Love can transpose to form and dignity.<br/>
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;<br/>
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.<br/>
Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste.<br/>
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.<br/>
And therefore is love said to be a child,<br/>
Because in choice he is so oft beguil’d.<br/>
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,<br/>
So the boy Love is perjur’d everywhere.<br/>
For, ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne,<br/>
He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine;<br/>
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,<br/>
So he dissolv’d, and showers of oaths did melt.<br/>
I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight.<br/>
Then to the wood will he tomorrow night<br/>
Pursue her; and for this intelligence<br/>
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.<br/>
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,<br/>
To have his sight thither and back again.</p>
<p class="right"> [<i>Exit <span class="charname">Helena</span>.</i>]</p>
<p class="scene"><SPAN name="sceneI_2" id="sceneI_2"></SPAN></p>
<h3><b><br/>SCENE II. The Same. A Room in a Cottage</b></h3>
<p class="scenedesc"> Enter <span class="charname">Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute,
Snout </span> and <span class="charname">Starveling</span>.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
Is all our company here?</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
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.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of
the actors; and so grow to a point.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
Marry, our play is <i>The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of
Pyramus and Thisbe</i>.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
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.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
Answer, as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
What is Pyramus—a lover, or a tyrant?</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
A lover, that kills himself most gallantly for love.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
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.<br/>
<br/>
The raging rocks<br/>
And shivering shocks<br/>
Shall break the locks<br/>
Of prison gates,<br/>
And Phibbus’ car<br/>
Shall shine from far,<br/>
And make and mar<br/>
The foolish Fates.<br/><br/>
This was lofty. Now name the rest of the players. This is Ercles’ vein, a
tyrant’s vein; a lover is more condoling.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.</p>
<p>FLUTE.<br/>
Here, Peter Quince.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
Flute, you must take Thisbe on you.</p>
<p>FLUTE.<br/>
What is Thisbe? A wandering knight?</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
It is the lady that Pyramus must love.</p>
<p>FLUTE.<br/>
Nay, faith, let not me play a woman. I have a beard coming.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
That’s all one. You shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small
as you will.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
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!’</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
No, no, you must play Pyramus; and, Flute, you Thisbe.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
Well, proceed.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
Robin Starveling, the tailor.</p>
<p>STARVELING.<br/>
Here, Peter Quince.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
Robin Starveling, you must play Thisbe’s mother.<br/>
Tom Snout, the tinker.</p>
<p>SNOUT<br/>
Here, Peter Quince.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
You, Pyramus’ father; myself, Thisbe’s father;<br/>
Snug, the joiner, you, the lion’s part. And, I hope here is a play
fitted.</p>
<p>SNUG<br/>
Have you the lion’s part written? Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I
am slow of study.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
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.’</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
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.</p>
<p>ALL<br/>
That would hang us every mother’s son.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
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.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
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.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
Why, what you will.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
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.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
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.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
We will meet, and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take
pains, be perfect; adieu.</p>
<p>QUINCE.<br/>
At the Duke’s oak we meet.</p>
<p>BOTTOM.<br/>
Enough. Hold, or cut bow-strings.</p>
<p class="right"> [<i>Exeunt.</i>]</p>
<p><br/><br/><br/><br/></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />