A Midsummer Night's Dream (5 page)

HERMIA
    God speed
fair
¹⁸³
Helena, whither away?

HELENA
    Call you me fair? That fair again unsay.

Demetrius loves your fair: O
happy
¹⁸⁵
fair!

Your eyes are
lodestars
, and your tongue's sweet
air
¹⁸⁶

More
tuneable
¹⁸⁷
than lark to shepherd's ear

When wheat is
green
¹⁸⁸
, when hawthorn buds appear.

Sickness is catching: O, were
favour
¹⁸⁹
so,

Your words I
catch
¹⁹⁰
, 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
¹⁹³
,

The rest I'll give to be to you
translated
¹⁹⁴
.

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!

HERMIA
    I give him curses, yet he gives me love.

HELENA
    O, that my prayers could such affection
move
²⁰⁰
!

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
none
²⁰³
of mine.

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
²⁰⁶
this place.

Before the time I did Lysander see,

Seemed Athens like a paradise to me.

O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,

That he hath turned a heaven into hell!

LYSANDER
    Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:

Tomorrow night, when
Phoebe
²¹²
doth behold

Her silver visage in the wat'ry
glass
²¹³
,

Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,

A time that lovers' flights doth
still
²¹⁵
conceal,

Through Athens' gates have we devised to steal.

HERMIA
    And in the wood, where often you and I

Upon
faint
primrose beds were
wont
²¹⁸
to lie,

Emptying our bosoms of their
counsel
²¹⁹
sweet,

There my Lysander and myself shall meet,

And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,

To seek new friends and
strange
²²²
companions.

Farewell, sweet playfellow: pray thou for us,

And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius! —

Keep word, Lysander: we must starve our sight

From lovers' food till morrow deep midnight.

LYSANDER
    I will, my Hermia.— Helena, adieu.

As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!

HELENA
    How happy some
o'er other some
²²⁹
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
²³²
but he doth know.

And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,

So I, admiring of his qualities.

Things base and vile, holding no
quantity
²³⁵
,

Love can transpose to
form
²³⁶
and dignity.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is winged Cupid painted
blind
²³⁸
.

Nor hath love's mind
of any judgement taste
²³⁹
,

Wings and no eyes
figure
²⁴⁰
unheedy haste.

And therefore is love said to be a child,

Because in choice he is often
beguiled
²⁴²
.

As
waggish
boys in
game
themselves forswear
²⁴³
,

So the boy love is perjured everywhere.

For ere Demetrius looked on Hermia's
eyne
²⁴⁵
,

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 tomorrow night

Pursue her; and for this
intelligence
²⁵¹
,

If I have thanks, it is a
dear expense
²⁵²
.

But herein mean I to enrich my pain,

To have his sight thither and back again.

QUINCE
    Is all our company here?

BOTTOM
    You were best to call them
generally
²
, man by man,

according to the
scrip
³
.

QUINCE
    Here is the scroll of every man's name, which is

thought fit through all Athens to play in our
interlude
⁵
before

the duke and the duchess on his wedding day at night.

BOTTOM
    First, good Peter Quince, say what the play
treats
⁷

on, then read the names of the actors, and so
grow on to a

point
⁸
.

QUINCE
    
Marry
¹⁰
, 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
¹⁴
.

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
²⁰
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
²²
in some measure. To the rest — yet my

chief
humour
is for a tyrant: I could play
Ercles
rarely
²³
, or a

part to
tear a cat in
, to make all
split
²⁴
.

The raging rocks

And
shivering
²⁶
shocks

Shall break the locks

Of prison gates.

And
Phibbus' car
²⁹

Shall shine from far

And make and
mar
³¹

The foolish
Fates
³²
.

This was
lofty
³³
. Now name the rest of the players. This is Ercles'

vein
³⁴
, a tyrant's vein: a lover is more condoling.

QUINCE
    Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.

FLUTE
    Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE
    You must take Thisbe on you.

FLUTE
    What is Thisbe? A
wand'ring
³⁸
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
⁴²
. You shall play it in a mask, and you

may speak as
small
as you
will
⁴³
.

BOTTOM
    
An
⁴⁴
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.
⁵²

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 there is a play

fitted
⁵⁷
.

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
⁶⁰
, 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 that you should fright the

ladies out of their wits, they would have no more
discretion
⁷⁰

but to hang us: but I will
aggravate
⁷¹
my voice so that I will

roar
you as gently as any
sucking dove
. I will roar
an 'twere
⁷²

any nightingale.

QUINCE
    You can play no part but Pyramus, for Pyramus is a

sweet-faced man, a
proper
⁷⁵
man, as one shall see in a

summer's day; a most lovely gentlemanlike 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
⁸¹
straw-colour beard,

your
orange-tawny
beard, your
purple-in-grain
⁸²
beard, or

your
French-crown-coloured
⁸³
beard, your perfect yellow.

QUINCE
    Some of your French
crowns
⁸⁴
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
⁸⁷
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 dogged with company, and our
devices
⁹⁰
known. In

the meantime I will
draw
a
bill
⁹¹
of properties, such as our play

wants. I pray you fail me not.

BOTTOM
    We will meet, and there we may rehearse more

obscenely
and
courageously
. Take pains, be
perfect
⁹⁴
. Adieu.

QUINCE
    At the duke's oak we meet.

BOTTOM
    Enough.
Hold or cut bow-strings.
⁹⁶