The Complete Works of William Shakespeare In Plain and Simple English (Translated) (513 page)

Playing music and reciting love poetry

To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,

To your fling, Phillida. And why did you come here,

Come from the farthest Steppe of India?

So far from our land in India?

But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,

I know why: that swaggering Amazon

Your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love,

who was your animal skin wearing, warrior of a mistress and love,

To Theseus must be wedded, and you come

Is marrying Theseus, and you have come

To give their bed joy and prosperity.

To celebrate and bless their union.

OBERON

How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,

How can you speak so shamelessly, Titania,

Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

And attack my thoughts of Hippolyta,

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

When you know that I know of your love for Theseus?

Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night

Didn’t you lead him through the night away from

From Perigenia, whom he ravished?

Perigenia, whom he raped?

And make him with fair AEgle break his faith,

And didn’t you make him cheat on Aegle

With Ariadne and Antiopa?

With both Ariadne and Antiopa?

TITANIA

These are the forgeries of jealousy:

You are making this up from your jealousy.

And never, since the middle summer's spring,

Never, since the beginning of midsummer,

Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,

Can I meet with the fairies, not on a hill or in the valley, or the forest,

By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Not by a fountain or by a stream

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

Or on the beach next to the sea.

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

We aren’t able to dance and shake our hair in the wind

But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.

Without you interrupting us to argue and fight.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

So, the winds, making noise in vain,

As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea

Have taken their revenge by lifting up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which falling in the land

Great clouds that rain all over the land,

Have every pelting river made so proud

Pelting the river until each one is puffed up, like they are proud,

That they have overborne their continents:

Spilling over their banks and flooding.

The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,

The ox in the fields can’t pull the yoke through the wet mud,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

The farmer can do nothing, and the young corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;

Has rotted before it grew out its yellow tassel marking its ripeness.

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

The sheep pens are empty in the flooded fields,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;

And crows are fat from eating the sheep who died from disease.

The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,

Places where people could play games like “nine men’s morris” are now muddy,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green

And mazes cut into fields of weeds

For lack of tread are undistinguishable:

Have collapsed from the water and are unusable.

The human mortals want their winter here;

Since it is not winter for the humans,

No night is now with hymn or carol blest:

They have not blessed the night with their songs to protect them,

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

And so the moon, who controls the water,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

Can put water into the air in her anger

That rheumatic diseases do abound:

Which causes sicknesses to arise.

And thorough this distemperature we see

And since the temperatures are off for the time of year,

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

The seasons are changing: frosts

Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,

Are appearing on the blooming rose

And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown

And on Winter’s crown of ice,

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

A row of sweet smelling flowers, like prayer beads,

Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,

hangs like a joke. Spring, summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

fertile autumn, and cold, angry winter, have exchanged

Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,

their places, and now the confused world

By their increase, now knows not which is which:

doesn’t know which season it is in.

And this same progeny of evils comes

This list of evils and poor effects all come

From our debate, from our dissension;

For our arguments and disagreement:

We are their parents and original.

We are the causes.

OBERON

Do you amend it then; it lies in you:

Then fix it: you are the one at fault.

Why should Titania cross her Oberon?

Why are you being mean to me?

I do but beg a little changeling boy,

All I want is a little orphan boy

To be my henchman.

To be my servant.

TITANIA

Set your heart at rest:

Let it go:

The fairy land buys not the child of me.

You cannot buy the child from me for all of fairy-land.

His mother was a votaress of my order:

His mother worshipped me as part of my order,

And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,

And at night, in the perfumed Indian air,

Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,

She gossiped with me at my side,

And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,

And sat with me on the yellow sands of the beach,

Marking the embarked traders on the flood,

Watching the traders in their ships out at sea,

When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive

And laughing to watch the sails grow,

And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;

Like a pregnant woman’s belly, with the wind.

Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait

She, beautiful and graceful,

Following,--her womb then rich with my young squire,--

And already pregnant with the boy you want,

Would imitate, and sail upon the land,

Would imitate the ships and pretend to sail on the land,

To fetch me trifles, and return again,

Fetching me little gifts and returning

As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.

Like she had been on a voyage and came back with treasures.

But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;

But she was mortal, and she died giving birth to the boy

And for her sake do I rear up her boy,

Whom now I raise for her sake,

And for her sake I will not part with him.

And for her sake I will not give him to you.

OBERON

How long within this wood intend you stay?

How long are you staying in this forest?

TITANIA

Perchance till after Theseus' wedding-day.

Probably until after Theseus’ wedding.

If you will patiently dance in our round

If you can dance with us nicely

And see our moonlight revels, go with us;

And partake in our parties beneath the moon, then come with us,

If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

And if not, leave me alone and I will leave you alone.

OBERON

Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.

Give me the boy and I will go with you.

TITANIA

Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away!

Not for the entire kingdom. Fairies, come!

We shall chide downright, if I longer stay.

We will fight openly if I longer stay.

Exit TITANIA with her train

OBERON

Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove

Fine, go your way. You won’t leave here

Till I torment thee for this injury.

Until I get my revenge for this.

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest

Puck, come here.  Do you remember

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

when I sat on a cliff

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back

And heard a mermaid riding on a dolphin,

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath

Singing such a sweet melody

That the rude sea grew civil at her song

That it made the stormy sea become calm

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

And the stars twinkled brighter

To hear the sea-maid's music.

just to hear her song?

PUCK

I remember.

OBERON

That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,

Also then, I saw something you couldn’t:

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,

Flying high in the sky, between the moon and earth,

Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took

Was Cupid, armed iwth his bow. He took aim

At a fair vestal throned by the west,

At a vestal virgin, a worshipper sitting on a throne in the west

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

And shot an enchanted arrow from his bow strongly,

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;

As if he was trying to shoot it through a hundred thousand hearts at once.

But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft

But I saw this enflamed arrow of Cupid’s

Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon,

Put out by the virginal beams of the moon

And the imperial votaress passed on,

And so the young royal worshipper walked on

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Meditating beautifully, and spared from the arrow.

Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

But, I saw where the arrow fell:

It fell upon a little western flower,

It struck a little wester flower

Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,

That had been milk white, but after turned purple where the arrow hit it.

And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

Maidens refer to it as “love-in-idleness.”

Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew'd thee once:

Bring me that flower, the one I once showed you.

The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid

If its juice is put on the eyelids of someone asleep,

Will make or man or woman madly dote

It will make any man, woman, or creature fall in love

Upon the next live creature that it sees.

With the next living creature it sees.

Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again

Bring me this flower and return

Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

Before the great sea monster can swim a league.