Текст книги "A Midsummer Night’s Dream"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 4 страниц)

Dramatis Personae

THESEUS, Duke of Athens

EGEUS, father to Hermia

LYSANDER, in love with Hermia

DEMETRIUS, in love with Hermia

PHILOSTRATE, Master of the Revels to Theseus

QUINCE, a carpenter

SNUG, a joiner

BOTTOM, a weaver

FLUTE, a bellows-mender

SNOUT, a tinker

STARVELING, a tailor

HIPPOLYTA, Queen of the Amazons

HERMIA, daughter to Egeus, in love with Lysander.

HELENA, in love with Demetrius.

OBERON, king of the fairies

TITANIA, Queen of the fairies

PUCK, or Robin Goodfellow.

A FAIRY, in the service of Titania

PEASEBLOSSOM, a fairy

COBWEB, a fairy

MOTH, a fairy

MUSTARDSEED, a fairy

Other fairies attending on their King and Queen. Attendants on Theseus and Hippolyta.

Scene. – Athens and wood near it.      

ACT 1

Scene 1

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, and Philostrate, with others.

THESEUS

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour

Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in

Another moon. But, O, methinks how slow

This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires

Like to a stepdame or a dowager

Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

HIPPOLYTA

Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;

Four nights will quickly dream away the time;

And then the moon, like to a silver bow

New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night

Of our solemnities.

THESEUS Go, Philostrate,

Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments.

Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth.

Turn melancholy forth to funerals;

The pale companion is not for our pomp.

Philostrate exits.

Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword

And won thy love doing thee injuries,

But I will wed thee in another key,

With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling.

Enter Egeus and his daughter Hermia, and Lysander

and Demetrius.

EGEUS

Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke!

THESEUS

Thanks, good Egeus. What’s the news with thee?

EGEUS

Full of vexation come I, with complaint

Against my child, my daughter Hermia.—

Stand forth, Demetrius.—My noble lord,

This man hath my consent to marry her.—

Stand forth, Lysander.—And, my gracious duke,

This man hath bewitched the bosom of my child.—

Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes

And interchanged love tokens with my child.

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung

With feigning voice verses of feigning love

And stol’n the impression of her fantasy

With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gauds, conceits,

Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats—messengers

Of strong prevailment in unhardened youth.

With cunning hast thou filched my daughter’s heart,

Turned her obedience (which is due to me)

To stubborn harshness.—And, my gracious duke,

Be it so she will not here before your Grace

Consent to marry with Demetrius,

I beg the ancient privilege of Athens:

As she is mine, I may dispose of her,

Which shall be either to this gentleman

Or to her death, according to our law

Immediately provided in that case.

THESEUS

What say you, Hermia? Be advised, fair maid.

To you, your father should be as a god,

One that composed your beauties, yea, and one

To whom you are but as a form in wax

By him imprinted, and within his power

To leave the figure or disfigure it.

Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

HERMIA

So is Lysander.

THESEUS In himself he is,

But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice,

The other must be held the worthier.

HERMIA

I would my father looked but with my eyes.

THESEUS

Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

HERMIA

I do entreat your Grace to pardon me.

I know not by what power I am made bold,

Nor how it may concern my modesty

In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;

But I beseech your Grace that I may know

The worst that may befall me in this case

If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

THESEUS

Either to die the death or to abjure

Forever the society of men.

Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires,

Know of your youth, examine well your blood,

Whether (if you yield not to your father’s choice)

You can endure the livery of a nun,

For aye to be in shady cloister mewed,

To live a barren sister all your life,

Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.

Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood

To undergo such maiden pilgrimage,

But earthlier happy is the rose distilled

Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,

Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.

HERMIA

So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,

Ere I will yield my virgin patent up

Unto his Lordship whose unwished yoke

My soul consents not to give sovereignty.

THESEUS

Take time to pause, and by the next new moon

(The sealing day betwixt my love and me

For everlasting bond of fellowship),

Upon that day either prepare to die

For disobedience to your father’s will,

Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would,

Or on Diana’s altar to protest

For aye austerity and single life.

DEMETRIUS

Relent, sweet Hermia, and, Lysander, yield

Thy crazed title to my certain right.

LYSANDER

You have her father’s love, Demetrius.

Let me have Hermia’s. Do you marry him.

EGEUS

Scornful Lysander, true, he hath my love;

And what is mine my love shall render him.

And she is mine, and all my right of her

I do estate unto Demetrius.

LYSANDER, to Theseus

I am, my lord, as well derived as he,

As well possessed. My love is more than his;

My fortunes every way as fairly ranked

(If not with vantage) as Demetrius’;

And (which is more than all these boasts can be)

I am beloved of beauteous Hermia.

Why should not I then prosecute my right?

Demetrius, I’ll avouch it to his head,

Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena,

And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,

Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,

Upon this spotted and inconstant man.

THESEUS

I must confess that I have heard so much,

And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;

But, being overfull of self-affairs,

My mind did lose it.—But, Demetrius, come,

And come, Egeus; you shall go with me.

I have some private schooling for you both.—

For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself

To fit your fancies to your father’s will,

Or else the law of Athens yields you up

(Which by no means we may extenuate)

To death or to a vow of single life.—

Come, my Hippolyta. What cheer, my love?—

Demetrius and Egeus, go along.

I must employ you in some business

Against our nuptial and confer with you

Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.

EGEUS

With duty and desire we follow you.

All but Hermia and Lysander exit.

LYSANDER

How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale?

How chance the roses there do fade so fast?

HERMIA

Belike for want of rain, which I could well

Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.

LYSANDER

Ay me! For aught that I could ever read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth.

But either it was different in blood—

HERMIA

O cross! Too high to be enthralled to low.

LYSANDER

Or else misgraffed in respect of years—

HERMIA

O spite! Too old to be engaged to young.

LYSANDER

Or else it stood upon the choice of friends—

HERMIA

O hell, to choose love by another’s eyes!

LYSANDER

Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,

Making it momentary as a sound,

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth,

And, ere a man hath power to say “Behold!”

The jaws of darkness do devour it up.

So quick bright things come to confusion.

HERMIA

If then true lovers have been ever crossed,

It stands as an edict in destiny.

Then let us teach our trial patience

Because it is a customary cross,

As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,

Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers.

LYSANDER

A good persuasion. Therefore, hear me, Hermia:

I have a widow aunt, a dowager

Of great revenue, and she hath no child.

From Athens is her house remote seven leagues,

And she respects me as her only son.

There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;

And to that place the sharp Athenian law

Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me, then

Steal forth thy father’s house tomorrow night,

And in the wood a league without the town

(Where I did meet thee once with Helena

To do observance to a morn of May),

There will I stay for thee.

HERMIA My good Lysander,

I swear to thee by Cupid’s strongest bow,

By his best arrow with the golden head,

By the simplicity of Venus’ doves,

By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,

And by that fire which burned the Carthage queen

When the false Trojan under sail was seen,

By all the vows that ever men have broke

(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

Godspeed, fair Helena. Whither away?

HELENA

Call you me “fair”? That “fair” again unsay.

Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair!

Your eyes are lodestars and your tongue’s sweet air

More tunable than lark to shepherd’s ear

When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.

Sickness is catching. O, were favor 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,

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!

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.

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

Seemed Athens as a paradise to me.

O, then, what graces in my love do dwell

That he hath turned 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,

Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass

(A time that lovers’ flights doth still 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 to lie,

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,

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.      Hermia exits.

Helena, adieu.

As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!

Lysander exits.

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,

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 winged 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 beguiled.

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,

So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.

For, ere Demetrius looked on Hermia’s eyne,

He hailed down oaths that he was only mine;

And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,

So he dissolved, and show’rs 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.

She exits.

Scene 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 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.

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 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 humor 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 wand’ring 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 An 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 An 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 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 straw-color

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

beard, or your French-crown-color beard,

your perfit yellow.

QUINCE Some of your French crowns have no hair at

all, and then you will play barefaced. But, masters,

here are your parts, giving out the 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 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.

BOTTOM We will meet, and there we may rehearse

most obscenely and courageously. Take pains. Be

perfit. Adieu.

QUINCE At the Duke’s Oak we meet.

BOTTOM Enough. Hold or cut bowstrings.

They exit.

ACT 2

Scene 1

Enter a Fairy at one door and Robin Goodfellow at

another.

ROBIN

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 favors;

In those freckles live their savors.

I must go seek some dewdrops 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.

ROBIN

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 stolen 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 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

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

Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he

That frights the maidens of the villagery,

Skim milk, and sometimes labor in the quern

And bootless make the breathless huswife 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?

ROBIN Thou speakest 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 choir 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 the King of Fairies at one door, with his

train, and Titania the Queen 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 stolen 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 buskined 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 Perigouna, 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 paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge have sucked 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 stretched his yoke in vain,

The plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrain flock.

The nine-men’s-morris is filled 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 blessed.

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 votaress of my order,

And in the spiced Indian air by night

Full often hath she gossiped by my side

And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,

Marking th’ embarked traders on the flood,

When we have laughed 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.

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

OBERON

Give me that boy and I will go with thee.

TITANIA

Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away.

We shall chide downright if I longer stay.

Titania and her fairies exit.

OBERON

Well, go thy way. Thou shalt not from this grove

Till I torment thee for this injury.—

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest

Since once I sat upon a promontory

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath

That the rude sea grew civil at her song

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres

To hear the sea-maid’s music.

ROBIN I remember.

OBERON

That very time I saw (but thou couldst not),

Flying between the cold moon and the Earth,

Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took

At a fair vestal throned by the west,

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.

But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft

Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon,

And the imperial vot’ress passed on

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.

It fell upon a little western flower,

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

And maidens call it “love-in-idleness.”

Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once.

The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid

Will make or man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees.

Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again

Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

ROBIN

I’ll put a girdle round about the Earth

In forty minutes.      He exits.

OBERON Having once this juice,

I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep

And drop the liquor of it in her eyes.

The next thing then she, waking, looks upon

(Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,

On meddling monkey, or on busy ape)

She shall pursue it with the soul of love.

And ere I take this charm from off her sight

(As I can take it with another herb),

I’ll make her render up her page to me.

But who comes here? I am invisible,

And I will overhear their conference.

Enter Demetrius, Helena following him.

DEMETRIUS

I love thee not; therefore pursue me not.

Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?

The one I’ll stay; the other stayeth me.

Thou told’st me they were stol’n unto this wood,

And here am I, and wood within this wood

Because I cannot meet my Hermia.

Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.

HELENA

You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant!

But yet you draw not iron, for my heart

Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw,

And I shall have no power to follow you.

DEMETRIUS

Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair?

Or rather do I not in plainest truth

Tell you I do not, nor I cannot love you?

HELENA

And even for that do I love you the more.

I am your spaniel, and, Demetrius,

The more you beat me I will fawn on you.

Use me but as your spaniel: spurn me, strike me,

Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave

(Unworthy as I am) to follow you.

What worser place can I beg in your love

(And yet a place of high respect with me)

Than to be used as you use your dog?

DEMETRIUS

Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit,

For I am sick when I do look on thee.

HELENA

And I am sick when I look not on you.

DEMETRIUS

You do impeach your modesty too much

To leave the city and commit yourself

Into the hands of one that loves you not,

To trust the opportunity of night

And the ill counsel of a desert place

With the rich worth of your virginity.

HELENA

Your virtue is my privilege. For that

It is not night when I do see your face,

Therefore I think I am not in the night.

Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,

For you, in my respect, are all the world.

Then, how can it be said I am alone

When all the world is here to look on me?

DEMETRIUS

I’ll run from thee and hide me in the brakes

And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.

HELENA

The wildest hath not such a heart as you.

Run when you will. The story shall be changed:

Apollo flies and Daphne holds the chase;

The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind

Makes speed to catch the tiger. Bootless speed

When cowardice pursues and valor flies!

DEMETRIUS

I will not stay thy questions. Let me go,

Or if thou follow me, do not believe

But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.

HELENA

Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,

You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!

Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex.

We cannot fight for love as men may do.

We should be wooed and were not made to woo.

Demetrius exits.

I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell

To die upon the hand I love so well.      Helena exits.

OBERON

Fare thee well, nymph. Ere he do leave this grove,

Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love.

Enter Robin.

Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.

ROBIN

Ay, there it is.

OBERON I pray thee give it me.

Robin gives him the flower.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet muskroses, and with eglantine.

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.

And there the snake throws her enameled skin,

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes

And make her full of hateful fantasies.

Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove.

He gives Robin part of the flower.

A sweet Athenian lady is in love

With a disdainful youth. Anoint his eyes,

But do it when the next thing he espies

May be the lady. Thou shalt know the man

By the Athenian garments he hath on.

Effect it with some care, that he may prove

More fond on her than she upon her love.

And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.

ROBIN

Fear not, my lord. Your servant shall do so.

They exit.

Scene 2

Enter Titania, Queen of Fairies, with her train.

TITANIA

Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;

Then, for the third part of a minute, hence—

Some to kill cankers in the muskrose buds,

Some war with reremice for their leathern wings

To make my small elves coats, and some keep back

The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders

At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep.

Then to your offices and let me rest.      She lies down.

Fairies sing.

FIRST FAIRY

You spotted snakes with double tongue,

Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen.

Newts and blindworms, do no wrong,

Come not near our Fairy Queen.

CHORUS

Philomel, with melody

Sing in our sweet lullaby.

Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby.

Never harm

Nor spell nor charm

Come our lovely lady nigh.

So good night, with lullaby.

FIRST FAIRY

Weaving spiders, come not here.

Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence.

Beetles black, approach not near.

Worm nor snail, do no offence.

CHORUS

Philomel, with melody

Sing in our sweet lullaby.

Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby.

Never harm

Nor spell nor charm

Come our lovely lady nigh.

So good night, with lullaby.

Titania sleeps.

SECOND FAIRY

Hence, away! Now all is well.

One aloof stand sentinel.       Fairies exit.

Enter Oberon, who anoints Titania’s eyelids with the

nectar.

OBERON

What thou seest when thou dost wake

Do it for thy true love take.

Love and languish for his sake.

Be it ounce, or cat, or bear,

Pard, or boar with bristled hair,

In thy eye that shall appear

When thou wak’st, it is thy dear.

Wake when some vile thing is near.      He exits.

Enter Lysander and Hermia.

LYSANDER

Fair love, you faint with wand’ring in the wood.

And, to speak troth, I have forgot our way.

We’ll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good,

And tarry for the comfort of the day.

HERMIA

Be it so, Lysander. Find you out a bed,

For I upon this bank will rest my head.

LYSANDER

One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;

One heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth.

HERMIA

Nay, good Lysander. For my sake, my dear,

Lie further off yet. Do not lie so near.