A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

How came these things to pass?
O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!

OBERON
Silence awhile. - Robin, take off this head.
Titania, music call; and strike more dead
Than common sleep, of all these five, the sense.

TITANIA
Music, ho! music; such as charmeth sleep.

PUCK
Now when thou wak'st, with thine own fool's eyes peep.

OBERON
Sound, music. [Still music.] Come, my queen, take hands with me,
And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.
Now thou and I are new in amity,
And will to-morrow midnight solemnly
Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly,
And bless it to all fair prosperity:
There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be
Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity.

PUCK
Fairy king, attend and mark;
I do hear the morning lark.

OBERON
Then, my queen, in silence sad,
Trip we after night's shade.
We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wand'ring moon.

TITANIA
Come, my lord; and in our flight,
Tell me how it came this night
That I sleeping here was found
With these mortals on the ground.

[Exeunt. Horns sound within.]

[Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS, and Train.]

THESEUS
Go, one of you, find out the forester; -
For now our observation is perform'd;
And since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds, -
Uncouple in the western valley; go: -
Despatch, I say, and find the forester. -

[Exit an ATTENDANT.]

We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top,
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

HIPPOLYTA
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

THESEUS
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.
Judge when you hear. - But, soft, what nymphs are these?

EGEUS
My lord, this is my daughter here asleep;
And this Lysander; this Demetrius is;
This Helena, old Nedar's Helena:
I wonder of their being here together.

THESEUS
No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May; and, hearing our intent,
Came here in grace of our solemnity. -
But speak, Egeus; is not this the day
That Hermia should give answer of her choice?

EGEUS
It is, my lord.

THESEUS
Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.

[Horns, and shout within. DEMETRIUS, LYSANDER,HERMIA, and HELENA
awake and start up.]

Good-morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past;
Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?

LYSANDER
Pardon, my lord.

[He and the rest kneel to THESEUS.]

THESEUS
I pray you all, stand up.
I know you two are rival enemies;
How comes this gentle concord in the world,
That hatred is so far from jealousy
To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?

LYSANDER
My lord, I shall reply amazedly,
Half 'sleep, half waking; but as yet, I swear,
I cannot truly say how I came here:
But, as I think, - for truly would I speak -
And now I do bethink me, so it is, -
I came with Hermia hither: our intent
Was to be gone from Athens, where we might be,
Without the peril of the Athenian law.

EGEUS
Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough;
I beg the law, the law upon his head. -
They would have stol'n away, they would, Demetrius,
Thereby to have defeated you and me:
You of your wife, and me of my consent, -
Of my consent that she should be your wife.

DEMETRIUS
My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,
Of this their purpose hither to this wood;
And I in fury hither follow'd them,
Fair Helena in fancy following me.
But, my good lord, I wot not by what power, -
But by some power it is, - my love to Hermia,
Melted as the snow - seems to me now
As the remembrance of an idle gawd
Which in my childhood I did dote upon:
And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,
The object and the pleasure of mine eye,
Is only Helena. To her, my lord,
Was I betroth'd ere I saw Hermia:
But, like a sickness, did I loathe this food;
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,
And will for evermore be true to it.

THESEUS
Fair lovers, you are fortunately met:
Of this discourse we more will hear anon. -
Egeus, I will overbear your will;
For in the temple, by and by with us,
These couples shall eternally be knit.
And, for the morning now is something worn,
Our purpos'd hunting shall be set aside. -
Away with us to Athens, three and three,
We'll hold a feast in great solemnity. -
Come, Hippolyta.

[Exeunt THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS, and Train.]

DEMETRIUS
These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.

HERMIA
Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
When every thing seems double.

HELENA
So methinks:
And I have found Demetrius like a jewel.
Mine own, and not mine own.

DEMETRIUS
It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream. - Do not you think
The duke was here, and bid us follow him?

HERMIA
Yea, and my father.

HELENA
And Hippolyta.

LYSANDER
And he did bid us follow to the temple.

DEMETRIUS
Why, then, we are awake: let's follow him;
And by the way let us recount our dreams.

[Exeunt.]

[As they go out, BOTTOM awakes.]

BOTTOM
When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is 'Most
fair Pyramus.' - Heigh-ho! - Peter Quince! Flute, the
bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God's my life,
stol'n hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare
vision. I have had a dream - past the wit of man to say
what dream it was. - Man is but an ass if he go about
to expound this dream. Methought I was - there is no man can tell
what. Methought I was, and methought I had, - but man is but a
patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The
eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen; man's
hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart
to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a
ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because
it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a
play, before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more
gracious, I shall sing it at her death.

[Exit.]


SCENE II. Athens. A Room in QUINCE'S House.

[Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING.]

QUINCE
Have you sent to Bottom's house? is he come home yet?

STARVELING
He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt, he is transported.

FLUTE
If he come not, then the play is marred; it goes not
forward, doth it?

QUINCE
It is not possible: you have not a man in all Athens
able to discharge Pyramus but he.

FLUTE
No; he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in
Athens.

QUINCE
Yea, and the best person too: and he is a very paramour
for a sweet voice.

FLUTE
You must say paragon: a paramour is, God bless us, a thing of
naught.

[Enter SNUG.]

SNUG
Masters, the duke is coming from the temple; and there is
two or three lords and ladies more married: if our sport had gone
forward, we had all been made men.

FLUTE
O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a day
during his life; he could not have 'scaped sixpence a-day; an
the duke had not given him sixpence a-day for playing Pyramus,
I'll be hanged; he would have deserved it: sixpence a-day in
Pyramus, or nothing.

[Enter BOTTOM.]

BOTTOM
Where are these lads? where are these hearts?

QUINCE
Bottom! - O most courageous day! O most happy hour!

BOTTOM
Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask me not
what; for if I tell you, I am not true Athenian. I will tell you
everything, right as it fell out.

QUINCE
Let us hear, sweet Bottom.

BOTTOM
Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is, that the
duke hath dined. Get your apparel together; good strings to
your beards, new ribbons to your pumps; meet presently at the
palace; every man look over his part; for the short and the long
is, our play is preferred. In any case, let Thisby have clean
linen; and let not him that plays the lion pare his nails, for
they shall hang out for the lion's claws. And, most dear actors,
eat no onions nor garlick, for we are to utter sweet breath; and
I do not doubt but to hear them say it is a sweet comedy. No more
words: away! go; away!

[Exeunt.]


ACT V

SCENE I. Athens. An Apartment in the Palace of THESEUS.

[Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords, and Attendants.]

HIPPOLYTA
'Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.

THESEUS
More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear?

HIPPOLYTA
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur'd so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

[Enter LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA,