QUIN. Let us hear, sweet Bottom. BOT. Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is, 30 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 o'er 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 garlic, 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. 40 Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords, and Attendants IS STRANGE, MY THE- These antique fables, nor these Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, [poet 10 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 Such tricks hath strong imagination, That, if it would but apprehend some joy, HIP. But all the story of the night told over, And grows to something of great constancy; THE. Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth. Enter LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA, and HELENA Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love Accompany your hearts! Lys. More than to us Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed! THE. Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have, 11 a brow of Egypt] a brow of a gipsy. 6 20 30 To wear away this long age of three hours Call Philostrate. PHIL. Here, mighty Theseus. THE. Say, what abridgement have you for this evening? What masque? what music? How shall we beguile 40 The lazy time, if not with some delight? PHIL. There is a brief how many sports are ripe: Make choice of which your highness will see first. [Giving a paper. THE. [reads] The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung We'll none of that: that have I told my love, [Reads] The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage. That is an old device; and it was play'd 50 When I from Thebes came last a conqueror. 34 after-supper] Cf. Cotgrave's Fr.-Engl. Dict.: "Regoubillonner, to make a reare supper, steale an after supper." 42 ripe] This obvious correct reading is in the First Quarto alone, and is wrongly altered elsewhere to rife. 44-49 The references both to "the Centaurs" and to "the Thracian singer" Orpheus are reminiscences of Ovid's Metamorphoses. See Bks. XII and XI, respectively. [Reads] The thrice three Muses mourning for the death That is some satire, keen and critical, That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow. How shall we find the concord of this discord? PHIL. A play there is, my lord, some ten words long, Which is as brief as I have known a play; But by ten words, my lord, it is too long, For Pyramus therein doth kill himself. Which, when I saw rehearsed, I must confess, THE. What are they that do play it? PHIL. Hard-handed men, that work in Athens here, Which never labour'd in their minds till now; And now have toil'd their unbreathed memories 52 The thrice three Muses] Probably an allusion to the Tears of the Muses, a poem by Edmund Spenser, lamenting the decay of literature, which was published in 1591. 59 wondrous strange snow] a tautological echo of hot ice. For "wondrous strange," cf. Hamlet, I, v, 164: "O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!" and 8 Hen. VI, II, i, 33: "'T is wondrous strange, the like yet never heard of." 74 toil'd. memories] wearied out their unpractised memories. 60 70 |