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-
seus, that these lovers speak of.
THE. 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

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

[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
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!

HIP. But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,

And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

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
Between our after-supper and bed-time?
Where is our usual manager of mirth?
What revels are in hand? Is there no play,
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?

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
By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.

We'll none of that: that have I told my love,
In glory of my kinsman Hercules.

[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
Of Learning, late deceased in beggary.

That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.
[Reads] A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!

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,
Which makes it tedious; for in all the play
There is not one word apt, one player fitted:
And tragical, my noble lord, it is;

For Pyramus therein doth kill himself.

Which, when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,
Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed.

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