SCENE, Athens; and a Wood not far from it.
ACT I.

SCENE I.-Athens. A Room in the Palace of
Theseus.

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Philostrate, and
Attendants.

The. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but, oh, methinks how slow
This old moon wanes ! she lingers my desires
Like to a step-dame, or a dowager,
Long withering out a young man's revenue.
Hip. Four days will quickly steep them-
selves in nights;

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.

The.
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.-
[Exit Philostrate.
Hippolyta, I woo'd 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 revelling.
Enter Egeus, Hermia, Lysander, and
Demetrius.

Ege. Happy be Theseus, our renowned
duke!
[with thee?
The. Thanks, good Egeus: what's the news
Ege. Full of vexation come I, with com-
plaint

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,
[child

This man hath 'witch'd the bosom of my
Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her
rhymes,

And interchang'd love-tokens with my child :
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung.
With feigning voice, verses of feigning love;
And stol'n th' impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, con-
ceits,
{sengers

Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats; mes-
Of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth:
With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's
heart;

Turn'd 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.

The. What say you, Hermia? be advis'd,
fair maid:

To you, your father should be as a god ;
One that compos'd your beauties; yea, and
To whom you are but as a form in wax, [one
By him imprinted, and within his power
To leave the figure, or disfigure it.
Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.
Her. So is Lysander.
The.
In himself he is;
But, in this kind, wanting your father's voice,

Lys. 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, Ly-That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,

Her. God speed fair Helena ! Whither Love can transpose to form and dignity:

Quin. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.

Bot. What is Pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant? Quin. A lover, that kills himself most gallantly for love.

Bot. 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 humour 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.-
[more condoling.
This is Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein ;-a lover is
Quin. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.
Flu. Here, Peter Quince.

Quin. You must take Thisby on you.
Fla. What is Thisby? a wandering knight?
Quin. It is the lady that Pyramus must love.
Flu. Nay, faith, let not me play a woman;
I have a beard coming.

Quin. That's all one: you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will.

Bot. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too: I'll speak in a monstrous little voice-Thisne, Thisne'-'Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear! thy Thisby dear, and Lady dear!'

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.

Quin. 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, gentleman-like man: therefore, you must needs play Pyramus.

Bot. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?

Quin. Why, what you will.

Bot. I will discharge it in either your strawcolour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown colour beard, your perfect yellow.

Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced. -But, masters, here are your parts: and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to con them by to-morrow 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 mean time, I will draw a bill of properties, such as cur play wants.. I pray you, fail me not.

Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse more obscenely, and courageously. Take pains; be perfect; adieu.

Quin. At the duke's oak we meet.
Bot. Enough; hold, or cut bow-strings.
[Exeunt.

ACT II.

SCENE I.-A Wood near Athens.

Quin. No, no; you must play Pyramus: Enter a Fairy on one side, and Puck on the

and, Flute, you Thisby.

Bot. Well, proceed.

Quin. Robin Starveling, the tailor.

Star. Here, Peter Quince.

Quin. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby's mother.-Tom Snout, the tinker.

Snout. Here, Peter Quince.

Quin. You, Pyramus's father; myself, Thisby'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. [nothing but roaring. Quin. You may do it extempore, for it is Bot. 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.' Quin. 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.

[son.

other.

Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander
Fai. Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,

[you?

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 favours,

In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dew-drops 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.
Puck. The king doth keep his revels here
to-night :

Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
All. That would hang us, every mother's For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Bot. I grant you, friends, if that you should Because that she, as her attendant, hath
fright the ladies out of their wits, they would A lovely boy, stol'n 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 star-light sheen,
But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.
Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making
quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite,
Call'd Robin Good-fellow are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the
quern,

Obe. How canst thou thus, for shame,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, [Titania,
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
Didst thou not lead him through the glimmer-
ing night

From Perigenia, whom he ravished?
And make him with fair Eglé break his faith,
With Ariadne, and Antiopa?

Tita. 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 on the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our
sport.
[churn; Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,
Have every pelting river made so proud,
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green

And bootless makes the breathless housewife
And sometime makes the drink to bear no barm;
Misleads night-wanderers, laughing at their

harm?

:

Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good
Are not you he?
[luck
Puck.
Thou speak'st 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 wither'd dew-lap 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 quire 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.
Fai. And here my mistress :-Would that
he were gone!

SCENE II.-The Same.

Enter Oberon on one side, with his train;

and Titania on the other, with hers. Obe. Ill met by moon-light, proud Titania. Tita. What, jealous Oberon! Fairy, skip hence:

I have forsworn his bed and company.

Obe. Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?
Tita. Then, I must be thy lady: but I know
When thou hast stol'n away from fairy land,
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 buskin'd mistress and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded; and you come
To give their bed joy and prosperity.

corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard:
The fold stands empty in the drownèd field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock;
The nine-men's morris is fill'd 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 blest :-
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 Hyems' chin, 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
We are their parents and original.
From our debate, from our dissension;

Obe. 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.
Tita.
Set your heart at rest :
The fairy land 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 gossip'd by my side;
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood;
When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive,
And grow big-bellied, with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming
gait
[squire)
Following, (her womb then rich with my young