As due to love, as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs, I have a widow aunt, a dowager Of great revenue, and she hath no child: There will I stay for thee. Her. My good Lysander! I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow; By that which knitteth souls, and prospers loves; Lys. Keep promise, love: Look, here comes, Enter HELENA. Her. God speed fair Helena! Whither away ? Hel. Call you me fair? that fair again unsay. 12 Fancy is love. So afterwards in this play: Fair Helena in fancy following me.' And again in the celebrated passage applied to Q. Elizabeth : 'In maiden meditation fancy-free.' 13 Shakspeare forgot that Theseus performed his exploits before the Trojan war, and consequently long before the death of Dido. Demetrius loves your fair 14: O happy fair! sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, Her. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. such skill! Her. I give him curses, yet he gives me love. Hel. O, that my prayers could such affection move! Her. The more I hate, the more he follows me. Her. Take comfort; he no more shall see my face; Lysander and myself will fly this place.- Seem'd Athens as a paradise to me: 14 Fair for fairness, beauty. Very common in writers of Shakspeare's age. 15 The lode-star is the leading or guiding star, that is the polar star. The magnet is for the same reason called the lodeThe reader will remember Milton's beauty: stone. The cynosure of neighb'ring eyes. 16 Countenance, feature. 17 i. e. changed, transformed. O then, what graces in my love do dwell, Lys. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold: To-morrow 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 devis'd to steal. Her. 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. [Exit HERM. Lys. I will, my Hermia.-Helena, adieu: As you on him, Demetrius dote on you! [Exit LYSANder. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, As waggish boys in game 18 themselves forwear, SCENE II. The same. [Exit. A Room in a Cottage. Enter SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, QUINCE, and STARVELING1. Quin. Is all our company here? Bot. You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip. Quin. 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 duchess, on his wedding-day at night. Bot. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so grow to a point. Quin. Marry, our play is―The most lamentable 18 Sport. 19 Eyes. 1 In this scene Shakspeare takes advantage of his knowledge of the theatre, to ridicule the prejudices and competitions of the players. Bottom, who is generally acknowledged the principal actor, declares his inclination to be for a tyrant, for a part of fury, tumult, and noise, such as every young man pants to perform when he first appears upon the stage. The same Bottom, who seems bred in a tiring-room, has another histrionical passion. He is for engrossing every part, and would exclude his inferiors from all possibility of distinction. He is therefore desirous to play Pyramus, Thisbe, and the Lion, at the same time. comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby 2. Bot. 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. Quin. Answer, as I call you.-Nick Bottom, the weaver. Bot. Ready: Name what part I am for, and proceed. 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, With shivering shocks, 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. 2 Probably a burlesque upon the titles of some of our old Dramas: thus- A lamentable Tragedie, mixed full of pleasant mirth, containing the Life of Cambises, king of Percia,' &c. by Thomas Preston. bl. 1. no date. So, Skelton's Magnificence is called 'a goodly interlude and a mery.' |