you,

For fair Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fancies to your father's will;
Or else the law of Athens yields you up
(Which by no means we may extenuate)
To death, or to a vow of single life.

Come, my Hippolyta; what cheer, my love ?
Demetrius and Egeus, go along :

I must employ you in some business
Against our nuptial; and confer with you
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.
Ege. With duty and desire we follow you.
[Exeunt THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS,
DEMETRIUS, and Train.

Lys. How now, my love? why is your cheek so pale?

How chance the roses there do fade so fast? Her. Belike for want of rain; which I could well

Beteem them from the tempest of mine eyes.

Lys. Ah me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth: But either it was different in blood:

Her. O cross! too high to be enthralled to low! Lys. Or else misgrafféd, in respect of years: Her. O spite! too old to be engaged to young! Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends : Her. O hell! to choose love by another's eye! 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, That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, "Behold!" The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion.

Her. If then true lovers have been ever crossed,
It stands as an edíct in destiny:
Then let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary cross;

As due to love as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs,
Wishes, and tears, poor fancy's followers.
Lys. A good persuasion; therefore, hear me,
Hermia.

I have a widow aunt, a dowager
Of great revenue, and she hath no child:
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me, then,
Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee.

I swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow;
By his best arrow with the golden head;
By the simplicity of Venus' doves;
By that which knitteth souls, and prospers loves;
And by that fire which burned the Carthage queen,
When the false Trojan under sail was seen;
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke;
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.
Lys. Keep promise, love. Look, here comes
Helena.

Enter HELENA.

Her. God speed fair Helena! Whither away? Hel. Call you me fair! that fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair: O, happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air

More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn-buds appear!

Sickness is catching; O, were favour so,
Your's would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go;
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,
My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet
melody.

Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
The rest I'll give to be to you translated.
O, teach me how you look; and with what art
You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart.

IHer. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. Ilel. O, that your frowns would teach my smiles 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. Hel. The more I love, the more he hateth me. Her. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine. Hel. None; but your beauty: 'would that fault were mine!

Her. Take comfort; he no more shall see my

face;

Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seemed Athens like a paradise to me:
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turned a heaven into a hell!

Lys. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold :
To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass
(A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal),
Through Athens' gates have we devised 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 HERMIA.
Lys. I will, my Hermia. Helena, adieu:
As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!

[Exit LYSANDER.

Hel. How happy some o'er other some can be! Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so; He will not know what all but he do know. And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes, So I, admiring of his qualities. Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind : Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste: And therefore is Love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguiled. As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, So the boy Love is perjured everywhere: For ere Demetrius looked on Hermia's eyne, He hailed down oaths that he was only mine; And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt. I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight : Then to the wood will he, to-morrow night, Pursue her and for this intelligence, If I have thanks, it is a dear expense: But herein mean I to enrich my pain,

To have his sight thither and back again. [Exit.

SCENE II.-The same. A Room in a Cottage.

Enter SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, QUINCE, and STARVELING.

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 on to a point.

Quin. Marry, our play is—“The most lament

able comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby."

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 Py

ramus.

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. This is Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein; a lover is more condoling.

Quin. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.
Flu. Here, Peter Quince.

Quin. You must take Thisby on you.
Flu. What is Thisby? a wandering knight?
Quin. It is the lady that Pyramus must love.
Flu. Nay, faith, let me not 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!" Quin. No, no; you must play Pyramus; 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 there 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. Quin. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.

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.

All. That would hang us every mother's son. Bot. I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would 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 't were any nightingale.

Quin. You can play no part but Pyramus: for Pyramus is a sweetfaced man; a proper man as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely, gentlemanlike 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 strawcoloured beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crowncoloured beard, your perfect yellow.

Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play barefaced.— 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 our 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 bowstrings.

[Exeunt.

SCENE I.-A Wood near Athens.
Enter a Fairy at one door, and Puck at another.
Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you?
Fai. Over hill, over dale,

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

Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moonés 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 dewdrops 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.
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changéling:
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 starlight 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,

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 withered dewlap 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, Faery, here comes Oberon.

Fai. And here my mistress. 'Would that he were gone!

SCENE II.

Enter OBERON, at one door, with his Train; and TITANIA, at another, with hers.

Obe. Ill met by moonlight, 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 stolen 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 buskined mistress and your warrior love, To Theseus must be wedded; and you come To give their bed joy and prosperity.

Obe. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania, Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night

From Perigenia, whom he ravishéd?

And make him with fair Æglé 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 pavéd fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or on the beachéd margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our
sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have sucked 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 stretched his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard:
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
The crows are fatted with the murrain flock;
The nine-men's morris is filled 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 'mazéd world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.

Obe. Do you amend it, then; it lies in you: Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy, henchman.

Set your heart at rest;

To be my
Tita.
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spicéd Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossiped by my side;
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarkéd traders on the flood;
When we have laughed to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton-wind:
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait,
Following (her womb then rich with my young

squire),

Would imitate; and sail upon the land
To fetch me trifles, and return again
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And for her sake I do rear up the boy;
And for her sake I will not part with him.
Obe. How long within this wood intend you
stay?

Tita. Perchance till after Theseus' wedding

day.

If you will patiently dance in our round,
And see our moonlight revels, go with us:
If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.
Obe. Give me that boy, and I will go with
thee.

Tita. Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies away: We shall chide downright, if I longer stay.

[Exeunt TITANIA and her Train. Obe. Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove

Till I torment thee for this injury.—

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberst
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music?