The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite

  Call’d Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he

  That frights the maidens of the villagery,

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  Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,

  And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,

  And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,

  Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

  Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,

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  You do their work, and they shall have good luck.

  Are not you he?

  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,

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  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 dewlap pour the ale.

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  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

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  And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear

  A merrier hour was never wasted there.

  But room, fairy! Here comes Oberon.

  FAIRY

  And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

  Enter OBERON, the King of Fairies, at one door, with his

  train; and TITANIA, the Queen, at another, with hers.

  OBERON Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

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  TITANIA What, jealous Oberon? Fairies, skip hence;

  I have forsworn his bed and company.

  OBERON Tarry, rash wanton; am not I thy lord?

  TITANIA Then I must be thy lady; but I know

  When thou hast stol’n away from fairy land,

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  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 step of India,

  But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,

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  Your buskin’d mistress and your warrior love,

  To Theseus must be wedded, and you come

  To give their bed joy and prosperity?

  OBERON How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania,

  Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

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  Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

  Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night

  From Perigouna, whom he ravished;

  And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,

  With Ariadne and Antiopa?

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  TITANIA 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 in the beached margent of the sea,

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  To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

  But with thy brawls thou has disturb’d our sport.

  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,

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  Hath 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 corn

  Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard;

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  The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

  And crows are fatted with the murrion 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.

  100

  The human mortals want their winter cheer:

  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.

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  And thorough this distemperature we see

  The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

  Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;

  And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown,

  An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

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  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

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  From our debate, from our dissension;

  We are their parents and original.

  OBERON Do you amend it then: it lies in you.

  Why should Titania cross her Oberon?

  I do but beg a little changeling boy

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  To be my henchman.

  TITANIA Set your heart at rest:

  The fairy land buys not the child of me.

  His mother was a votress of my order;

  And in the spiced Indian air, by night,

  Full often hath she gossip’d by my side;

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  And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,

  Marking th’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

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  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;

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  And for her sake do I rear up her boy;

  And for her sake I will not part with him.

  OBERON How long within this wood intend you stay?

  TITANIA Perchance till after Theseus’ wedding-day.

  If you will patiently dance in our round,

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  And see our moonlight revels, go with us;

  If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

  OBERON Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.

  TITANIA Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away!

  We shall chide downright if I longer stay.

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  Exeunt Titania and her train.

  OBERON

  Well, go thy way; thou shalt not from this grove

  Till I torment thee for this injury.

  My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb’rest

  Since once I sat upon a promontory,

  And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back

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  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?

  PUCK I remember.

  OBERON That very time I saw (but thou couldst not),

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  Flying between the cold moon and the earth,

  Cupid all arm’d: a certain aim he took

  At a fair vestal, throned by the west,

  And loos’d his love-shaft smartly from his bow

  As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.

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  But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft

  Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon;
/>
  And the imperial votress passed on,

  In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

  Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

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  It fell upon a little western flower,

  Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound:

  And maidens call it ‘love-in-idleness’.

  Fetch me that flower; the herb I show’d thee once.

  The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid,

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  Will make or man or woman madly dote

  Upon the next live creature that it sees.

  Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again

  Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

  PUCK I’ll put a girdle round about the earth

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  In forty minutes. Exit.

  OBERON Having once this juice,

  I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep,

  And drop the liquor of it in her eyes:

  The next thing then she waking looks upon

  (Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,

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  On meddling monkey, or on busy ape)

  She shall pursue it with the soul of love.

  And ere I take this charm from off her sight

  (As I can take it with another herb)

  I’ll make her render up her page to me.

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  But who comes here? I am invisible;

  And I will overhear their conference.

  Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him.

  DEMETRIUS I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.

  Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?

  The one I’ll slay, the other slayeth me.

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  Thou told’st me they were stol’n unto this wood;

  And here am I, and wood within this wood

  Because I cannot meet my Hermia.

  Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.

  HELENA You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant –

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  But yet you draw not iron, for my heart

  Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw,

  And I shall have no power to follow you.

  DEMETRIUS Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair?

  Or rather do I not in plainest truth

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  Tell you I do not, nor I cannot love you?

  HELENA And even for that do I love you the more.

  I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,

  The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.

  Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,

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  Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,

  Unworthy as I am, to follow you.

  What worser place can I beg in your love –

  And yet a place of high respect with me –

  Than to be used as you use your dog?

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  DEMETRIUS Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit;

  For I am sick when I do look on thee.

  HELENA And I am sick when I look not on you.

  DEMETRIUS You do impeach your modesty too much

  To leave the city and commit yourself

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  Into the hands of one that loves you not,

  To trust the opportunity of night

  And the ill counsel of a desert place

  With the rich worth of your virginity.

  HELENA Your virtue is my privilege: for that

  It is not night when I do see your face,

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  Therefore I think I am not in the night;

  Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,

  For you, in my respect, are all the world;

  Then how can it be said I am alone,

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  When all the world is here to look on me?

  DEMETRIUS

  I’ll run from thee and hide me in the brakes,

  And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.

  HELENA The wildest hath not such a heart as you.

  Run when you will; the story shall be chang’d:

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  Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase;

  The dove pursues the griffin, the mild hind

  Makes speed to catch the tiger – bootless speed,

  When cowardice pursues and valour flies!

  DEMETRIUS I will not stay thy questions; let me go,

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  Or if thou follow me, do not believe

  But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.

  HELENA Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,

  You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!

  Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex.

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  We cannot fight for love, as men may do;

  We should be woo’d, and were not made to woo.

  Exit Demetrius.

  I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell,

  To die upon the hand I love so well. Exit.