These couples shall eternally be knit.
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And, for the morning now is something worn,
Our purpos’d hunting shall be set aside.
Away, with us, to Athens: three and three,
We’ll hold a feast in great solemnity.
Come, Hippolyta.
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Exeunt Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus and train.
DEMETRIUS
These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.
HERMIA Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
When everything seems double.
HELENA So methinks;
And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,
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Mine own, and not mine own.
DEMETRIUS Are you sure
That we are awake? It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think
The Duke was here, and bid us follow him?
HERMIA Yea, and my father.
HELENA And Hippolyta.
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LYSANDER And he did bid us follow to the temple.
DEMETRIUS Why then, we are awake: let’s follow him,
And by the way let us recount our dreams. Exeunt.
BOTTOM [waking] When my cue comes, call me and I
will answer. My next is ‘Most fair Pyramus’. Heigh-
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ho! Peter Quince? Flute, the bellows-mender? Snout,
the tinker? Starveling? God’s my life! Stolen hence,
and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have
had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it
was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this
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dream. Methought I was – there is no man can tell
what. Methought I was – and methought I had – but
man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what
methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the
ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to
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taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report,
what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a
ballad of this dream: it shall be called ‘Bottom’s
Dream’, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it
in the latter end of a play, before the Duke.
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Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall
sing it at her death. Exit.
4.2 Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT and STARVELING.
QUINCE Have you sent to Bottom’s house? Is he come
home yet?
STARVELING He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is
transported.
FLUTE If he come not, then the play is marred: it goes
5
not forward, doth it?
QUINCE It is not possible. You have not a man in all
Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he.
FLUTE No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft
man in Athens.
10
QUINCE Yea, and the best person too; and he is a very
paramour for a sweet voice.
FLUTE You must say paragon. A paramour is, God bless
us, a thing of naught.
Enter SNUG the joiner.
SNUG Masters, the Duke is coming from the temple,
15
and there is two or three lords and ladies more
married. If our sport had gone forward, we had all
been made men.
FLUTE O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost
sixpence a day during his life; he could not have
20
‘scaped sixpence a day. And the Duke had not given
him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I’ll be
hanged. He would have deserved it: sixpence a day in
Pyramus, or nothing.
Enter BOTTOM.
BOTTOM Where are these lads? Where are these hearts?
25
QUINCE Bottom! O most courageous day! O most happy
hour!
BOTTOM Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask
me not what; for if I tell you, I am not true Athenian.
I will tell you everything, right as it fell out.
30
QUINCE Let us hear, sweet Bottom.
BOTTOM Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is,
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
35
o’er his part: for the short and the long is, our play is
preferred. In any case, let Thisbe 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
40
sweet breath; and I do not doubt but to hear them say,
it is a sweet comedy. No more words. Away! Go, away!
Exeunt.
5.1 Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA; lords and
attendants, among them PHILOSTRATE.
HIPPOLYTA
’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.
THESEUS 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
5
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
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
15
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:
20
Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!
HIPPOLYTA But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur’d so together,
More witnesseth than fancy’s images,
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And grows to something of great constancy;
But howsoever, strange and admirable.
Enter the lovers: LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA and HELENA.
THESEUS Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.
Joy, gentle friends, joy and fresh days of love
Accompany your hearts!
LYSANDER More than to us
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Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed!
THESEUS
Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have,
To wear away this long age of three hours
Between our after-supper and bed-time?
Where is our usual manager of mirth?
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What revels are in hand? Is there no play
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?
Call Philostrate.
PHILOSTRATE [advancing] Here, mighty Theseus.
THESEUS
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?
PHILOSTRATE
&
nbsp; There is a brief how many sports are ripe:
Make choice of which your Highness will see first.
[giving a paper]
THESEUS [Reads.]
The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung
By an Athenian eunuch to the harp?
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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.
[Reads.] The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
Of learning, late deceas’d in beggary?
That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.
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[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?
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PHILOSTRATE
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.
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And tragical, my noble lord, it is,
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself;
Which, when I saw rehears’d, I must confess
Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed.
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THESEUS What are they that do play it?
PHILOSTRATE
Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
Which never labour’d in their minds till now;
And now have toil’d their unbreath’d memories
With this same play, against your nuptial.
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THESEUS And we will hear it.
PHILOSTRATE No, my noble lord,
It is not for you: I have heard it over,
And it is nothing, nothing in the world;
Unless you can find sport in their intents,
Extremely stretch’d and conn’d with cruel pain
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To do you service.
THESEUS I will hear that play;
For never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it.
Go bring them in; and take your places, ladies.
Exit Philostrate.
HIPPOLYTA I love not to see wretchedness o’er-charg’d,
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And duty in his service perishing.
THESEUS Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.
HIPPOLYTA He says they can do nothing in this kind.
THESEUS
The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.
Our sport shall be to take what they mistake:
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And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect
Takes it in might, not merit.
Where I have come, great clerks have purposed
To greet me with premeditated welcomes;
Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,
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Make periods in the midst of sentences,
Throttle their practis’d accent in their fears,
And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off,
Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,
Out of this silence yet I pick’d a welcome,
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And in the modesty of fearful duty
I read as much as from the rattling tongue
Of saucy and audacious eloquence.
Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity
In least speak most, to my capacity.
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Enter PHILOSTRATE.
PHILOSTRATE
So please your grace, the Prologue is address’d.
THESEUS Let him approach.
[Flourish of trumpets.]
Enter QUINCE for the PROLOGUE.
PROLOGUE If we offend, it is with our good will.
That you should think, we come not to offend,
But with good will. To show our simple skill,
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That is the true beginning of our end.
Consider then, we come but in despite.
We do not come, as minding to content you,
Our true intent is. All for your delight,
We are not here. That you should here repent you,
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The actors are at hand; and by their show,
You shall know all, that you are like to know.
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 397