Lorenzo
In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea banks and waft her love
To come again to Carthage.
Jessica
In such a night
Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs
That did renew old Aeson.
Lorenzo
In such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice
As far as Belmont.
Jessica
In such a night
Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well,
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith
And ne’er a true one.
Lorenzo
In such a night
Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew,
Slander her love, and he forgave it her.
Jessica
I would out-night you, did no body come;
But, hark, I hear the footing of a man.
Enter Stephano
Lorenzo
Who comes so fast in silence of the night?
Stephano
A friend.
Lorenzo
A friend! what friend? your name, I pray you, friend?
Stephano
Stephano is my name; and I bring word
My mistress will before the break of day
Be here at Belmont; she doth stray about
By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays
For happy wedlock hours.
Lorenzo
Who comes with her?
Stephano
None but a holy hermit and her maid.
I pray you, is my master yet return’d?
Lorenzo
He is not, nor we have not heard from him.
But go we in, I pray thee, Jessica,
And ceremoniously let us prepare
Some welcome for the mistress of the house.
Enter Launcelot
Launcelot
Sola, sola! wo ha, ho! sola, sola!
Lorenzo
Who calls?
Launcelot
Sola! did you see Master Lorenzo?
Master Lorenzo, sola, sola!
Lorenzo
Leave hollaing, man: here.
Launcelot
Sola! where? where?
Lorenzo
Here.
Launcelot
Tell him there’s a post come from my master, with his horn full of good news: my master will be here ere morning.
Exit
Lorenzo
Sweet soul, let’s in, and there expect their coming.
And yet no matter: why should we go in?
My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you,
Within the house, your mistress is at hand;
And bring your music forth into the air.
Exit Stephano
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Enter Musicians
Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn!
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear,
And draw her home with music.
Music
Jessica
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
Lorenzo
The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn’d to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
Enter Portia and Nerissa
Portia
That light we see is burning in my hall.
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
Nerissa
When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.
Portia
So doth the greater glory dim the less:
A substitute shines brightly as a king
Unto the king be by, and then his state
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook
Into the main of waters. Music! hark!
Nerissa
It is your music, madam, of the house.
Portia
Nothing is good, I see, without respect:
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
Nerissa
Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.
Portia
The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended, and I think
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by season season’d are
To their right praise and true perfection!
Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion
And would not be awaked.
Music ceases
Lorenzo
That is the voice,
Or I am much deceived, of Portia.
Portia
He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo,
By the bad voice.
Lorenzo
Dear lady, welcome home.
Portia
We have been praying for our husbands’ healths,
Which speed, we hope, the better for our words.
Are they return’d?
Lorenzo
Madam, they are not yet;
But there is come a messenger before,
To signify their coming.
Portia
Go in, Nerissa;
Give order to my servants that they take
No note at all of our being absent hence;
Nor you, Lorenzo; Jessica, nor you.
A tucket sounds
Lorenzo
Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet:
We are no tell-tales, madam; fear you not.
Portia
This night methinks is but the daylight sick;
It looks a little paler: ’tis a day,
Such as the day is when the sun is hid.
Enter Bassanio, Antonio, Gratiano, and their followers
Bassanio
We should hold day with the Antipodes,
If you would walk in absence of the sun.
Portia
Let me give light, but let me not be light;
For a light wife doth make a heavy husband,
And never be Bassanio so for me:
But God sort all! You are welcome home, my lord.
; Bassanio
I thank you, madam. Give welcome to my friend.
This is the man, this is Antonio,
To whom I am so infinitely bound.
Portia
You should in all sense be much bound to him.
For, as I hear, he was much bound for you.
Antonio
No more than I am well acquitted of.
Portia
Sir, you are very welcome to our house:
It must appear in other ways than words,
Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.
Gratiano
[To Nerissa] By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong;
In faith, I gave it to the judge’s clerk:
Would he were gelt that had it, for my part,
Since you do take it, love, so much at heart.
Portia
A quarrel, ho, already! what’s the matter?
Gratiano
About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring
That she did give me, whose posy was
For all the world like cutler’s poetry
Upon a knife, ‘Love me, and leave me not.’
Nerissa
What talk you of the posy or the value?
You swore to me, when I did give it you,
That you would wear it till your hour of death
And that it should lie with you in your grave:
Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths,
You should have been respective and have kept it.
Gave it a judge’s clerk! no, God’s my judge,
The clerk will ne’er wear hair on’s face that had it.
Gratiano
He will, an if he live to be a man.
Nerissa
Ay, if a woman live to be a man.
Gratiano
Now, by this hand, I gave it to a youth,
A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy,
No higher than thyself; the judge’s clerk,
A prating boy, that begg’d it as a fee:
I could not for my heart deny it him.
Portia
You were to blame, I must be plain with you,
To part so slightly with your wife’s first gift:
A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger
And so riveted with faith unto your flesh.
I gave my love a ring and made him swear
Never to part with it; and here he stands;
I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it
Nor pluck it from his finger, for the wealth
That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano,
You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief:
An ’twere to me, I should be mad at it.
Bassanio
[Aside] Why, I were best to cut my left hand off
And swear I lost the ring defending it.
Gratiano
My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away
Unto the judge that begg’d it and indeed
Deserved it too; and then the boy, his clerk,
That took some pains in writing, he begg’d mine;
And neither man nor master would take aught
But the two rings.
Portia
What ring gave you my lord?
Not that, I hope, which you received of me.
Bassanio
If I could add a lie unto a fault,
I would deny it; but you see my finger
Hath not the ring upon it; it is gone.
Portia
Even so void is your false heart of truth.
By heaven, I will ne’er come in your bed
Until I see the ring.
Nerissa
Nor I in yours
Till I again see mine.
Bassanio
Sweet Portia,
If you did know to whom I gave the ring,
If you did know for whom I gave the ring
And would conceive for what I gave the ring
And how unwillingly I left the ring,
When nought would be accepted but the ring,
You would abate the strength of your displeasure.
Portia
If you had known the virtue of the ring,
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
Or your own honour to contain the ring,
You would not then have parted with the ring.
What man is there so much unreasonable,
If you had pleased to have defended it
With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty
To urge the thing held as a ceremony?
Nerissa teaches me what to believe:
I’ll die for’t but some woman had the ring.
Bassanio
No, by my honour, madam, by my soul,
No woman had it, but a civil doctor,
Which did refuse three thousand ducats of me
And begg’d the ring; the which I did deny him
And suffer’d him to go displeased away;
Even he that did uphold the very life
Of my dear friend. What should I say, sweet lady?
I was enforced to send it after him;
I was beset with shame and courtesy;
My honour would not let ingratitude
So much besmear it. Pardon me, good lady;
For, by these blessed candles of the night,
Had you been there, I think you would have begg’d
The ring of me to give the worthy doctor.
Portia
Let not that doctor e’er come near my house:
Since he hath got the jewel that I loved,
And that which you did swear to keep for me,
I will become as liberal as you;
I’ll not deny him any thing I have,
No, not my body nor my husband’s bed:
Know him I shall, I am well sure of it:
Lie not a night from home; watch me like Argus:
If you do not, if I be left alone,
Now, by mine honour, which is yet mine own,
I’ll have that doctor for my bedfellow.
Nerissa
And I his clerk; therefore be well advised
How you do leave me to mine own protection.
Gratiano
Well, do you so; let not me take him, then;
For if I do, I’ll mar the young clerk’s pen.
Antonio
I am the unhappy subject of these quarrels.
Portia
Sir, grieve not you; you are welcome notwithstanding.
Bassanio
Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong;
And, in the hearing of these many friends,
I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes,
Wherein I see myself —
Portia
Mark you but that!
In both my eyes he doubly sees himself;
In each eye, one: swear by your double self,
And there’s an oath of credit.
Bassanio
Nay, but hear me:
Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear
I never more will break an oath with thee.
Antonio
I once did lend my body for his wealth;
Which, but for him that had your husband’s ring,
Had quite miscarried: I dare be bound again,
My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord
Will never more break faith advisedly.
Portia
Then you shall be his surety. Give him this
And bid him keep it better than the other.
Antonio
Here, Lord Bassanio; swear to keep this ring.
Bassanio
By heaven, it is the same I gave the doctor!
Portia
I had it of him: pardon me, Bassanio;
For, by this ring, the doctor lay with me.
Nerissa
And pardon me, my gentle Gratiano;
For that same scrubbed boy, the doctor’s cler
k,
In lieu of this last night did lie with me.
Gratiano
Why, this is like the mending of highways
In summer, where the ways are fair enough:
What, are we cuckolds ere we have deserved it?
Portia
Speak not so grossly. You are all amazed:
Here is a letter; read it at your leisure;
It comes from Padua, from Bellario:
There you shall find that Portia was the doctor,
Nerissa there her clerk: Lorenzo here
Shall witness I set forth as soon as you
And even but now return’d; I have not yet
Enter’d my house. Antonio, you are welcome;
And I have better news in store for you
Than you expect: unseal this letter soon;
There you shall find three of your argosies
Are richly come to harbour suddenly:
You shall not know by what strange accident
I chanced on this letter.
Antonio
I am dumb.
Bassanio
Were you the doctor and I knew you not?
Gratiano
Were you the clerk that is to make me cuckold?
Nerissa
Ay, but the clerk that never means to do it,
Unless he live until he be a man.
Bassanio
Sweet doctor, you shall be my bed-fellow:
When I am absent, then lie with my wife.
Antonio
Sweet lady, you have given me life and living;
For here I read for certain that my ships
Are safely come to road.
Portia
How now, Lorenzo!
My clerk hath some good comforts too for you.
Nerissa
Ay, and I’ll give them him without a fee.
There do I give to you and Jessica,
From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift,
After his death, of all he dies possess’d of.
Lorenzo
Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way
Of starved people.
Portia
It is almost morning,
And yet I am sure you are not satisfied
Of these events at full. Let us go in;
And charge us there upon inter’gatories,
And we will answer all things faithfully.
Gratiano
Let it be so: the first inter’gatory
That my Nerissa shall be sworn on is,
Whether till the next night she had rather stay,
Or go to bed now, being two hours to day:
But were the day come, I should wish it dark,
That I were couching with the doctor’s clerk.
Well, while I live I’ll fear no other thing
So sore as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring.
Exeunt
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY
ACT I
SCENE I. ATHENS. THE PALACE OF THESEUS.
SCENE II. ATHENS. QUINCE’S HOUSE.
ACT II
SCENE I. A WOOD NEAR ATHENS.
Complete Plays, The Page 307