The object and the pleasure of mine eye,
Is only Helena. To her, my lord,
Was I betroth’d ere I saw Hermia:
But, like a sickness, did I loathe this food;
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,
And will for evermore be true to it.
THESEUS
Fair lovers, you are fortunately met:
Of this discourse we more will hear anon.—
Egeus, I will overbear your will;
For in the temple, by and by with us,
These couples shall eternally be knit.
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.
[Exeunt THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS, and Train.]
DEMETRIUS
These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turnèd into clouds.
HERMIA
Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
When every thing seems double.
HELENA
So methinks:
And I have found Demetrius like a jewel.
Mine own, and not mine own.
DEMETRIUS
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.
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.]
[As they go out, BOTTOM awakes.]
BOTTOM
When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is ‘Most fair Pyramus.’—Heigh-ho!—Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God’s my life, stol’n 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 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 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: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.
[Exit.]
SCENE II. Athens. A Room in QUINCE’S House
[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 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.
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.]
SNUG
Masters, the duke is coming from the temple; 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 ‘scaped sixpence a-day; an 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?
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.
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 over his part; for the short and the long is, our play is preferred. In any case, let Thisby 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 garlick, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I do not doubt but to hear them say it is a sweet comedy. No more words: away! go; away!
[Exeunt.]
ACT V
SCENE I. Athens. An Apartment in the Palace of THESEUS
[Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords, and Attendants.]
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
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,
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
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,