ACT IV, SCENE I. The same.
[LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HELENA, and HERMIA, lying asleep]
[Enter TITANIA and BOTTOM; PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB, MOTH, MUSTARDSEED,
and other Fairies attending; OBERON behind unseen]
TITANIA:
- Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
- While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
- And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,
- And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.
BOTTOM:
- Where's Peaseblossom?
BOTTOM:
- Scratch my head Peaseblossom. Where's Mounsieur Cobweb?
BOTTOM:
- Mounsieur Cobweb, good mounsieur, get you your
- weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped
- humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good
- mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret
- yourself too much in the action, mounsieur; and,
- good mounsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not;
- I would be loath to have you overflown with a
- honey-bag, signior. Where's Mounsieur Mustardseed?
BOTTOM:
- Give me your neaf, Mounsieur Mustardseed. Pray you,
- leave your courtesy, good mounsieur.
MUSTARDSEED:
- What's your Will?
BOTTOM:
- Nothing, good mounsieur, but to help Cavalery Cobweb
- to scratch. I must to the barber's, monsieur; for
- methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face; and I
- am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me,
- I must scratch.
TITANIA:
- What, wilt thou hear some music,
- my sweet love?
BOTTOM:
- I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let's have
- the tongs and the bones.
TITANIA:
- Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat.
BOTTOM:
- Truly, a peck of provender: I could munch your good
- dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle
- of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.
TITANIA:
- I have a venturous fairy that shall seek
- The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.
BOTTOM:
- I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas.
- But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me: I
- have an exposition of sleep come upon me.
TITANIA:
- Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.
- Fairies, begone, and be all ways away.
-
[Exeunt fairies]
- So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
- Gently entwist; the female ivy so
- Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
- O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!
-
[They sleep]
-
[Enter PUCK]
OBERON:
-
[Advancing]
- Welcome, good Robin.
- See'st thou this sweet sight?
- Her dotage now I do begin to pity:
- For, meeting her of late behind the wood,
- Seeking sweet favours from this hateful fool,
- I did upbraid her and fall out with her;
- For she his hairy temples then had rounded
- With a coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;
- And that same dew, which sometime on the buds
- Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls,
- Stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes
- Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.
- When I had at my pleasure taunted her
- And she in mild terms begg'd my patience,
- I then did ask of her her changeling child;
- Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent
- To bear him to my bower in fairy land.
- And now I have the boy, I will undo
- This hateful imperfection of her eyes:
- And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp
- From off the head of this Athenian swain;
- That, he awaking when the other do,
- May all to Athens back again repair
- And think no more of this night's accidents
- But as the fierce vexation of a dream.
- But first I will release the fairy queen.
- Be as thou wast wont to be;
- See as thou wast wont to see:
- Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower
- Hath such force and blessed power.
- Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen.
TITANIA:
- My Oberon! what visions have I seen!
- Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.
OBERON:
- There lies your love.
TITANIA:
- How came these things to pass?
- O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!
OBERON:
- Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head.
- Titania, music call; and strike more dead
- Than common sleep of all these five the sense.
TITANIA:
- Music, ho! music, such as charmeth sleep!
-
[Music, still]
PUCK:
- Now, when thou wakest, with thine
- own fool's eyes peep.
OBERON:
- Sound, music! Come, my queen, take hands with me,
- And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.
- Now thou and I are new in amity,
- And will to-morrow midnight solemnly
- Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly,
- And bless it to all fair prosperity:
- There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be
- Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity.
PUCK:
- Fairy king, attend, and mark:
- I do hear the morning lark.
OBERON:
- Then, my queen, in silence sad,
- Trip we after the night's shade:
- We the globe can compass soon,
- Swifter than the wandering moon.
THESEUS:
- Go, one of you, find out the forester;
- For now our observation is perform'd;
- And since we have the vaward of the day,
- My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
- Uncouple in the western valley; let them go:
- Dispatch, I say, and find the forester.
-
[Exit an Attendant]
- We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top,
- And mark the musical confusion
- Of hounds and echo in conjunction.
HIPPOLYTA:
- I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
- When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
- With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
- Such gallant chiding: for, besides the groves,
- The skies, the fountains, every region near
- Seem'd all one mutual cry: I never heard
- So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
THESEUS:
- My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
- So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung
- With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
- Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
- Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
- Each under each. A cry more tuneable
- Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn,
- In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:
- Judge when you hear. But, soft! what nymphs are these?
EGEUS:
- My lord, this is my daughter here asleep;
- And this, Lysander; this Demetrius is;
- This Helena, old Nedar's Helena:
- I wonder of their being here together.
THESEUS:
- No doubt they rose up early to observe
- The rite of May, and hearing our intent,
- Came here in grace our solemnity.
- But speak, Egeus; is not this the day
- That Hermia should give answer of her choice?
THESEUS:
- Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.
-
[Horns and shout within.]
-
[LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HELENA, and HERMIA wake and start up]
- Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past:
- Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?
LYSANDER:
- Pardon, my lord.
THESEUS:
- I pray you all, stand up.
- I know you two are rival enemies:
- How comes this gentle concord in the world,
- That hatred is so far from jealousy,
- To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?
LYSANDER:
- My lord, I shall reply amazedly,
- Half sleep, half waking: but as yet, I swear,
- I cannot truly say how I came here;
- But, as I think,--for truly would I speak,
- And now do I bethink me, so it is,--
- I came with Hermia hither: our intent
- Was to be gone from Athens, where we might,
- Without the peril of the Athenian law.
EGEUS:
- Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough:
- I beg the law, the law, upon his head.
- They would have stolen away; they would, Demetrius,
- Thereby to have defeated you and me,
- You of your wife and me of my consent,
- Of my consent that she should be your wife.
DEMETRIUS:
- My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,
- Of this their purpose hither to this wood;
- And I in fury hither follow'd them,
- Fair Helena in fancy following me.
- But, my good lord, I wot not by what power,--
- But by some power it is,--my love to Hermia,
- Melted as the snow, seems to me now
- As the remembrance of an idle gaud
- Which in my childhood I did dote upon;
- And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,
- 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 in 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.
DEMETRIUS:
- These things seem small and undistinguishable,
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:
- 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.
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:
-
[Awaking]
- 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, 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 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]
ACT IV, SCENE II. Athens. 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 no true Athenian. I
- will tell you every thing, 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
- o'er 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
- pair 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 sweet breath; and I
- do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet
- comedy. No more words: away! go, away!
-
[Exeunt]