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LYSANDER
Ay me! For aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.
But either it was different in blood—
HERMIA
O cross! Too high to be enthralled to low.
LYSANDER
Or else misgraffed in respect of years—
HERMIA
O spite! Too old to be engaged to young.
LYSANDER
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends—
HERMIA
O hell, to choose love by another’s eyes!
LYSANDER
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth,
And, ere a man hath power to say “Behold!”
The jaws of darkness do devour it up.
So quick bright things come to confusion.
HERMIA
If then true lovers have been ever crossed,
It stands as an edict in destiny.
Then let us teach our trial patience
Because it is a customary cross,
As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,
Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers.
LYSANDER
A good persuasion. Therefore, hear me, Hermia:
I have a widow aunt, a dowager
Of great revenue, and she hath no child.
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues,
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Ca
Steal forth thy father’s house tomorrow night,
And in the wood a league without the town
(Where I did meet thee once with Helena
To do observance to a morn of May),
There will I stay for thee.
HERMIA My good Lysander,
I swear to thee by Cupid’s strongest bow,
By his best arrow with the golden head,
By the simplicity of Venus’ doves,
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,
And by that fire which burned the Carthage queen
When the false Trojan under sail was seen,
By all the vows that ever men have broke
(In number more than ever women spoke),
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
Tomorrow truly will I meet with thee.
LYSANDER
Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.
Enter Helena.
HERMIA
Godspeed, fair Helena. Whither away?
HELENA
Call you me “fair”? That “fair” again unsay.
Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair!
Your eyes are lodestars and your tongue’s sweet air
More tunable than lark to shepherd’s ear
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.
Sickness is catching. O, were favor so!
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go.
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye;
My tongue should catch your tongue’s sweet
melody.
Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
The rest I’d give to be to you translated.
O, teach me how you look and with what art
You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart!
HERMIA
I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.
HELENA
O, that your frowns would teach my smiles such
skill!
HERMIA
I give him curses, yet he gives me love.
HELENA
O, that my prayers could such affection move!
HERMIA
The more I hate, the more he follows me.
HELENA
The more I love, the more he hateth me.
HERMIA
His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.
HELENA
None but your beauty. Would that fault were mine!
HERMIA
Take comfort: he no more shall see my face.
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see
Seemed Athens as a paradise to me.
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell
That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell!
LYSANDER
Helen, to you our minds we will unfold.
Tomorrow night when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the wat’ry glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass
(A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal),
Through Athens’ gates have we devised to steal.
HERMIA
And in the wood where often you and I
Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie,
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,
There my Lysander and myself shall meet
And thence from Athens turn away our eyes
To seek new friends and stranger companies.
Farewell, sweet playfellow. Pray thou for us,
And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius.—
Keep word, Lysander. We must starve our sight
From lovers’ food till morrow deep midnight.
LYSANDER
I will, my Hermia. Hermia exits.
Helena, adieu.
As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!
Lysander exits.
HELENA
How happy some o’er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so.
He will not know what all but he do know.
And, as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste.
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is Love said to be a child
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.
For, ere Demetrius looked on Hermia’s eyne,
He hailed down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and show’rs of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight.
Then to the wood will he tomorrow night
Pursue her. And, for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.
She exits.
Scene 2
Enter Quince the carpenter, and Snug the joiner, and
Bottom the weaver, and Flute the bellows-mender, and
Snout the tinker, and Starveling the tailor.
QUINCE Is all our company here?
BOTTOM You were best to call them generally, man by
man, according to the scrip.
QUINCE Here is the scroll of every man’s name which
is thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our
interlude before the Duke and the Duchess on his
wedding day at night.
BOTTOM First, good Peter Quince, say what the play
treats on, then read the names of the actors, and so
grow to a point.
QUINCE Marry, our play is “The most lamentable
comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and
Thisbe.”
BOTTOM A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a
merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your
actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves.
QUINCE Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.
BOTTOM Ready. Name what part I am for, and
proceed.
QUINCE You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.
BOTTOM What is Pyramus—a lover or a tyrant?
QUINCE A lover that kills himself most gallant for love.
BOTTOM That will ask some tears in the true performing
of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their
eyes. I will move storms; I will condole in some
measure. To the rest.—Yet my chief humor is for a
tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a
cat in, to make all split: