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Hel. O weary night, O long and tedious night,
Abate thy hours: shine, comforts, from the east;
That I may back to Athens, by daylight,
From these that my poor company detest:-
And, sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye,
Steal me a while from mine own company. [Sleeps.
Puck. Yet but three? Come one more;

Two of both kinds makes up four.
Here she comes, curst and sad :-

Cupid is a knavish lad,

Thus to make poor females mad.

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your weapons in your hand, and kill me a redhipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and,

Enter TITANIA and BOTTOM, Fairies attending; good monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not

OBERON behind unseen.

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fret yourself too much in the action, monsieur; and, good monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; I would be loth to have you overflown with a honey-bag, signior.-Where's Monsieur Mustardseed?

Must. Ready.

Bot. Give me your neif, Monsieur Mustardseed.

Pray you, leave your courtesy, good monsieur. Must. What's your will?

Bot. Nothing, good monsieur, but to help

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Like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail.
When I had, at my pleasure, taunted her,
And she, in mild terms, begged 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;

[Touching her eyes with an herb.
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.
Tita. My Oberon! what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamoured of an ass.
Obe. There lies your love.

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fool's eyes peep.

Obe. Sound, music. [Still 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 posterity:

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.
Obe. Then, my queen, in silence sad,

Trip we after the night's shade:
We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wandering moon.
Tita. Come, my lord; and in our flight,
Tell me how it came this night,
That I sleeping here was found,
With these mortals on the ground.
[Exeunt. Horns sound within.

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS, and Train.
Thes. Go, one of you, find out the forester ;-

-

For now our observation is performed;
And since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds,-
Uncouple in the western valley; go:-
Despatch, I say, and find the forester.-
We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top,
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

Hip. I was with Hercules, and Cadmus, once,
When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seemed all one mutual cry: I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

Thes. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flewed, so sanded; and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-kneed, and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;

Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheered with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:
Judge, when you hear.-But, soft; what nymphs
are these?

Ege. 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.

Thes. No doubt, they rose up early, to observe The rite of May; and, hearing our intent, Came here in grace of our solemnity.But, speak, Egeus; is not this the day That Hermia should give answer of her choice? Ege. It is, my lord.

Thes. Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.

Horns and shout within. DEMETRIUS, LYSANDER,
HERMIA, and HELENA, wake and start up.
Thes. Good-morrow, friends. Saint Valentine
is past;

Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?
Lys. Pardon, my lord.

Thes.

I

[He and the rest kneel to THESEUS. pray you all, stand up. I know, you are two 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?

Lys. 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 I do bethink me, so it is),

I came with Hermia hither: our intent

Was, to be gone from Athens, where we might be Without the peril of the Athenian law.

Ege. Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough:

I beg the law, the law upon his head.-
They would have stolen away, they would, Deme-
trius,

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.
Dem. My lord, fair Helen told me of their
stealth,

Of this their purpose hither, to this wood;
And I in fury hither followed 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 doth the snow, seems to me now
As the remembrance of an idle gawd,
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 betrothed ere I saw Hermia;
But, like in sickness, did I loath this food:
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now do I wish it, love it, long for it,
And will for evermore be true to it.

Thes. Fair lovers, you are fortunately met:
Of this discourse we will hear more 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 purposed hunting shall be set aside.—
Away, with us, to Athens: three and three,
We'll hold a feast of great solemnity.—-
Come, Hippolyta.

[Exeunt THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS, and Train.

Dem. These things seem small and undistin

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As they go out, BOTTOM awakes. Bot. When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer :--my next is, "Most fair Pyramus."— Hey, ho!-Peter Quince! Flute, the bellowsmender! 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.

SCENE II.-Athens. A Room in QUINCE's House. Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING.

Quin. Have you sent to Bottom's house?—is he come home yet?

Star. He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt, he is transported.

Flu. If he come not, then the play is marred; it goes not forward, doth it?

Quin. It is not possible: you have not a man in all Athens, able to discharge Pyramus, but he. Flu. No; he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in Athens.

Quin. Yea, and the best person too: and he is a very paramour for a sweet voice.

Flu. You must say, paragon: a paramour is, God bless us! a thing of nought.

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.

Flu. 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.

Bot. Where are these lads? where are these hearts?

Quin. Bottom!-O most courageous day! O most happy hour!

Bot. 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 everything, right as it fell out.

Quin. Let us hear, sweet Bottom.

Bot. 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

ribands 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, 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 words; away; go away.

[Exeunt.

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SCENE 1.-The same. An Apartment in the Palace of THESEUS.

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords, and Attendants.

Hip. "Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.

Thes. 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 frantick,
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,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear?

Hip. But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

Enter LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA, and HELENA.

Thes. Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.

Joy, gentle friends! joy, and fresh days of love, Accompany your hearts!

Lys.

More than to us

Wait on your royal walks, your board, your bed!

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