Unto the rigour of severest law.

PRINCE

We still have known thee for a holy man.

Where’s Romeo’s man? What can he say to this? 270

BALTHASAR

I brought my master news of Juliet’s death,

And then in post he came from Mantua

To this same place, to this same monument.

This letter he early bid me give his father,

And threatened me with death, going in the vault,

If I departed not and left him there.

PRINCE

Give me the letter. I will look on it.

He takes the letter

Where is the County’s page that raised the watch?

Sirrah, what made your master in this place?

PAGE

He came with flowers to strew his lady’s grave,

And bid me stand aloof, and so I did.

Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb,

And by and by my master drew on him,

And then I ran away to call the watch.

PRINCE

This letter doth make good the friar’s words,

Their course of love, the tidings of her death;

And here he writes that he did buy a poison

Of a poor ’pothecary, and therewithal

Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.

Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague, 290

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.

And I, for winking at your discords, too

Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished.

CAPULET

O brother Montague, give me thy hand. 295

This is my daughter’s jointure, for no more

Can I demand.

MONTAGUE But I can give thee more,

For I will raise her statue in pure gold,

That whiles Verona by that name is known

There shall no figure at such rate be set 300

As that of true and faithful Juliet.

CAPULET

As rich shall Romeo’s by his lady’s lie,

Poor sacrifices of our enmity.

PRINCE

A glooming peace this morning with it brings.

The sun for sorrow will not show his head. 305

Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.

Some shall be pardoned, and some punishèd;

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

⌈The tomb is closed.⌉ Exeunt

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

FRANCIS MERES mentions A Midsummer Night’s Dream in his Palladis Tamia, of 1598, and it was first printed in 1600. The Folio (1623) version offers significant variations apparently deriving from performance, and is followed in the present edition. It has often been thought that Shakespeare wrote the play for an aristocratic wedding, but there is no evidence to support this speculation, and the 1600 title-page states that it had been ’sundry times publicly acted’ by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. In stylistic variation it resembles Love’s Labour’s Lost: both plays employ a wide variety of verse measures and rhyme schemes, along with prose that is sometimes (as in Bottom’s account of his dream, 4.1.202―15) rhetorically patterned. Probably it was written in 1594 or 1595, either just before or just after Romeo and Juliet.

Shakespeare built his own plot from diverse elements of literature, drama, legend, and folklore, supplemented by his imagination and observation. There are four main strands. One, which forms the basis of the action, shows the preparations for the marriage of Theseus, Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and (in the last act) its celebration. This is indebted to Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, as is the play’s second strand, the love story of Lysander and Hermia (who elope to escape her father’s opposition) and of Demetrius. In Chaucer, two young men fall in love with the same girl and quarrel over her; Shakespeare adds the comic complication of another girl (Helena) jilted by, but still loving, one of the young men. A third strand shows the efforts of a group of Athenian workmen—the ‘mechanicals’—led by Bottom the Weaver to prepare a play, Pyramus and Thisbe (based mainly on Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses) for performance at the Duke’s wedding. The mechanicals themselves belong rather to Elizabethan England than to ancient Greece. Bottom’s partial transformation into an ass has many literary precedents. Fourthly, Shakespeare depicts a quarrel between Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the Fairies. Oberon’s attendant, Robin Goodfellow, a puck (or pixie), interferes mischievously in the workmen’s rehearsals and the affairs of the lovers. The fairy part of the play owes something to both folklore and literature; Robin Goodfellow was a well-known figure about whom Shakespeare could have read in Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft (1586).

A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers a glorious celebration of the powers of the human imagination while also making comic capital out of its limitations. It is one of Shakespeare’s most polished achievements, a poetic drama of exquisite grace, wit, and humanity. In performance, its imaginative unity has sometimes been violated, but it has become one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, with a special appeal for the young.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

THESEUS, Duke of Athens

HIPPOLYTA, Queen of the Amazons, betrothed to Theseus

PHILOSTRATE, Master of the Revels to Theseus

EGEUS, father of Hermia

HERMIA, daughter of Egeus, in love with Lysander

LYSANDER, loved by Hermia

DEMETRIUS, suitor to Hermia

HELENA, in love with Demetrius

OBERON, King of Fairies

TITANIA, Queen of Fairies

ROBIN GOODFELLOW, a puck

Peter QUINCE, a carpenter

Nick BOTTOM, a weaver

Francis FLUTE, a bellows-mender

Tom SNOUT, a tinker

SNUG, a joiner

Robin STARVELING, a tailor

Attendant lords and fairies

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

1.1 Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, and Philostrate, with others

THESEUS

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour

Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in