QUINCE Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare faced. But masters, here are your parts, and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you to con them by tomorrow night, and meet me in the palace wood a mile without the town by moonlight. There will we rehearse; for if we meet in the city we shall be dogged with company, and our devices known. In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties such as our play wants. I pray you fail me not.

BOTTOM We will meet, and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect. Adieu.

QUINCE At the Duke’s oak we meet.

BOTTOM Enough. Hold, or cut bowstrings. Exeunt

2.1 Enter a Fairy at one door and Robin Goodfellow, a puck, at another

ROBIN

How now, spirit, whither wander you?

FAIRY

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire:

I do wander everywhere

Swifter than the moonës sphere,

And I serve the Fairy Queen

To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be.

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours;

In those freckles live their savours.

I must go seek some dewdrops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.

Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone.

Our Queen and all her elves come here anon.

ROBIN

The King doth keep his revels here tonight.

Take heed the Queen come not within his sight,

For Oberon is passing fell and wroth 20

Because that she, as her attendant, hath

A lovely boy stol’n from an Indian king.

She never had so sweet a changeling;

And jealous Oberon would have the child

Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild.

But she perforce withholds the loved boy,

Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy.

And now they never meet in grove, or green,

By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,

But they do square, that all their elves for fear

Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.

FAIRY

Either I mistake your shape and making quite

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite

Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he

That frights the maidens of the villag‘ry,

Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,

And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,

And sometime make the drink to bear no barm—

Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm?

Those that ‘hobgoblin’ call you, and ‘sweet puck’,

You do their work, and they shall have good luck.

Are not you he?

ROBIN Thou speak’st aright;

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon, and make him smile

When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;

And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl

In very likeness of a roasted crab,

And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,

And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.

The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale

Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;

Then slip I from her bum. Down topples she,

And ’tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough,

And then the whole choir hold their hips, and laugh,

And waxen in their mirth, and sneeze, and swear

A merrier hour was never wasted there.—

Enter Oberon the King of Fairies at one door, with his train, and Titania the Queen at another, with hers

But make room, fairy: here comes Oberon.

FAIRY

And here my mistress. Would that he were gone.

OBERON

I’ll met by moonlight, proud Titania.

TITANIA

What, jealous Oberon?—Fairies, skip hence.

I have forsworn his bed and company.

OBERON

Tarry, rash wanton. Am not I thy lord?

TITANIA

Then I must be thy lady; but I know

When thou hast stol’n away from fairyland

And in the shape of Corin sat all day,

Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love

To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here

Come from the farthest step of India,

But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,

Your buskined mistress and your warrior love,

To Theseus must be wedded, and you come

To give their bed joy and prosperity?

OBERON

How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,

Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night

From Perigouna whom he ravished,

And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,

With Ariadne and Antiopa?

TITANIA

These are the forgeries of jealousy,

And never since the middle summer’s spring

Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margin of the sea

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge have sucked up from the sea

Contagious fogs which, falling in the land,

Hath every pelting river made so proud