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 betrothed ere I see 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.

THESEUS

Fair lovers, you are fortunately met.

Of this discourse we more will hear 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 in great solemnity.

Come, Hippolyta.

Exit Duke Theseus with Hippolyta, Egeus, and all his train

DEMETRIUS

These things seem small and undistinguishable,

Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.

HERMIA

Methinks I see these things with parted eye,

When everything seems double.

HELENA So methinks,

And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,

Mine own and not mine own.

DEMETRIUS 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.

HELENA And Hippolyta.

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 the lovers

Bottom wakes

BOTTOM 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 t‘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

4.2 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 the joiner

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 everything 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 Thisbe 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 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

5.1 Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, ⌈Egeus⌉, and attendant lords

HIPPOLYTA

’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.

THESEUS

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 frantic,

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!

HIPPOLYTA

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.