Enter the lovers: Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena

THESEUS

Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.

Joy, gentle friends—joy and fresh days of love

Accompany your hearts.

LYSANDER More than to us

Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed.

THESEUS

Come now, what masques, what dances shall we have

To wear away this long age of three hours

Between our after-supper and bed-time?

Where is our usual manager of mirth?

What revels are in hand? Is there no play

To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?

Call Egeus.

⌈REGEUS⌉ Here, mighty Theseus.

THESEUS

Say, what abridgement have you for this evening?

What masque, what music? How shall we beguile

The lazy time if not with some delight?

⌈EGEUS⌉

There is a brief how many sports are ripe.

Make choice of which your highness will see first.

⌈LYSANDER⌉ (reads)

‘The battle with the centaurs, to be sung

By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.’

THESEUS

We’ll none of that. That have I told my love

In glory of my kinsman Hercules.

⌈LYSANDER⌉ (reads)

‘The riot of the tipsy bacchanals

Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.’

THESEUS

That is an old device, and it was played

When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.

⌈LYSANDER⌉ (reads)

‘The thrice-three muses mourning for the death

Of learning, late deceased in beggary.’

THESEUS

That is some satire, keen and critical,

Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.

⌈LYSANDER⌉ (reads)

‘A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus

And his love Thisbe: very tragical mirth.’

THESEUS

‘Merry’ and ‘tragical’? ‘Tedious’ and ’brief?—

That is, hot ice and wondrous strange black snow.

How shall we find the concord of this discord?

⌈EGEUS⌉

A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,

Which is as ‘brief’ as I have known a play;

But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,

Which makes it ‘tedious’; for in all the play

There is not one word apt, one player fitted.

And ‘tragical’, my noble lord, it is,

For Pyramus therein doth kill himself;

Which when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,

Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears

The passion of loud laughter never shed.

THESEUS What are they that do play it?

⌈EGEUS⌉

Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,

Which never laboured in their minds till now,

And now have toiled their unbreathed memories

With this same play against your nuptial.

THESEUS

And we will hear it.

⌈EGEUS⌉ No, my noble lord,

It is not for you. I have heard it over,

And it is nothing, nothing in the world,

Unless you can find sport in their intents

Extremely stretched, and conned with cruel pain

To do you service.

THESEUS I will hear that play;

For never anything can be amiss

When simpleness and duty tender it.

Go, bring them in; and take your places, ladies.

Exit ⌈Egeus⌉

HIPPOLYTA

I love not to see wretchedness o’ercharged,

And duty in his service perishing.

THESEUS

Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.

HIPPOLYTA

He says they can do nothing in this kind.

THESEUS

The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.

Our sport shall be to take what they mistake,

And what poor duty cannot do,

Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.

Where I have come, great clerks have purposed

To greet me with premeditated welcomes,

Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,

Make periods in the midst of sentences,

Throttle their practised accent in their fears,

And in conclusion dumbly have broke off,

Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,

Out of this silence yet I picked a welcome,

And in the modesty of fearful duty

I read as much as from the rattling tongue

Of saucy and audacious eloquence.

Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity

In least speak most, to my capacity.

Enter ⌈Egeus⌉

⌈EGEUS⌉

So please your grace, the Prologue is addressed.

THESEUS Let him approach.

⌈Flourish trumpets.⌉ Enter ⌈Quince as⌉ the Prologue

⌈QUINCE⌉ (as Prologue)

If we offend, it is with our good will.

That you should think: we come not to offend

But with good will. To show our simple skill,

That is the true beginning of our end.

Consider then we come but in despite.

We do not come as minding to content you,

Our true intent is. All for your delight

We are not here. That you should here repent you

The actors are at hand, and by their show

You shall know all that you are like to know.

THESEUS This fellow doth not stand upon points.

LYSANDER He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt: he knows not the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not enough to speak, but to speak true.

HIPPOLYTA Indeed, he hath played on this prologue like a child on a recorder—a sound, but not in government.

THESEUS His speech was like a tangled chain—nothing impaired, but all disordered. Who is next?

Enter ⌈with a trumpeter before them⌉ Bottom as Pyramus, Flute as Thisbe, Snout as Wall, Starveling as Moonshine, and Snug as Lion, for the dumb show

⌈QUINCE⌉ (as Prologue)

Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show,

But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.