Act IV
Scene I
The same. Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and Hermia lying asleep.
Enter Titania and Bottom; Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed, and other Fairies attending; Oberon behind unseen. | |
Titania |
Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
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Bottom | Where’s Peaseblossom? |
Peaseblossom | Ready. |
Bottom | Scratch my head, Peaseblossom. Where’s Mounsieur Cobweb? |
Cobweb | Ready. |
Bottom | Mounsieur Cobweb, good mounsieur, get you your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, mounsieur; and, good mounsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; I would be loath to have you overflown with a honey-bag, signior. Where’s Mounsieur Mustardseed? |
Mustardseed | Ready. |
Bottom | Give me your neaf, Mounsieur Mustardseed. Pray you, leave your courtesy, good mounsieur. |
Mustardseed | What’s your will? |
Bottom | Nothing, good mounsieur, but to help Cavalery Cobweb to scratch. I must to the barber’s, mounsieur; for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face; and I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch. |
Titania | What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love? |
Bottom | I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let’s have the tongs and the bones. |
Titania | Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat. |
Bottom | Truly, a peck of provender: I could munch your good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow. |
Titania |
I have a venturous fairy that shall seek
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Bottom | I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas. But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me: I have an exposition of sleep come upon me. |
Titania |
Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.
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Enter Puck. | |
Oberon |
Advancing. Welcome, good Robin. See’st thou this sweet sight?
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Titania |
My Oberon! what visions have I seen!
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Oberon | There lies your love. |
Titania |
How came these things to pass?
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Oberon |
Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head.
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Titania | Music, ho! music, such as charmeth sleep! Music, still. |
Puck | Now, when thou wakest, with thine own fool’s eyes peep. |
Oberon |
Sound, music! Come, my queen, take hands with me,
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Puck |
Fairy king, attend, and mark:
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Oberon |
Then, my queen, in silence sad,
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Titania |
Come, my lord, and in our flight
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Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus, and train. | |
Theseus |
Go, one of you, find out the forester;
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Hippolyta |
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
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Theseus |
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
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Egeus |
My lord, this is my daughter here asleep;
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Theseus |
No doubt they rose up early to observe
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Egeus | It is, my lord. |
Theseus |
Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns. Horns and shout within. Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and Hermia, wake and start up.
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Lysander | Pardon, my lord. |
Theseus |
I pray you all, stand up.
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Lysander |
My lord, I shall reply amazedly,
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Egeus |
Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough:
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Demetrius |
My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,
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Theseus |
Fair lovers, you are fortunately met:
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Demetrius |
These things seem small and undistinguishable,
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Hermia |
Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
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Helena |
So methinks:
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Demetrius |
Are you sure
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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;
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Bottom | Awaking. 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 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. Quince’s house.
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. | |
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 not 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 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 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. |