Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,5 The rest I'ld give to be to you translated."] O, teach me how you look, and with what art You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart.

Her. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still. Hel. O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!

[Her. I give him curses, yet he gives me love.

Hel. O that my prayers could such affection move!]

Her. The more I hate, the more he follows

[Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seem'd Athens as a paradise to me:
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!]
Lys. Helen, to you our minds we will un-
fold:
To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,—
A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal,-
Through Athens' gates have we devis'd to steal.
Her. And in the wood, where often you
and I

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Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie, Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet, There my Lysander and myself shall meet; And thence from Athens turn away our eyes, To seek new friends and stranger companies. Farewell, sweet playfellow: pray thou for us; And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius! 221 Keep word, Lysander: we must starve our sight

From lovers' food till morrow deep midnight. Lys. I will, my Hermia. [Exit Hermia. Helena, adieu: As you on him, Demetrius dote on you! [Exit. Hel. How happy some o'er other-some can be!

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so; He will not know what all but he do know: And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes, 230 So I, admiring of his qualities:

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,s
Love can transpose9 to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the
mind;

And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind :
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste;
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguil’'d.
As waggish boys in game1o themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjur'd every where: 241
For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,11
He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;

Enter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, Flute, Snout, and STARVELING.

Quin. Is all our company here?

Bot. You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip.2

Quin. Here is the scroll of every man's name, which is thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our interlude before the duke and the duchess, on his wedding-day at night.

Bot. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so grow to a point.3

10

Quin. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby's mother. Tom Snout, the tinker. Snout. Here, Peter Quince.

Quin. You, Pyramus' father: myself, Thisby's father. Snug, the joiner; you, the lion's part:-and, I hope, here is a play fitted.

Snug. Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.

Quin. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.

71

Bot. I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us: but I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you an 't were any nightingale.

Quin. You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely gentleman-like man: therefore you must needs play Pyramus.

91

Bot. Well, I will undertake it. [What beard were I best to play it in?

94

Quin. Why, what you will. Bot. I will discharge it in either your strawcolour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crowncolour beard, your perfect yellow.]

Quin. [Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play barefaced.But, masters, here are your parts: and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to con them by to-morrow 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 dogg'd with company, and our devices known. In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties,1 such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not.

109

Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely? and courageously. Take pains; be perfect: adieu.

Quin. At the duke's oak we meet. Bot. Enough; hold, or cut bow-strings.3 [Exeunt.

Enter, from one side, OBERON, with his train;

from the other, TITANIA, with hers.

Obe. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania. 60 Tita. What, jealous Oberon!-Fairies, skip hence:

[I have forsworn his bed and company.

Obe. Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord?

Tita. Then I must be thy lady: but I know When thou hast stol'n away from fairy land, And in the shape of Corin sat all day, Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love1 To amorous Phillida.] Why art thou here, Come from the farthest steep of India? But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon, 70 Your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love, To Theseus must be wedded? and you come To give their bed joy and prosperity.

Obe. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania, Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, Knowing I know thy love to Theseus? [Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night

From Perigenia, whom he ravished?
And make him with fair Ægle break his faith,
With Ariadne and Antiopa?]

80

Tita. 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 margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets3 to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our
sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; [which falling in the land 90
Have every pelting river made so proud,
That they have overborne their continents: 5
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in
vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat; and the green

And crows are fatted with the murrion" flock;
The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread, are undistinguishable: 100
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:-].
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
[And thorough this distemperature9 we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set:] the spring, the sum-

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Obe. Do you amend it then; it lies in you: Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy, To be my henchman. Tita. Set your heart at rest: The fairy land buys not the child of me. His mother was a votress of my order: And, in the spiced Indian air, by night, Full often hath she gossipp'd by my side; And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands, [Marking th' embarked traders on the flood;13 When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind; Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait

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