ried; 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 every thing, right as it fell out.

Quince. Let us hear, sweet Bottom.

Bottom. Not a word of me.

is that the duke hath dined.

All that I will tell you

Get your apparel to

20

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gether, 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, 40 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.

L

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords, and

Attendants

Hippolyta. T is 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 suppos'd a bear!

Hippolyta. But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur'd so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,

And grows to something of great constancy,

But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

Theseus. Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.

Enter LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA, and HELENA Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love Accompany your hearts!

IO

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Lysander.

More than to us

30

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 Philostrate.

Philostrate.

Here, mighty Theseus.

Theseus. Say, what abridgment have you for this

evening?

What masque? what music? How shall we beguile
The lazy time, if not with some delight?

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Philostrate. There is a brief how many sports are ripe ;

Make choice of which your highness will see first.

[Giving a paper. Theseus. [Reads] The battle with the Centaurs, to

be sung

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By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.'

We 'll none of that; that have I told my love,
In glory of my kinsman Hercules.

[Reads] The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.'
That is an old device; and it was play'd

When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.

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[Reads] The thrice three Muses mourning for the

death

Of Learning, late deceas'd in beggary.'

That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.
[Reads] A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.'
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!

That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?

60

Philostrate. 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 rehears'd, 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?

Philostrate. Hard-handed men that work in Athens

here,

Which never labour'd in their minds till now,

And now have toil'd their unbreath'd memories
With this same play, against your nuptial.

Theseus. And we will hear it.

Philostrate.

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,