The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare [book recommendations based on other books txt] 📗

for I am slow of study.

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

BOTTOM. Let me play the lion too. I will roar that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me; I will roar that I will make the Duke say ‘Let him roar again, let him roar again.’

QUINCE. An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the Duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all.

ALL. That would hang us, every mother’s son.

BOTTOM. I grant you, friends, if 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 ‘twere any nightingale.

QUINCE. You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-fac’d man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer’s day; a most lovely gentlemanlike man; therefore you must needs play Pyramus.

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

QUINCE. Why, what you will.

BOTTOM. I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow.

QUINCE. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play barefac’d. But, masters, here are your parts; and I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to con them by tomorrow 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, such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not.

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

QUINCE. At the Duke’s oak we meet.

BOTTOM. Enough; hold, or cut bowstrings. Exeunt

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ACT II. SCENE I.

A wood near Athens

 

Enter a FAIRY at One door, and PUCK at another PUCK. How now, spirit! whither wander you?

FAIRY. Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire, I do wander every where,

Swifter than the moon’s sphere; And I serve the Fairy Queen, To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be; In their gold coats spots you see; Those be rubies, fairy favours, In those freckles live their savours.

 

I must go seek some dewdrops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.

Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone.

Our Queen and all her elves come here anon.

PUCK. The King doth keep his revels here tonight; Take heed the Queen come not within his sight; For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, Because that she as her attendant hath A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king.

She never had so sweet a changeling;

And jealous Oberon would have the child Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild; But she perforce withholds the loved boy, Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy.

And now they never meet in grove or green, By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, But they do square, that all their elves for fear Creep into acorn cups and hide them there.

FAIRY. Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call’d Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he That frights the maidens of the villagery, Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern, And bootless make the breathless housewife churn, And sometime make the drink to bear no barm, Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck.

Are not you he?

PUCK. Thou speakest aright:

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon, and make him smile

When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal; And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl In very likeness of a roasted crab,

And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.

The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough; And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh, And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there.

But room, fairy, here comes Oberon.

FAIRY. And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

 

Enter OBERON at one door, with his TRAIN, and TITANIA, at another, with hers OBERON. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

TITANIA. What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence; I have forsworn his bed and company.

OBERON. Tarry, rash wanton; am not I thy lord?

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

OBERON. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania, Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night From Perigouna, whom he ravished?

And make him with fair Aegles break his faith, With Ariadne and Antiopa?

TITANIA. 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 ringlets 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, Hath every pelting river made so proud That they have overborne their continents.

The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain, The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard; The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 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.

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 distemperature 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 summer, The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, By their increase, now knows not which is which.

And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension; We are their parents and original.

OBERON. 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.

TITANIA. Set your heart at rest;

The fairy land buys not the child of me.

His mother was a vot’ress of my order; And, in the spiced Indian air, by night, Full often hath she gossip’d by my side; And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands, Marking th’ embarked traders on the flood; 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 Following-her womb then rich with my young squire-Would imitate, and sail upon the land, To fetch me trifles, and return again, As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.

But she, being mortal, of that boy did die; And for her sake do I rear up her boy; And for her sake I will not part with him.

OBERON. How long within this wood intend you stay?

TITANIA. Perchance till after Theseus’ wedding-day.

If you will patiently dance in our round, And see our moonlight revels, go with us; If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

OBERON. Give me that boy and I will go with thee.

TITANIA. Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away.

We shall chide downright if I longer stay.

Exit TITANIA with her train OBERON. Well, go thy way; thou shalt not from this grove Till I torment thee for this injury.

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb’rest Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid’s music.

PUCK. I remember.

OBERON. That very time I saw, but thou couldst not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth Cupid, all arm’d; a certain aim he took At a fair vestal, throned by the west, And loos’d his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft Quench’d in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon; And the imperial vot’ress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell.

It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, And maidens call it Love-in-idleness.

Fetch me that flow’r, the herb I showed thee once.

The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid Will make or man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees.

Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

PUCK. I’ll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes. Exit PUCK

OBERON. Having once this juice,

I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep, And drop the liquor of it in her eyes; The next thing then she waking looks upon, Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, On meddling monkey, or on busy ape,

She shall pursue it with the soul of love.

And ere I take this charm from off her sight, As I can take it with another herb,

I’ll make her render up her page to me.

But who comes here? I am invisible;

And I will overhear their conference.

 

Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him DEMETRIUS. I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.

Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?

The one I’ll slay, the other slayeth me.

Thou told’st me they were stol’n unto this wood, And here am I, and wood within this wood, Because I cannot meet my Hermia.

Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.

HELENA. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant; But yet you draw not iron, for my heart Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw, And I shall have no power