A Midsummer Night's Dream
Act V.
Scene i. Athens. The palace of Theseus.
- Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Philostrate, Lords and Attendants
- Hippolyta: 'Tis 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 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 supposed a bear!
- Hippolyta: But all the story of the night told over,
- And all their minds transfigured 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!
- 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 Philostrate.
- Philostrate: 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?
- 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
- 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.
- Reads
- 'The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
- Of Learning, late deceased 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?
- 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 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?
- Philostrate: Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
- Which never labour'd in their minds till now,
- And now have toil'd their unbreathed 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,
- Extremely stretch'd and conn'd 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 Philostrate
- Hippolyta: I love not to see wretchedness o'er charged
- 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 pick'd 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.
- Re-enter Philostrate
- Philostrate: So please your grace, the Prologue is address'd.
- Theseus: Let him approach.
- Flourish of trumpets
- Enter Quince for the Prologue
- 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 contest 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 his 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 Pyramus and Thisbe, Wall, Moonshine, and Lion
- Prologue: Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show;
- But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.
- This man is Pyramus, if you would know;
- This beauteous lady Thisby is certain.
- This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present
- Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder;
- And through Wall's chink, poor souls, they are content
- To whisper. At the which let no man wonder.
- This man, with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn,
- Presenteth Moonshine; for, if you will know,
- By moonshine did these lovers think no scorn
- To meet at Ninus' tomb, there, there to woo.
- This grisly beast, which Lion hight by name,
- The trusty Thisby, coming first by night,
- Did scare away, or rather did affright;
- And, as she fled, her mantle she did fall,
- Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain.
- Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth and tall,
- And finds his trusty Thisby's mantle slain:
- Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,
- He bravely broach'd is boiling bloody breast;
- And Thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade,
- His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest,
- Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twain
- At large discourse, while here they do remain.
- Exeunt Prologue, Thisbe, Lion, and Moonshine
- Theseus: I wonder if the lion be to speak.
- Demetrius: No wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many asses do.
- Wall: In this same interlude it doth befall
- That I, one Snout by name, present a wall;
- And such a wall, as I would have you think,
- That had in it a crannied hole or chink,
- Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby,
- Did whisper often very secretly.
- This loam, this rough-cast and this stone doth show
- That I am that same wall; the truth is so:
- And this the cranny is, right and sinister,
- Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.
- Theseus: Would you desire lime and hair to speak better?
- Demetrius: It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard
- discourse, my lord.
- Enter Pyramus
- Theseus: Pyramus draws near the wall: silence!
- Pyramus: O grim-look'd night! O night with hue so black!
- O night, which ever art when day is not!
- O night, O night! alack, alack, alack,
- I fear my Thisby's promise is forgot!
- And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,
- That stand'st between her father's ground and mine!
- Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,
- Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne!
- Wall holds up his fingers
- Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this!
- But what see I? No Thisby do I see.
- O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss!
- Cursed be thy stones for thus deceiving me!
- Theseus: The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again.
- Pyramus: No, in truth, sir, he should not. 'Deceiving me'
- is Thisby's cue: she is to enter now, and I am to
- spy her through the wall. You shall see, it will
- fall pat as I told you. Yonder she comes.
- Enter Thisbe
- Thisbe: O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans,
- For parting my fair Pyramus and me!
- My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones,
- Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.
- Pyramus: I see a voice: now will I to the chink,
- To spy an I can hear my Thisby's face. Thisby!
- Thisbe: My love thou art, my love I think.
- Pyramus: Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover's grace;
- And, like Limander, am I trusty still.
- Thisbe: And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill.
- Pyramus: Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.
- Thisbe: As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.
- Pyramus: O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall!
- Thisbe: I kiss the wall's hole, not your lips at all.
- Pyramus: Wilt thou at Ninny's tomb meet me straightway?
- Thisbe: 'Tide life, 'tide death, I come without delay.
- Exeunt Pyramus and Thisbe
- Wall: Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;
- And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.
- Exit
- Theseus: Now is the mural down between the two neighbours.
- Demetrius: No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear
- without warning.
- Hippolyta: This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.
- Theseus: The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst
- are no worse, if imagination amend them.
- Hippolyta: It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.
- Theseus: If we imagine no worse of them than they of
- themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here
- come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion.
- Enter Lion and Moonshine
- Lion: You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear
- The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,
- May now perchance both quake and tremble here,
- When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.
- Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, am
- A lion-fell, nor else no lion's dam;
- For, if I should as lion come in strife
- Into this place, 'twere pity on my life.
- Theseus: A very gentle beast, of a good conscience.
- Demetrius: The very best at a beast, my lord, that e'er I saw.
- Lysander: This lion is a very fox for his valour.
- Theseus: True; and a goose for his discretion.
- Demetrius: Not so, my lord; for his valour cannot carry his
- discretion; and the fox carries the goose.
- Theseus: His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour;
- for the goose carries not the fox. It is well:
- leave it to his discretion, and let us listen to the moon.
- Moonshine: This lanthorn doth the horned moon present;—
- Demetrius: He should have worn the horns on his head.
- Theseus: He is no crescent, and his horns are
- invisible within the circumference.
- Moonshine: This lanthorn doth the horned moon present;
- Myself the man i' the moon do seem to be.
- Theseus: This is the greatest error of all the rest: the man
- should be put into the lanthorn. How is it else the
- man i' the moon?
- Demetrius: He dares not come there for the candle; for, you
- see, it is already in snuff.
- Hippolyta: I am aweary of this moon: would he would change!
- Theseus: It appears, by his small light of discretion, that
- he is in the wane; but yet, in courtesy, in all
- reason, we must stay the time.
- Lysander: Proceed, Moon.
- Moonshine: All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the
- lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this
- thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.
- Demetrius: Why, all these should be in the lanthorn; for all
- these are in the moon. But, silence! here comes Thisbe.
- Enter Thisbe
- Thisbe: This is old Ninny's tomb. Where is my love?
- Lion: [Roaring] Oh—
- Thisbe runs off
- Demetrius: Well roared, Lion.
- Theseus: Well run, Thisbe.
- Hippolyta: Well shone, Moon. Truly, the moon shines with a
- good grace.
- The Lion shakes Thisbe's mantle, and exit
- Theseus: Well moused, Lion.
- Lysander: And so the lion vanished.
- Demetrius: And then came Pyramus.
- Enter Pyramus
- Pyramus: Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams;
- I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright;
- For, by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams,
- I trust to take of truest Thisby sight.
- But stay, O spite!
- But mark, poor knight,
- What dreadful dole is here!
- Eyes, do you see?
- How can it be?
- O dainty duck! O dear!
- Thy mantle good,
- What, stain'd with blood!
- Approach, ye Furies fell!
- O Fates, come, come,
- Cut thread and thrum;
- Quail, crush, conclude, and quell!
- Theseus: This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would
- go near to make a man look sad.
- Hippolyta: Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.
- Pyramus: O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame?
- Since lion vile hath here deflower'd my dear:
- Which is—no, no—which was the fairest dame
- That lived, that loved, that liked, that look'd
- with cheer.
- Come, tears, confound;
- Out, sword, and wound
- The pap of Pyramus;
- Ay, that left pap,
- Where heart doth hop:
- Stabs himself
- Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.
- Now am I dead,
- Now am I fled;
- My soul is in the sky:
- Tongue, lose thy light;
- Moon take thy flight:
- Exit Moonshine
- Now die, die, die, die, die.
- Dies
- Demetrius: No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one.
- Lysander: Less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing.
- Theseus: With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover, and
- prove an ass.
- Hippolyta: How chance Moonshine is gone before Thisbe comes
- back and finds her lover?
- Theseus: She will find him by starlight. Here she comes; and
- her passion ends the play.
- Re-enter Thisbe
- Hippolyta: Methinks she should not use a long one for such a
- Pyramus: I hope she will be brief.
- Demetrius: A mote will turn the balance, which Pyramus, which
- Thisbe, is the better; he for a man, God warrant us;
- she for a woman, God bless us.
- Lysander: She hath spied him already with those sweet eyes.
- Demetrius: And thus she means, videlicet:—
- Thisbe: Asleep, my love?
- What, dead, my dove?
- O Pyramus, arise!
- Speak, speak. Quite dumb?
- Dead, dead? A tomb
- Must cover thy sweet eyes.
- These My lips,
- This cherry nose,
- These yellow cowslip cheeks,
- Are gone, are gone:
- Lovers, make moan:
- His eyes were green as leeks.
- O Sisters Three,
- Come, come to me,
- With hands as pale as milk;
- Lay them in gore,
- Since you have shore
- With shears his thread of silk.
- Tongue, not a word:
- Come, trusty sword;
- Come, blade, my breast imbrue:
- Stabs herself
- And, farewell, friends;
- Thus Thisby ends:
- Adieu, adieu, adieu.
- Dies
- Theseus: Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the dead.
- Demetrius: Ay, and Wall too.
- Bottom: [Starting up] No assure you; the wall is down that
- parted their fathers. Will it please you to see the
- epilogue, or to hear a Bergomask dance between two
- of our company?
- Theseus: No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no
- excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all
- dead, there needs none to be blamed. Marry, if he
- that writ it had played Pyramus and hanged himself
- in Thisbe's garter, it would have been a fine
- tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very notably
- discharged. But come, your Bergomask: let your
- epilogue alone.
- A dance
- The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve:
- Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.
- I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn
- As much as we this night have overwatch'd.
- This palpable-gross play hath well beguiled
- The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed.
- A fortnight hold we this solemnity,
- In nightly revels and new jollity.
- Exeunt
- Enter Puck
- Puck: Now the hungry lion roars,
- And the wolf behowls the moon;
- Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
- All with weary task fordone.
- Now the wasted brands do glow,
- Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,
- Puts the wretch that lies in woe
- In remembrance of a shroud.
- Now it is the time of night
- That the graves all gaping wide,
- Every one lets forth his sprite,
- In the church-way paths to glide:
- And we fairies, that do run
- By the triple Hecate's team,
- From the presence of the sun,
- Following darkness like a dream,
- Now are frolic: not a mouse
- Shall disturb this hallow'd house:
- I am sent with broom before,
- To sweep the dust behind the door.
- Enter Oberon and Titania with their train
- Oberon: Through the house give gathering light,
- By the dead and drowsy fire:
- Every elf and fairy sprite
- Hop as light as bird from brier;
- And this ditty, after me,
- Sing, and dance it trippingly.
- Titania: First, rehearse your song by rote
- To each word a warbling note:
- Hand in hand, with fairy grace,
- Will we sing, and bless this place.
- Song and dance
- Oberon: Now, until the break of day,
- Through this house each fairy stray.
- To the best bride-bed will we,
- Which by us shall blessed be;
- And the issue there create
- Ever shall be fortunate.
- So shall all the couples three
- Ever true in loving be;
- And the blots of Nature's hand
- Shall not in their issue stand;
- Never mole, hare lip, nor scar,
- Nor mark prodigious, such as are
- Despised in nativity,
- Shall upon their children be.
- With this field-dew consecrate,
- Every fairy take his gait;
- And each several chamber bless,
- Through this palace, with sweet peace;
- And the owner of it blest
- Ever shall in safety rest.
- Trip away; make no stay;
- Meet me all by break of day.
- Exeunt Oberon, Titania, and train
- Puck: If we shadows have offended,
- Think but this, and all is mended,
- That you have but slumber'd here
- While these visions did appear.
- And this weak and idle theme,
- No more yielding but a dream,
- Gentles, do not reprehend:
- if you pardon, we will mend:
- And, as I am an honest Puck,
- If we have unearned luck
- Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
- We will make amends ere long;
- Else the Puck a liar call;
- So, good night unto you all.
- Give me your hands, if we be friends,
- And Robin shall restore amends.
- --oOo-- -