4.2 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 the joiner
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 no 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 Thisbe 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
5.1 Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, ⌈Egeus⌉, and attendant lords
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 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 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.
Enter the lovers: Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena
THESEUS
Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.
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 Egeus.
⌈REGEUS⌉ 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?
⌈EGEUS⌉
There is a brief how many sports are ripe.
Make choice of which your highness will see first.
⌈LYSANDER⌉ (reads)
‘The battle with the centaurs, to be sung
By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.’
THESEUS
We’ll none of that. That have I told my love
In glory of my kinsman Hercules.
⌈LYSANDER⌉ (reads)
‘The riot of the tipsy bacchanals
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.’
THESEUS
That is an old device, and it was played
When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.
⌈LYSANDER⌉ (reads)
‘The thrice-three muses mourning for the death
Of learning, late deceased in beggary.’
THESEUS
That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.
⌈LYSANDER⌉ (reads)
‘A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe: very tragical mirth.’
THESEUS
‘Merry’ and ‘tragical’? ‘Tedious’ and ’brief?—
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange black snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?
⌈EGEUS⌉
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?
⌈EGEUS⌉
Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
Which never laboured in their minds till now,
And now have toiled their unbreathed memories
With this same play against your nuptial.
THESEUS
And we will hear it.
⌈EGEUS⌉ 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 stretched, and conned 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 ⌈Egeus⌉
HIPPOLYTA
I love not to see wretchedness o’ercharged,
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 picked 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.
Enter ⌈Egeus⌉
⌈EGEUS⌉
So please your grace, the Prologue is addressed.
THESEUS Let him approach.
⌈Flourish trumpets.⌉ Enter ⌈Quince as⌉ the Prologue
⌈QUINCE⌉ (as 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 content 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 this 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 ⌈with a trumpeter before them⌉ Bottom as Pyramus, Flute as Thisbe, Snout as Wall, Starveling as Moonshine, and Snug as Lion, for the dumb show
⌈QUINCE⌉ (as 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 Thisbe is, certain.
This man with lime and roughcast 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 lantern, 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 grizzly beast, which ’Lion’ hight by name,
The trusty Thisbe 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 Thisbe’s mantle slain;
Whereat with blade—with bloody, blameful blade—
He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast;
And Thisbe, 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 all the clowns but Snout as Wall⌉
THESEUS I wonder if the lion be to speak.
DEMETRIUS No wonder, my lord—one lion may when many asses do.
⌈SNOUT⌉ (as 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 Thisbe
Did whisper often, very secretly.
This loam, this roughcast, 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 Bottom as Pyramus
THESEUS Pyramus draws near the wall. Silence.
BOTTOM (as Pyramus)
O grim-looked 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 Thisbe’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 shows his chink
Thanks, courteous wall. Jove shield thee well for this.
But what see I? No Thisbe 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.
BOTTOM (to Theseus) No, in truth, sir, he should not.
’Deceiving me’ is Thisbe’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.Enter Flute as Thisbe
Yonder she comes.
FLUTE (as Thisbe)
O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans
For parting my fair Pyramus and me.
My cherry lips have often kissed thy stones,
Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.
BOTTOM (as Pyramus)
I see a voice. Now will I to the chink
To spy an I can hear my Thisbe’s face.
Thisbe?
FLUTE (as Thisbe) My love—thou art my love, I think.
BOTTOM (as Pyramus)
Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover’s grace,
And like Lemander am I trusty still.
FLUTE (as Thisbe)
And I like Helen, till the fates me kill.
BOTTOM (as Pyramus)
Not Shaphalus to Procrus was so true.
FLUTE (as Thisbe)
As Shaphalus to Procrus, I to you.
BOTTOM (as Pyramus)
O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall.
FLUTE (as Thisbe)
I kiss the wall’s hole, not your lips at all.
BOTTOM (as Pyramus)
Wilt thou at Ninny’s tomb meet me straightway?
FLUTE (as Thisbe)
Tide life, tide death, I come without delay.
Exeunt Bottom and Flute severally
SNOUT (as Wall)
Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;
And being done, thus Wall away doth go. Exit
THESEUS Now is the wall 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 Snug as Lion, and Starveling as Moonshine with a lantern, thorn bush, and dog
SNUG (as 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 roa
r.
Then know that I as 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, and 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.
STARVELING (as Moonshine) This lantern doth the hornèd 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.
STARVELING (as Moonshine)
This lantern doth the hornèd moon present.
Myself the man i’th’ moon do seem to be.
THESEUS This is the greatest error of all the rest—the man should be put into the lantern. How is it else the man i’th’ 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.
STARVELING All that I have to say is to tell you that the lantern is the moon, I the man i’th’ moon, this thorn bush my thorn bush, and this dog my dog.
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 142
