A Midsummer Night’s Dream - William Shakespeare (best classic novels txt) 📗

comedy. No more words: away! go, away! Exeunt. 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 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.

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’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 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 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 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