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dream it was man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had,—but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death. [Exit.

SCENE II.-Athens. A Room in QUINCE's House Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING Quin. Have you sent to Bottom's house? is he come home yet?

Star. He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt, he is transported.

Flu. If he come not, then the play is marred. It goes not forward, doth it?

Quin. It is not possible: you have not a man in all Athens able to discharge Pyramus, but he.

Flu. No; he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in Athens.

Quin. Yea, and the best person too; and he is a very paramour for a sweet voice.

Flu. You must say, paragon: a paramour is, God bless us! a thing of naught.

Enter SNUG

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.

Flu. 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

Bot. Where are these lads? where are these hearts?

Quin. Bottom!-O most courageous day! O most happy hour!

Bot. 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.

Quin. Let us hear, sweet Bottom.

Bot. 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.

ACT FIFTH

SCENE I.-The Same. An Apartment in the Palace of THESEUS

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE,
Lords, and Attendants

Hip. "Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.

The. More strange than true : I never may

believe

These antick 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?

Hip. 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.

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

Enter LYSANDER, HERMIA, DEMETRIUS, and

HELENA

Joy, gentle friends! joy, and fresh days of love,
Accompany your hearts!

Lys.

More than to us

Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed! The. 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?

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