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As they go out, BOTTOM awakes.

Bor. When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer: -my next is, "Most fair Pyramus."-Hey, ho!-Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God's my life! stolen hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream,-past the wit of man to say what 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.

Patched fool-a fool in a particoloured coat.

L Probably, at the death of Thisbe. Theobald would read "after death,”—that is, after Bottom had been killed in the part of Pyramus.

Enter BOTTOM.

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

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

Bor. 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. 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 31, 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 Thisby 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.

• Right is omitted in the folio.

b

Preferred-not in the sense of chosen in preference-but offered-as a suit is preferred.

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EI-Athens. An Apartment in the Palace of Theseus.

HESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords, and Attendants.

nge, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of. ange than true. I never may believe

que fables, nor these fairy toys. madmen have such seething brains,

ng fantasies, that apprehend 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 transfigur'd so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,

And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange, and admirable.

Enter LYSANDER, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena.

THE. Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.
Joy, gentle friends! joy, and fresh days of love,

LYS.

Accompany your hearts!

Wait in your royal walks,

More than to us

your board, your bed!

THE. Come now; what masks, 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?

[blocks in formation]

THE. Say, what abridgment have you for this evening?
What mask, what music? How shall we beguile

A

The lazy time, if not with some delight?

The folio has "Call Egeus;" and to him nearly all the speeches subsequently given to Philostrate are assigned. As some stage convenience possibly suggested this arrangement in the folio, it is not worth while to derange the received allotment of the dialogue to Philostrate, which is that of the quartos.

Abridgment-pastime—something that may abridge "the lazy time." This is one explanstion. Is it not, rather, what short thing have you, of play, or mask, or music?

is a brief, how many sports are rifea;

of which your highness will see first.

The battle with the Centaurs 32, to be sung,

ian eunuch to the harp."

e of that: that have I told my love,

ny kinsman Hercules.

of the tipsy Bacchanals, Thracian singer in their rage."

old device, and it was play'd

1 Thebes came last a conqueror.
ce three Muses mourning for the death
late deceas'd in beggary."

me satire, keen, and critical,
with a nuptial ceremony.

3 brief scene of young Pyramus,
› Thisbe; very tragical mirth."
1 tragical? Tedious and brief?
ice, and wonderous strange snow".
e find the concord of this discord?

7 there is, my lord, some ten words long;
brief as I have known a play ;
vords, my lord, it is too long,
es it tedious: for in all the play
one word apt, one player fitted.
, my noble lord, it is;

s therein doth kill himself.

I saw rehears'd, I must confess,

eyes water; but more merry tears
of loud laughter never shed.
they that do play it?

handed men, that work in Athens here,
labour'd in their minds till now;

ve toil'd their unbreath'd memories me play, against your nuptial.

ill hear it.

No, my noble lord,

you I have heard it over, hing, nothing in the world,

lio. One of the quartos, ripe.

[Giving a paper.

Theseus reads the "brief," and makes the remarks upon each item;-in the s the list. The lines are generally printed as in the quartos; but the division is clearly better, and is perfectly natural and proper.

nge snow. This has sorely puzzled the commentators. They want an antihot is for ice. Upton, therefore, reads, "black snow;" Hanmer, "scorching strong snow." Surely snow is a common thing; and, therefore, "wonderous ly antithetical-hot ice, and snow as strange.

66

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