But by some power it is,

--

- my love to Hermia,
Melted as melts the snow, seems to me now
As the remembrance of an idle gaud,
Which in my childhood I did dote upon;
And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,
The object, and the pleasure of mine eye,
Is only Helena. To her, my lord,
Was I betroth'd ere I saw Hermia:

But, like 15 in sickness, did I loathe this food;
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now do I wish it, love it, long for it,
And will for evermore be true to it.

The. Fair lovers, you are fortunately met: Of this discourse we more will hear anon. Egeus, I will overbear your will;

For in the temple, by-and-by, with us,

These couples shall eternally be knit :

And, for 16 the morning now is something worn,
Our purposed hunting shall be set aside.

Away with us to Athens ! three and three,

We'll hold a feast in great solemnity.

Come, my Hippolyta. [Exeunt THE., HIP., EGE., and train Dem. These things seem small and undistinguishable,

Like far-off mountains turnèd into clouds.

Her. Methinks I see these things with parted eye,1

When every thing seems double.

17

Hel.

So methinks:

15 Like was sometimes used with the force of the conjunction as. The usage still holds in some parts of the United States.

16 Here, as often, for is equivalent to because, inasmuch as, or since. 17" With parted eye" means, apparently, with the two eyes acting separately or independently, and not together or as one.

And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,

Mine own, and not mine own.18

Dem.

But are you sure

That we are well awake? It seems to me

That yet we sleep, we dream. — Do you not think
The Duke was here, and bid us follow him!

Her. Yea; and my father.

Hel.

And Hippolyta.

Lys. And he did bid us follow to the temple.

Dem. Why, then we are awake: let's follow him; And, by the way, let us recount our dreams.

[Exeunt. Bot. [Awaking.] When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer my next is, Most fair Pyramus. - Heigh-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 there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,

was

and methought I had, but man is but a patch'd fool,19 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 re

18 "As the jewel which one finds is his own and not his own; his own, unless the loser claims it." Not a very satisfactory explanation, perhaps; but the best that is forthcoming. How Demetrius has been Helen's own and not her own, and thus like a double man, is plain enough; but the simile of the jewel is not so clear.

19 I have once before noted the Poet's frequent use of patch for fool. In illustration of the matter, Staunton tells of his having seen a Flemish picture of the sixteenth century," which represents a procession of masquers and mummers, led by a Fool or jester, whose dress is covered with manycoloured coarse patches from head to heel." See page 65, note 2.

port, 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 our play before the Duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it after death.20 [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.1

Flu. If he come not, then the play is marr'd: 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.2

20 Of course Bottom means the make-believe death which is to form the catastrophe of “our play."

1 Starveling's transported means the same as Snout's translated, used before; that is, transformed or metamorphosed.

2 To make a man is an old phrase for making a man rich or setting him up: making his fortune.

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 hang'd; 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.3 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.

3 Preferred is here used in a way somewhat peculiar, meaning, not that the play is chosen in preference to others, but that it is put forward to a chance of favour; that is, recommended.

SCENE I. - Athens.

ACT V.

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 antique fables nor these fairy toys.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,1

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:"

2

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 shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That, if it would but apprehend some joy,

1 To seethe is to boil; and the notion of the brains boiling in such cases was very common. So in The Tempest, v. 1: "The brains, now useless, boil'd within the skull." And in The Winter's Tale, iii. 3: "Would any but these boil'd brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather?"

2 That is, altogether composed or made up of imagination. Spenser often uses all for altogether; and Shakespeare has both all and compact repeatedly in these senses.