for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely gentleman-like man: therefore you must needs play Pyramus.

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Bot. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?

Quin. Why, what you will.

Bot. I will discharge it in either your strawcolour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crowncolour beard, your perfect yellow.

Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play barefaced. But, masters, here are your parts: and I am to entreat you, request you and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse, for if we meet in the city, we shall be dogged with company, and our devices known. In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties,* such as our play wants. I pray you, fail me not.

*Theatrical articles.

Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect: adieu.

Quin. At the duke's oak we meet.

Bot. Enough; hold or cut bow-strings.

ACT II.

[Exeunt.

SCENE I. A wood near Athens.

Enter, from opposite sides, a Fairy, and PUCK.

Puck. How now, spirit! whither wander you? Fai. Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

I do wander every where,

Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs* upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be:

*Circles.

ΙΟ

In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,

In those freckles live their savours:

I must go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

Farewell, thou lobt of spirits; I'll be gone: †Looby.
Our queen and all our elves come here anon.

Puck. The king doth keep his revels here tonight:

20

Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her
joy:

And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But they do square,* that all their elves for fear 30
Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.*
.*Quarrel.
Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making
quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern*
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;†
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?
*Hand-mill. †Yeast.

Puck.
Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,*

*Wild-apple

50

And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quiret hold their hips and
laugh,

+Company.

And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear

A merrier hour was never wasted there.

But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.

Fai.

And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

Enter, from one side, OBERON, with his train; from the other, TITANIA, with hers.

Obe. Il met by moonlight, proud Titania. 60 Tita. What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip

hence:

I have forsworn his bed and company.

Obe. Tarry, rash wanton: am not I thy lord? Tita. Then I must be thy lady: but I know When thou hast stolen away from fairy land, And in the shape of Corin sat all day, Playing on pipes of corn and versing love To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here, Come from the farthest steppe of India? But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon, Your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love, To Theseus must be wedded, and you come To give their bed joy and prosperity.

70

Obe. How canst thou thus for shame, Titania, Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night

From Perigenia, whom he ravished?

And make him with fair Ægle break his faith,
With Ariadne and Antiopa?

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Tita. These are the forgeries of jealousy: And never, since the middle summer's spring,* Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, *Beginning. By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

90

†Paltry.

100

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting+ river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine men's morris? is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable:
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
The childing|| autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension;

We are their parents and original.

IIO

That which contains anything. Place set apart for Moorish

dance by nine men. Pregnant.

Obe. Do you amend it then; it lies in you: Why should Titania cross her Oberon?

I do but beg a little changeling boy,

To be my henchman.*

I 20

*Attendant.

Tita.
Set your heart at rest:
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,

Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood,
When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following, her womb then rich with my young
squire,-

Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die:
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him.

131

Obe. How long within this wood intend you stay?

Tita. Perchance till after Theseus' weddingday.

140

If you will patiently dance in our round
And see our moonlight revels, go with us;
If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.
Obe. Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.
Tita. Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies,

away!
We shall chide downright, if I longer stay.

[Exit Titania with her train. Obe. Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from

this grove

Till I torment thee for this injury.

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest Since once I sat upon a promontory,

150

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music.

I remember.

Puck.
Obe. That very time I saw, but thou couldst
not,

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal throned by the west,

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,