duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.

[Exit.

SCENE II. Athens.
Athens. 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.

10

Flu. O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life; he could not 20 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.

225. her, Thisbe's, of which his head was full.

Enter BOTTOM.

Bot. Where are these lads? where are these

hearts ?

Quin. Bottom!

most happy hour!

O most courageous day! O

Bot. Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask me not what; for if I tell you, I am no true 30 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 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. more words: away! go, away!

No

[Exeunt.

40

ACT V.

SCENE I. Athens. The palace of Theseus.
Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE,
Lords, and Attendants.

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

39. preferred, handed in to the 'manager of mirth to be inIcluded in his list of sports ripe

for performance (v. i. 42). This was, for Bottom, equivalent to its acceptance.

The. 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!

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, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA, and
HELENA.

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

the

3. antique, strange, fantastic. 11. brow of Egypt, swarthy features of a gipsy. Cf.

iii. 2. 257.

ΤΟ

20

26. constancy, consistency,

coherence.

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?
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.

Phil.

Here, mighty Theseus.

The. Say, what abridgement have you for this evening?

What masque? what music? How shall we beguile

The lazy time, if not with some delight?

Phil. There is a brief how many sports are

ripe:

Make choice of which your highness will see first. [Giving a paper.

The. [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

34. after-supper, the reresupper or dessert.

39. abridgement,

ment.

entertain

Orpheus.

30

40

50

52. The thrice three Muses, etc. Possibly an allusion to Spenser's Tears of the Muses on the Neglect and Contempt of Thracian singer, Learning (1591).

42. brief, list. 49. the

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?
Phil. 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.

The. What are they that do play it?

Phil. 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.

The. And we will hear it.

Phil.

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,

56. tedious brief. The terms were recognised opposites.

59. wondrous strange snow; since snow is one of the most familiar and uniform things in nature, it can hardly be 'wondrous strange without being unnatural, like hot ice.' Countless emen

60

70

dations have been proposed without necessity.

74. unbreathed, unpractised. 79. intents, endeavours; in the next line it stands for the subject of their endeavours, i.e. the play which they 'con with cruel pains.'