University of Virginia Library

ACT V.

SCENE I.

SCENE, the Wood.
Enter Queen of Fairies, Bottom; Fairies attending, and the King behind them.
Queen.
Come, sit thee down upon this flow'ry bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk-roses in thy sleek-smooth'd head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy!
AIR.

Bot.

What, my sweet Robin-red-breast, have I put a little
salt upon your tail? I'll have you in a cage, and feed you with
white bread and milk; and you shall whistle all day to me,
you little, loving, Tom-tit, you. Where's Peaseblossom?

Pease.

Ready.

Bot.

Scratch my head, Peaseblossom. Where's Monsieur
Cobweb?

Cob.

Ready.

Bot.

Monsieur Cobweb, good Monsieur, get your weapons
in your hand, and kill me a red-hipt humble bee on the top of
a thistle; and, good Monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do
not fret yourself too much in the action, Monsieur; and good

Monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not: I should be
loth to have you overflown with the honey-bag, Signior.
Where's Monsieur Mustardseed?

Must.

Ready.

Bot.

Give me thy neafe, Monsieur Mustardseed: Pray you,
leave your curtesie, good Monsieur.

Must.

What's your will?

Bot.

Nothing, good Monsieur, but to help Cavalero Cobweb
to scratch. I must to the barber's, Monsieur; for methinks,
I am marvellous hairy about the face: and I am such a tender
ass, if my hair doth but tickle me, I must scratch.

Queen.

What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?

Bot.

I have a reasonable good ear in musick.

DUET, By 1st and 2d Fairy.

Queen.
Or say, sweet love, what thou desir'st to eat.

Bot.

Truly a peck of provender; I could munch your good
dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay:
Good hay, sweet hay hath no fellow.

Queen.
I have a ventrous Fairy that shall seek
The squirrels hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.

Bot.
I had rather have a handful or two of dried pease.
But I pray you, let none of your people stir me;
I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.

Queen.
Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms;
Fairies begone, and be always away.
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist.
O how I love thee! how I doat on thee!

Sleep.
Enter Puck.
Ob.
Welcome, good Robin! See'st thou this sweet sight?
Her dotage now I do begin to pity:
For meeting her of late behind the wood,
I then did ask of her, her changeling child,
Which strait she gave me; wherefore I'll undo
This hateful imperfection of her eyes:
And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp
From off the head of this Athenian swain,
That he awaking when the others do,
And think no more of this night's accidents,
But as the fierce vexation of a dream.
But first I will release the Fairy Queen.
AIR.
Now my Titania, wake you, my sweet queen.

Queen.
My Oberon! What visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.

Ob.
There lies your love.

Queen.
How came these things to pass?
O how mine eyes do loath this visage now!

Ob.
Silence a while. Robin, take off his head.
Titania, musick call, and strike more dead
Than common sleep, of all these five the sense.

Queen.
Musick, ho musick! such as charmeth sleep.

AIR.
2d Fai.
Orpheus, with his lute, made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his musick, plants and flowers
Ever spring, as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.

Puck.
When thou awak'st, with thine own fool's eyes peep.

Ob.
Sound, musick: Come, my Queen, take hand with me,
And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.
Now thou and I are new in amity.

[Lark heard.
Puck.
Fairy king, attend and mark,
[Lark again.
I do hear the morning lark.

Ob.
Then, my Queen, in silence sad,
Trip we after the night's shade;
We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wand'ring moon.

Queen.
Come, my lord, and in our flights,
Tell me, how it came this night,
That I sleeping here was found,
With these mortals on the ground.

[A dance of Fairies, and exeunt.
Bottom wakes.
Bot.

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 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 s no man can tell what:
Methought I was, and methought I had; but man is but a
patch'd 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 call'd, Bottom's
dream, because it hat 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 Bot.

Enter Theseus, Egeus, Hippolita and all his train.
Thes.
Go, one of you, and find out the forester;
My love shall hear the musick of my hounds.
We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain's top,
And mark the musical confusion—
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

Hip.
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta: Never did I hear
Such gallant chiding: For besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, ev'ry region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

Thes.
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung,
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd, and dew-lap'd, like Tessalian bulls,
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never hollow'd to, nor cheer'd with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly:
Judge when you hear. But soft, what nymphs are these?

Ege.
My Lord this is my daughter here asleep,
And this, Lysander, this Demetrius is,
This Helena, old Nedar's Helena;
I wonder at their being here together.

Thes.
No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May, and hearing our intent,
Came here in grace of our solemnity.
But speak, Egeus, is not this the day,
That Hermia should give answer of her choice?

Ege.
It is, my Lord.

Thes.
Go bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.

AIR.
Lys.
Hark, hark, how the hounds and horn,
Cherely rouse the stumb'ring morn,
From the side of yon hoar hill,
Thro' the high wood echoing shrill.

Thes.
Good-morrow friends; saint Valentine is past:
Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?

Lys.
Pardon, my Lord.

Thes.
I know you two are rival enemies.
How comes this gentle concord in the world,
That hatred is so far from jealousy,
To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?

Lys.
My Lord, I shall reply amazedly,
Half sleep, half waking. But as yet I swear
I cannot truly say how I came here:
But as I think, (for truly would I speak)
And now I do methink me, so it is;
I came with Hermia hither. Our intent
Was to be gone from Athens, where we might be
Without the peril of th' Athenian law.

Ege.
Enough, enough, my Lord, you have enough;
I beg the law, the law upon his head:
They would have stol'n away, they would, Demetrius,
Thereby to have defeated you and me,
You of your wife, and me of my consent.

Dem.
My Lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,
And I in fury hither follow'd them;
Fair Helena in fancy follow'd me:
But, my good Lord, I wot not by what power,
But by some power it is, my love to Hermia
Is melted as the snow;
And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,
Is only Helena. To her, my Lord,
Was I betrothed 'ere I Hermia saw;
But like a sickness did I loath this food;
But as in health come to ny natural taste,
Now do I wish it, love it, long for it,
And will for ever more be true to it.

Lys.
And I my bond of faith to Hermia,
Will still maintain 'till life shall be no more.
The busy phantoms that disturb'd my brain,
Are fled, and all is happiness and love.

AIR. DUET.
Lys.
The dream is o'er as day appears,
The hags of night are flown;
My rising joys have chas'd my fears,
And Hermia is my own.

Her.
I must have slept, to be untrue;
And from my faith to rove,
My waking thoughts are all of you,
Of you alone, and love—.

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

Thes.
More strange than true. I never may believe
These antick fables, nor these fairy toys,
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains;
Such shaping phantesy they apprehend,
More than cool reason ever comprehends,
The lunatick, the lover, and the poet,
Are of Imagination all compact;
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
The madman; while the lover all as frantick,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet's eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n;
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.

Lys.
These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far off mountains turned into clouds.

Her.
Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
When every thing seems double.

Hel.
I think so too, and I have found Demetrius,
Like a jewel; mine own, and not mine own.

Hip.
Fair friends, the crosses of your loves are now o'erblown,
And future happiness await your walks, your board, your beds.

Thes.
—Of this discourse we shall hear more anon:
Fair lovers, you are fortunately met:
Egeus, I will overbear your will,
For in the temple, by and by with us,
These couples shall eternally be knit;
And, for the morning now is something worn,
Our purpos'd hunting shall be set aside,
Away with us to Athens, three and three;
There will we feast in great solemnity.

AIR.
Lys.
Pierce the air with sounds of joy;
Come hymen with the winged boy,
Bring song, and dance, and revelry,
From this our great solemnity
Drive care and sorrow far away,
Let all be mirth and holiday.
CHORUS.
Hail to love! and welcome joy!
Hail to the delicious boy!
See the sun from love returning,
Love's the flame in which he's burning.