ACT 1
Scene 1
Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, and Philostrate, with others.
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in
Another moon. But, O, methinks how slow
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires
Like to a stepdame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

...Of our solemnities.
Go, Philostrate,
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments.
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth.
Turn melancholy forth to funerals;
The pale companion is not for our pomp.
Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword
And won thy love doing thee injuries,
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling.

...our renownèd duke!
Thanks, good Egeus. What’s the news with thee?

...in that case.
What say you, Hermia? Be advised, fair maid.
To you, your father should be as a god,
One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted, and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it.
Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

...So is Lysander.
In himself he is,
But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice,
The other must be held the worthier.

...with my eyes.
Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

...to wed Demetrius.
Either to die the death or to abjure
Forever the society of men.
Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires,
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether (if you yield not to your father’s choice)
You can endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mewed,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
Thrice-blessèd they that master so their blood
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage,
But earthlier happy is the rose distilled
Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,
Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.

...to give sovereignty.
Take time to pause, and by the next new moon
(The sealing day betwixt my love and me
For everlasting bond of fellowship),
Upon that day either prepare to die
For disobedience to your father’s will,
Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would,
Or on Diana’s altar to protest
For aye austerity and single life.

...and inconstant man.
I must confess that I have heard so much,
And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;
But, being overfull of self-affairs,
My mind did lose it.—But, Demetrius, come,
And come, Egeus; you shall go with me.
I have some private schooling for you both.—
For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fancies to your father’s will,
Or else the law of Athens yields you up
(Which by no means we may extenuate)
To death or to a vow of single life.—
Come, my Hippolyta. What cheer, my love?—
Demetrius and Egeus, go along.
I must employ you in some business
Against our nuptial and confer with you
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.

...we follow you.
All but Hermia and Lysander exit.

ACT 4
Scene 1

...on the ground.
Wind horn. Enter Theseus and all his train, Hippolyta, Egeus.
Go, one of you, find out the Forester.
For now our observation is performed,
And, since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
Uncouple in the western valley; let them go.
Dispatch, I say, and find the Forester.
We will, fair queen, up to the mountain’s top
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

...such sweet thunder.
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flewed, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-kneed, and dewlapped like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tunable
Was never holloed to, nor cheered with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.
Judge when you hear.—But soft! What nymphs are these?

...being here together.
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?

...is, my lord.
Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.
Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past.
Begin these woodbirds but to couple now?

...Pardon, my lord.
I pray you all, stand up.

They rise.
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?

...true to it.
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 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, Hippolyta.
Theseus and his train, including Hippolyta and Egeus, exit.

ACT 5
Scene 1

...Away! Go, away!
Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, and Philostrate, Lords, and Attendants.

...lovers speak of.
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!

...Hermia, and Helena.
Here come the lovers full of joy and mirth.—
Joy, gentle friends! Joy and fresh days of love
Accompany your hearts!

...board, your bed!
Come now, what masques, what dances shall we have
To wear away this long age of three hours
Between our after-supper and bedtime?
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.

...Here, mighty Theseus.
Say what abridgment have you for this evening,
What masque, what music? How shall we beguile
The lazy time if not with some delight?
PHILOSTRATE, giving Theseus a paper

...will see first.
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.
The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.
That is an old device, and it was played
When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.
The thrice-three Muses mourning for the death
Of learning, late deceased in beggary.
That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.
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?

...laughter never shed.
What are they that do play it?

...against your nuptial.
And we will hear it.

...do you service.
I will hear that play,
For never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it.
Go, bring them in—and take your places, ladies.

...his service perishing.
Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.

...in this kind.
The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.
Our sport shall be to take what they mistake;
And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect
Takes it in might, not merit.
Where I have come, great clerks have purposèd
To greet me with premeditated welcomes,
Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,
Make periods in the midst of sentences,
Throttle their practiced accent in their fears,
And in conclusion dumbly have broke off,
Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,
Out of this silence yet I picked a welcome,
And in the modesty of fearful duty,
I read as much as from the rattling tongue
Of saucy and audacious eloquence.
Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity
In least speak most, to my capacity.

Enter Philostrate.


...Prologue is addressed.
Let him approach.

...like to know.
This fellow doth not stand upon points.

...not in government.
His speech was like a tangled chain—nothing
impaired, but all disordered. Who is next?

...they do remain.
I wonder if the lion be to speak.

...are to whisper.
Would you desire lime and hair to speak
better?

...discourse, my lord.
Pyramus draws near the wall. Silence.

...thus deceiving me!
The wall, methinks, being sensible, should
curse again.

...away doth go.
Now is the wall down between the two
neighbors.

...ever I heard.
The best in this kind are but shadows, and
the worst are no worse, if imagination amend
them.

...and not theirs.
If we imagine no worse of them than they of
themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here
come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion.

...on my life.
A very gentle beast, and of a good
conscience.

...for his valor.
True, and a goose for his discretion.

...carries the goose.
His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his
valor, for the goose carries not the fox. It is well.
Leave it to his discretion, and let us listen to the
Moon.

...on his head.
He is no crescent, and his horns are invisible
within the circumference.

...seem to be.
This is the greatest error of all the rest; the
man should be put into the lanthorn. How is it else
“the man i’ th’ moon”?

...he would change.
It appears by his small light of discretion that
he is in the wane; but yet, in courtesy, in all reason,
we must stay the time.

...Well roared, Lion.
Well run, Thisbe.

...worries the mantle.
Well moused, Lion.

...conclude, and quell!
This passion, and the death of a dear friend,
would go near to make a man look sad.

...he is nothing.
With the help of a surgeon he might yet
recover and yet prove an ass.

...finds her lover?
She will find him by starlight.

Enter Thisbe (Flute).
Here she comes, and her passion ends the play.

...adieu, adieu.Thisbe falls.
Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the
dead.

...of our company?
No epilogue, I pray you. For your play needs
no excuse. Never excuse. For when the players are
all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if
he that writ it had played Pyramus and hanged
himself in Thisbe’s garter, it would have been a fine
tragedy; and so it is, truly, and very notably discharged.
But, come, your Bergomask. Let your
epilogue alone.
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.
Lovers, to bed! ’Tis almost fairy time.
I fear we shall outsleep the coming morn
As much as we this night have overwatched.
This palpable-gross play hath well beguiled
The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed.
A fortnight hold we this solemnity
In nightly revels and new jollity.They exit.