LYSANDER     How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale?

How chance the roses there do fade so fast?

HERMIA         Belike for want of rain, which I could well

Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.

LYSANDER     Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth;

But either it was different in blood –

HERMIA         O cross, too high to be enthralled to low!

LYSANDER     Or else misgrafted in respect of years –

HERMIA         O spite, too old to be engaged to young!

LYSANDER     Or else it stood upon the choice of friends –

HERMIA         O hell, to choose love by another’s eyes!     (1.1.128-140)

Finally, the unhappy lovers are left alone (in some productions, Theseus has facilitated this by sweeping Demetrius and Egeus away with him) and they lament their plight. The patterning of their exchanges (stichomythia: alternating, repetitive lines) creates intimacy—it’s the equivalent of mirroring each other’s body language!—but also a kind of artificiality. Lysander’s initial concern is tender, though: how now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there do fade so fast? You’re looking all peaky and washed out. And Hermia’s reply develops his concern into a pretty conceit: belike for want of rain—that’s why the roses in my cheeks have faded—which I could well beteem them from the tempest of my eyes. If tears could bring back the colour to my cheeks, water their roses, I’d have a rosy glow alright! Lysander trots out a sigh—ay me!—and a consoling commonplace, which makes him (and so both of them) sound even younger, a mix of plaintiveness and pomposity: for aught that I could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth. The fact that THEY (the grownups, the world at large) don’t want us to be together, it’s a SIGN that we’ve got The Real Thing! (Terrible, damaging, fallacious reasoning, but infinitely seductive.) There are so many ways in which the world can conspire to frustrate True Love: but either it were different in blood, discrepancy in rank and social status, commoners and kings—Hermia joins in passionately, with her series of lamenting Os, O cross, too high to be enthralled to low, what a terrible thing to be too nobly born to be bound to someone of lower status! Or else—what could be another impediment?—misgrafted in respect of years, deemed too old, or too young for each other! O spite, too old to be engaged to young! First you’re too aristocratic, then you’re too decrepit! (Of course, they can play this as tongue in cheek, rehearsing all these clichés, leaning into the agony.) Or else, it stood upon the choice of friends—family trying to choose for you, arranging your marriage against your will! That’s another sort of impediment. And that, of course, is Hermia and Lysander’s own situation, more or less, giving rise to Hermia’s heartfelt O hell, to choose love by another’s eyes! the oath adds intensity, but it’s the emphasis on sight that matters, the loss of agency, being made to love against one’s own will—which isn’t quite Hermia’s situation; she doesn’t love Demetrius and, as she’s been reiterating, she cannot be made to love him. But her protestation here, however fleetingly, suggests that might also be possible…