LYSANDER     Helen, to you our minds we will unfold.

Tomorrow night, when Phoebe doth behold

Her silver visage in the watery glass,

Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass

(A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal),

Through Athens’ gates have we devised to steal.   (1.1.208-213)

Well, Hermia’s already blurted it out, and so Lysander interrupts to take a little more control of the story, and lower the temperature: Helen, to you our minds we will unfold. He addresses Helena by name, flatteringly taking her into their confidence, but also reminding the audience (and perhaps Helena herself) of the ironic charge of her name, its recollection of Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, over whom men are prepared to go to war. We’ll tell you everything, he says. Like Hermia and Helena, Lysander continues to speak in rhyme, with a beautiful and romantic evocation (not to say an idealised one) of their planned elopement by night. Tomorrow night, when Phoebe doth behold her silver visage in the watery glass, decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass—the moon will be reflected in water, and every dewdrop on every blade of grass will gleam with that silvery light (Lysander is sounding not unlike a fairy)—(A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal) (the perfect time for eloping!) through Athens’ gates have we devised to steal. We’re running away! That’s the plan! Lysander’s poetry is beautiful, but his bejewelled evocation of moonlight suggests that he hasn’t really thought this through; the play’s opening has very carefully established that the moon is waning, nearly new. It’s going to be DARK.