DEMETRIUS Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit;
For I am sick when I do look on thee.
HELENA And I am sick when I look not on you.
DEMETRIUS You do impeach your modesty too much,
To leave the city and commit yourself
Into the hands of one that loves you not,
To trust the opportunity of night
And the ill counsel of a desert place
With the rich worth of your virginity. (2.1.211-219)
It’s getting nastier, in ways that Helena perhaps doesn’t grasp, so caught up in a fever of her own self-abasement. Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit, says Demetrius—he’s switched from saying I-don’t-love-you to I-hate-you, or as good as, and also, that his patience, such as it isn’t, is running out, that he may not be able to control himself for much longer. For I am sick when I do look on thee—and he means it near-literally, it seems, YUCK, you turn my stomach, I can’t BEAR you. But Helena, wilfully or not, is still thinking metaphorically: and I am sick when I look not on you, sick with longing, sick with love! Demetrius’s response is literal, serious, and not-very-implicitly threatening: you do impeach your modesty too much, to leave the city and commit yourself into the hands of one that loves you not, to trust the opportunity of night and the ill counsel of a desert place with the rich worth of your virginity. Just STOP and THINK about what you’ve done, what you’re doing. You’re trashing your reputation, totally, coming here in the middle of the night with someone who, to be frank, does not have your best interests at heart, someone—me—whom you are irritating more by the minute, whose patience and self-restraint are wearing thin. And it’s not just your reputation you’re risking. There’s no one else here, it’s an actual dark forest, and, hey, all bets are off. Anything could happen; no one would hear you, no one would come. Are you sure that you’re safe with me? Because, even though I HATE you, I might not be able to help myself; a chance is a chance, after all.
Again, really difficult to play, if Demetrius isn’t to seem irremediably horrible; the appeal to a concern for reputation can be given more emphasis? Or the invisible Oberon can make a protective gesture? Night and opportunity are the addressees of two of the great apostrophes made by Lucrece in Shakespeare’s poem, printed in 1594, after she has been raped by Tarquin. Perhaps that has some purchase here?
