OBERON         But we are spirits of another sort. I with the morning’s love have oft made sport, And like a forester the groves may tread Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red, Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams. But notwithstanding, haste, make no delay. We may effect this business yet ere day. [Exit.]     (3.2.388-395) Oberon reassures Puck […]

PUCK  My fairy lord, this must be done with haste, For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger, At whose approach ghosts, wandering here and there, Troop home to churchyards. Damned spirits all, That in cross-ways and floods have burial, Already to their wormy beds are gone. For fear lest day should look their shames upon, They wilfully themselves exile from light, And must […]

OBERON         Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye, Whose liquor hath this virtuous property To take from thence all error with his might, And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight. When they next wake, all this derision Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision, And back to Athens shall the lovers wend With league whose date till death shall never end. Whiles I in this affair do thee employ, I’ll […]

OBERON         Thou seest these lovers seek a place to fight. Hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night; The starry welkin cover thou anon With drooping fog as black as Acheron, And lead these testy rivals so astray As one come not within another’s way. Like to Lysander sometime frame thy tongue, Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong, And sometime rail thou like Demetrius, And from each other look […]

OBERON         This is thy negligence. Still thou mistak’st, Or else commit’st thy knaveries wilfully. PUCK  Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook. Did not you tell me I should know the man By the Athenian garments he had on? And so far blameless proves my enterprise, That I have ’nointed an Athenian’s eyes; And so far am I glad it so did sort, As this their jangling I […]

LYSANDER                 Now she holds me not. Now follow, if thou dar’st, to try whose right, Of thine or mine, is most in Helena. DEMETRIUS   Follow? Nay, I’ll go with thee, cheek by jowl. ([Exeunt] Lysander and Demetrius.) HERMIA         You, mistress, all this coil is long of you. Nay, go not back. HELENA                     I will not trust you, I, Nor longer stay in your curst company. Your hands than mine […]

HERMIA         Little again? Nothing but low and little? Why will you suffer her to flout me thus? Let me come to her. LYSANDER                 Get you gone, you dwarf, You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made, You bead, you acorn. DEMETRIUS               You are too officious In her behalf that scorns your services. Let her alone. Speak not of Helena, Take not her […]

HERMIA         Why, get you gone. Who is’t that hinders you? HELENA         A foolish heart, that I leave here behind. HERMIA         What, with Lysander? HELENA                                 With Demetrius. LYSANDER     Be not afraid. She shall not harm thee, Helena. DEMETRIUS   No, sir, she shall not, though you take her part. HELENA         O, when she is angry, she is keen and shrewd. She was […]

HELENA         Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me. I evermore did love you, Hermia, Did ever keep your counsels, never wronged you, Save that in love unto Demetrius, I told him of your stealth unto this wood. He followed you; for love, I followed him. But he hath chid me hence, and threatened me To strike me, spurn me, nay […]

HELENA         I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen, Let her not hurt me. I was never curst; I have no gift at all in shrewishness. I am a right maid for my cowardice: Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think Because she is something lower than myself, That I can match her. HERMIA                     Lower? Hark again.   (3.2.299-305) Helena’s […]