Faculty of English

QUINCE          If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down every mother’s son, and rehearse your parts. Pyramus, you begin. When you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake; and so every one according to his cue. PUCK  [aside] What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here, So near the cradle of the Fairy Queen? What, a play toward? I’ll […]

QUINCE          Ay, or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a lantern, and say he comes to disfigure or to present the person of Moonshine. Then there is another thing: we must have a wall in the great chamber; for Pyramus and Thisbe, says the story, did talk through the chink […]

QUINCE          Well, it shall be so. But there is two hard things: that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for you know Pyramus and Thisbe meet by moonlight. SNOUT            Doth the moon shine that night we play our play? BOTTOM        A calendar, a calendar: look in the almanac. Find out moonshine, find out […]

SNOUT            Will not the ladies be afeared of the Lion? STARVELING I fear it, I promise you. BOTTOM        Masters, you ought to consider with yourself: to bring in (God shield us) a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living, and we ought […]

STARVELING I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done. BOTTOM        Not a whit. I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and for the more […]

Enter [QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT and STARVELING. TITANIA lying asleep.] BOTTOM        Are we all met? QUINCE          Pat, pat; and here’s a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal. This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our tiring-house; and we will do it in action, as we will do it before the duke. […]

HERMIA         Help me, Lysander, help me: do thy best To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast. Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here! Lysander, look how I do quake with fear. Methought a serpent ate my heart away, And you sat smiling at his cruel prey. Lysander – what, removed? Lysander, lord – What, out of hearing, gone? No sound, no word? […]

LYSANDER     She sees not Hermia. Hermia, sleep thou there, And never mayst thou come Lysander near. For as a surfeit of the sweetest things The deepest loathing to the stomach brings, Or as the heresies that men do leave Are hated most of those they did deceive, So thou, my surfeit and my heresy, Of all be hated, but […]

HELENA         Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born? When at your hands did I deserve this scorn? Is’t not enough, is’t not enough, young man, That I did never, no nor never can Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius’ eye, But you must flout my insufficiency? Good troth, you do me wrong; good sooth, you do, In such disdainful […]

LYSANDER     Things growing are not ripe until their season; So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason. And touching now the point of human skill, Reason becomes the marshal to my will And leads me to your eyes, where I o’erlook Love’s stories, written in love’s richest book.        (2.2.121-126) Lysander continues with his commonplaces and his logic, explaining exactly […]