Midsummer Lines Flashcards
How happy some o’er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so.
He will not know what all but he do know.
And, as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste.
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is Love said to be a child
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.
For, ere Demetrius looked on Hermia’s eyne,
He hailed down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and show’rs of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight.
Then to the wood will he tomorrow night
Pursue her. And, for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.
Helena
Is all our company here?
Quince
You were best to call them generally, man by
man, according to the scrip.
Bottom
Here is the scroll of every man’s name which
is thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our
interlude before the Duke and the Duchess on his
wedding day at night.
Quince
First, good Peter Quince, say what the play
treats on, then read the names of the actors, and so
grow to a point.
Bottom
Marry, our play is “The most lamentable
comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and
Thisbe.”
Quince
A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a
merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your
actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves.
Bottom
Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.
Quince
Ready. Name what part I am for, and
proceed.
Bottom
You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.
Quince
What is Pyramus—a lover or a tyrant?
Bottom
A lover that kills himself most gallant for love.
Quince
That will ask some tears in the true performing
of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their
eyes. I will move storms; I will condole in some
measure. To the rest.—Yet my chief humor is for a
tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a
cat in, to make all split:
The raging rocks
And shivering shocks
Shall break the locks
Of prison gates.
And Phibbus’ car
Shall shine from far
And make and mar
The foolish Fates.
This was lofty. Now name the rest of the players.
This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein. A lover is more
condoling.
Bottom
Francis Flute, the bellows-mender
Quince
Here, Peter Quince.
Flute
Flute, you must take Thisbe on you.
Quince
What is Thisbe—a wand’ring knight?
Flute
It is the lady that Pyramus must love.
Quince
Nay, faith, let not me play a woman. I have a
beard coming.
Flute
That’s all one. You shall play it in a mask, and
you may speak as small as you will.
Quince
An I may hide my face, let me play Thisbe too.
I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice: “Thisne,
Thisne!”—“Ah Pyramus, my lover dear! Thy Thisbe
dear and lady dear!”
Bottom
No, no, you must play Pyramus—and, Flute,
you Thisbe.
Quince
Well, proceed.
Bottom
Robin Starveling, the tailor.
Quince
Here, Peter Quince.
Starveling
Robin Starveling, you must play Thisbe’s
mother.—Tom Snout, the tinker.
Quince
Here, Peter Quince.
Snout
You, Pyramus’ father.—Myself, Thisbe’s
father.—Snug the joiner, you the lion’s part.—
And I hope here is a play fitted.
Quince
Have you the lion’s part written? Pray you, if it
be, give it me, for I am slow of study.
Snug
You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but
roaring.
Quince
Let me play the lion too. I will roar that I will
do any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar that
I will make the Duke say “Let him roar again. Let
him roar again!”
Bottom
An you should do it too terribly, you would
fright the Duchess and the ladies that they would
shriek, and that were enough to hang us all.
Quince
That would hang us, every mother’s son.
All mechanicals
I grant you, friends, if you should fright the
ladies out of their wits, they would have no more
discretion but to hang us. But I will aggravate my
voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking
dove. I will roar you an ’twere any nightingale.
Bottom
You can play no part but Pyramus, for Pyramus
is a sweet-faced man, a proper man as one
shall see in a summer’s day, a most lovely gentlemanlike
man. Therefore you must needs play
Pyramus.
Quince
Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I
best to play it in?
Bottom
Why, what you will.
Quince
I will discharge it in either your straw-color
beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain
beard, or your French-crown-color beard,
your perfit yellow.
Bottom
Some of your French crowns have no hair at
all, and then you will play barefaced. But, masters,
here are your parts, giving out the parts, and I am
to entreat you, request you, and desire you to con
them by tomorrow night and meet me in the palace
wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight. There
will we rehearse, for if we meet in the city, we shall
be dogged with company and our devices known. In
the meantime I will draw a bill of properties such as
our play wants. I pray you fail me not.
Quince
We will meet, and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously. Take pains. Be
perfit. Adieu.
Bottom
At the Duke’s Oak we meet.
Quince
Enough. Hold or cut bowstrings.
Bottom
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she
And “Tailor!” cries and falls into a cough,
And then the whole choir hold their hips and loffe
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
Robin (Puck)
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.
But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft
Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon,
And the imperial vot’ress passèd on
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before, milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it “love-in-idleness.”
Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once.
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Oberon
I love thee not; therefore pursue me not.
Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?
The one I’ll stay; the other stayeth me.
Thou told’st me they were stol’n unto this wood,
And here am I, and wood within this wood
Because I cannot meet my Hermia.
Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.
Demetrius
You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant!
But yet you draw not iron, for my heart
Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw,
And I shall have no power to follow you.
Helena
Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair?
Or rather do I not in plainest truth
Tell you I do not, nor I cannot love you?
Demetrius
And even for that do I love you the more.
I am your spaniel, and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me I will fawn on you.
Use me but as your spaniel: spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave
(Unworthy as I am) to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love
(And yet a place of high respect with me)
Than to be usèd as you use your dog?
Helena
Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit,
For I am sick when I do look on thee.
Demetrius
And I am sick when I look not on you.
Helena
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.
Demetrius
Your virtue is my privilege. For that
It is not night when I do see your face,
Therefore I think I am not in the night.
Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,
For you, in my respect, are all the world.
Then, how can it be said I am alone
When all the world is here to look on me?
Helena