Those heavenly eyes, that look into these faults,
Suggested us to make: Therefore, ladies,
Our love being yours, the error that love makes
Is likewise yours: we to ourselves prove false,
By being once false for ever to be true

To those that make us both,-fair ladies, you:
And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,
Thus puries itself, and turns to grace.

Prin. We have receiv'd your letters, full of love;
Your favours, the embassadors of love;
And, in ou maiden council, rated them
At courtsho, pleasant jest, and courtesy,
As bombas, and as lining to the time:
But more dvout than this, in our respects,

Have we nc been; and therefore met your loves
In their own fashion, like a merriment.

Dum. Ouretters, madam, show'd much more than
jest.

Long So dd our looks.
Ros.
We did not quote them so.
King. Now at the latest minute of the hour,
Grant us you loves.
Prin.
A time, methinks, too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in :
No, no, my lod, your grace is perjur'd much,
Full of dear guiltiness; and, therefore this,-
If for my love as there is no such cause)
You will do aught, this shall you do for me:
Your oath I wil not trust; but go with speed
To some forlon and naked hermitage,
Remote from al the pleasures of the world;
There stay, untl the twelve celestial signs
Have brought about their annual reckoning:
If this austere inociable life

Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts, and fast, hard lodging, and thin weeds,
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial, and last love;
Then, at the expintion of the year,

Come challenge, challenge me by these deserts,
And, by this virginpalm, now kissing thine,

I will be thine; and till that instant, shut
My woeful self up ir a mourning house;
Raining the tears of amentation

For the remembrance of my father's death.
If this thou do deny, et our hands part;
Neither intitled in the other's heart.

King. If this, or more than this, I would deny,
To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,
The sudden hand of death close up mine eye!
Hence ever then my heart is in thy breast.
Biron. And what to me, my love? and what to me?
Dum. But what to me, my love? but what to me?
Kath. A wife!-A beard, fair health, and honesty;
With three-fold love I wish you all these three.
Dum. O, shall I say, I thank you, gentle wife?
Kath. Not so, my lord;-a twelvemonth and a day
I'll mark no words that smooth-fac'd wooers say;
Come when the king doth to my lady come,
Then, if I have much love, I 'll give you some.
Dum. I'll serve thee true and faithfully till then.
Kath. Yet swear not, lest you be forsworn again.
Long. What says Maria?
Mar. -
At the twelvemonth's end,
I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend.
Long. I'll stay with patience; but the time is long.
Mar. The liker you; few taller are so young.
Biron. Studies my lady? mistress, look on me,
Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,
What humble suit attends thy answer there;
Impose some service on me for thy love.

Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,
Before I saw you; and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks;
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts;
Which you on all estates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your wit:
To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,
And, therewithal, to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won,)
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,
To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death?
It cannot be; it is impossible:
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools:
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears,

Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue them,
And I will have you, and that fault withal;
But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.

Biron. A twelvemonth? well, befal what will befal,
I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.
Prin. Ay, sweet my lord; and so I take my leave.
[To the King.
King. No, madam, we will bring you on your way.
Biron. Our wooing doth not end like an old play;
Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.
King. Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a
And then 't will end.
[day,
Biron.

That 's too long for a play.
Enter Armado.

Arm. Sweet majesty, vouchsafe me,
Prin. Was not that Hector?

Dum. The worthy knight of Troy.
Arm. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave:
I am a votary; I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold
the plough for her sweet love three years. But,
most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue
that the two learned men have compiled, in praise
of the owl and the cuckoo? it should have followed
in the end of our show.

King. Call them forth quickly, we will do so.
Arm. Holla! approach.

Enter Holofernes, Nathaniel, Moth, Costard, and
others.

This side is Hiems, winter; This Ver, the spring; the one maintained by the owl, the oth: by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.

A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

My fortunes every way as fairly rank'd
If not with vantage, as Demetrius';

And, which is more than all these boasts can be,
I am belov'd of beauteous Hermia:
Why should not I then prosecute my right?
Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena,

And wor her soul; and, she, sweet lady, dotes,
Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,

Upon this spotted and inconstant man.

The. I must confess that I have heard so much,
And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;
But, being over-full of self-affairs,

My mind dd lose it.-But, Demetrius, come;
And come, Egeus; you shall go with me,
I have some private schooling for you both.
For you, far Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fincies to your father's will;
Or else the hw of Athens yields you up
(Which by no means we may extenuate,)
To death, orto a vow of single life.

Come, my Hppolyta: What cheer, my love?
Demetrius, aid Egeus, go along :

I must employ you in some business
Against our ruptial: and confer with you
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.
Ege. With dity and desire, we follow you.

Exeunt Thes., Hip., Ege., Dem., and train.
Lys. How nov, my love? why is your cheek so pale?
How chance the roses there do fade so fast?
Her. Belike for want of rain: which I could well
Beteem them from the tempest of mine eyes.
Lys. Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth:
But, either it was different in blood;-

Her. O cross! tco high to be enthrall'd to low!
Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years;--
Her. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young!

Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!
Your eyes are load-stars; and your tongue 's sweet
More tunable than lark to shepherd's ear, [air
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.
Sickness is catching; O, were favour so,
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go;
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,
Mytongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody.
Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
The rest I'll give to be to you translated.
O, teach me how you look; and with what art
You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart.
Her. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.
Hel. O, that your frowns would teach my smiles such
skill!

Her. I give him curses, yet he gives me love.
Hel. O, that my prayers could such affection move!
Her. The more I hate, the more he follows me.
Hel. The more I love, the more he hateth me.
Her. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.

Hel. None. But your beauty; would that fault
were mine!

Her. Take comfort; he no more shall see my face;
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seem'd Athens like a paradise to me:
O then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!
Lys. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:
To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,
(A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal,)
Through Athens' gates have we devis'd to steal.
Her. And in the wood, where often you and I
Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie,
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,
There my Lysander and myself shall meet:
And thence, from Athens, turn away our eyes,

Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;-To seek new friends and stranger companies.

Her. O hell! to choose love by another's eye!

Lys. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,

War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it;
Making it momentary as a sound,

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say,-Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.

Her. If then true lovers have been ever cross'd,
It stands as an edict in destiny:
Then let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary cross;

As due to love as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs,
Wishes, and tears, poor fancy's followers.
Lys. A good persuasion; therefore, hear me,
I have a widow aunt, a dowager
[Hermia.
Of great revenue, and she hath no child;
From Athens is her house remov'd seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us: If thou lov'st me then,
Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee.

Her.

My good Lysander!
I swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow;
By his best arrow with the golden head;

By the simplicity of Venus doves;

By that which knitteth souls, and prospers loves;
And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen,
When the false Trojan under sail was seen;
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke;
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee. [Helena,
Lys. Keep promise, love: Look, here comes
Enter Helena,

Her. God speed fair Helena! Whither away?
Hel. Call you me fair? that fair again unsay.

Farewell, sweet playfellow; pray thou for us,
And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius!-
Keep word, Lysander: We must starve our sight
From lovers' food, till morrow deep midnight.
[Exit Hermia.

[Exit.

Lys. I will, my Hermia.-Helena, adieu:
As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!
Hel. 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 vild, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd 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 beguil'd.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear
So the boy love is perjur'd every where:
For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's cyne,
He hail'd down oaths, that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolv'd, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:
Then to the wood will he, to-morrow 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.

[Exit.

SCENE II.-The same. A Room in a Cottage.
Enter Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, Quince, and
Starveling.

Quin. Is all our company here?
Bot. You were best to call them generally, man by
man, according to the scrip.

Quin. 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.

Bot. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play

treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so grow on to a point.

Quin. Marry, our play is-The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.

weaver.

Bot. 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. Quin. Answer, as I call you.-Nick Bottom, the [ceed. Bot. Ready. Name what part I am for, and proQuin. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus. Bot. What is Pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant? [love. Quin. A lover, that kills himself most gallantly for Bot. 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 humour 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.

Quin. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.

Flu. Here, Peter Quince.

Quin. You must take Thisby on you.

Flu. What is Thisby? a wandering knight?
Quin. It is the lady that Pyramus must love.
Flu. Nay, faith, let not me play a woman: I have
a beard coming.

Quin. That's all one; you shall play it in a mask,
and you may speak as small as you will.
Bot. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby,
too; I'll speak in a monstrous little voice;-Thisne,
Thisne,-Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear; thy Thisby
dear! and lady dear!'

Quin. No, no, you must play Pyramus; and, Flute,
Bot. Well, proceed.
[you Thisby.

Quin. Robin Starveling, the tailor.
Star. Here, Peter Quince.

Quin. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-faced.-But, masters, here are your parts: and I am to entreat you, re quest you, and desire you, to con them by to-morrow night and meet me in the palace wood, a mie without the town, by moon-light; there we will rehearse: for if we meet in the city we shall be dog'd with company, and our devices known. In the mean time I will draw a bill of properties, such as our play wants. I pray you fail me not. Bot. We will meet; and there we may rehearse more obscenely and courageously. Take pains; be perfect; adieu. Quin. At the duke's oak we meet. Bot. Enough. Hold, or cut bow-strings. [Exeunt.

ACT II.

SCENE I.-A Wood near Athens.
Enter a Fairy on one side, and Puck on the other.
Puck. How now, spirit! whither warder you?
Fai. Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough briar,
Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere
Swifter than the moon's sphere:
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green:
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,

In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll be gone;
Our queen and all her elves come here anon.
Puck. The king doth keep his revels here to-night;
Take heed, the queen come not within his sight.
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy stol'n from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling:
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild:
But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove, or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled star-light sheen.

Quin. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby's But they do square; that all their elves, for fear
mother.-Tom Snout, the tinker.
Snout. Here, Peter Quince.
Quin. You, Pyramus's father; myself, Thisby's
father;-Snug, the joiner, you, the lion's part :-and,
I hope, here is a play fitted.

Snug. Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study. Quin. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.

Bot. 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.'

Quin. 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.

All. That would hang us every mother's son. Bot. I grant you, friends, if that you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no inore 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 't were any nightingale.

Quin. 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, gentle. man-like man; therefore you must needs play Py

ramus.

Bat. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?

Quin. Why, what you will.

Bot. I will discharge it in either your straw-coloured beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-ingrain beard, or your French-crown-coloured beard, your perfect yellow.

I

Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.
Fai. Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite,
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are you not he,"
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern;
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck :
Are not you he? Puck. Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
jest to Oberon, and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
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 wither'd 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 quire hold their hips and loffe
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.-
But room, Fairy, here comes Oberon.
Fai. And here my mistress :-Would that he were
SCENE II.-Enter Oberon, on one side, with his
train, and Titania, on the other, with hers.
Obe. Ill-met by moon-light, proud Titania.
Tita. What, jealous Oberon? Fairies, skip hence;
I have forsworn his bed and company.

[gone!