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ACT I / SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS. / Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, and Attendants

THESEUS

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour / Draws on apace; four happy days bring in / Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow / This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, / Like to a step-dame or a dowager / Long withering out a young man revenue.

HIPPOLYTA

Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; / Four nights will quickly dream away the time; / And then the moon, like to a silver bow / New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night / Of our solemnities.

THESEUS

Go, Philostrate, / Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; / Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth; / Turn melancholy forth to funerals; / The pale companion is not for our pomp.

STAGE

Exit PHILOSTRATE

THESEUS

Hippolyta, I wood thee with my sword, / And won thy love, doing thee injuries; / But I will wed thee in another key, / With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.

STAGE

Enter EGEUS, HERMIA, LYSANDER, and DEMETRIUS

EGEUS

Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke!

THESEUS

Thanks, good Egeus: whats the news with thee?

EGEUS

Full of vexation come I, with complaint / Against my child, my daughter Hermia. / Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord, / This man hath my consent to marry her. / Stand forth, Lysander: and my gracious duke, / This man hath bewitchd the bosom of my child; / Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes, / And interchanged love-tokens with my child: / Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung, / With feigning voice verses of feigning love, / And stolen the impression of her fantasy / With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits, / Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers / Of strong prevailment in unhardend youth: / With cunning hast thou filchd my daughters heart, / Turnd her obedience, which is due to me, / To stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke, / Be it so she; will not here before your grace / Consent to marry with Demetrius, / I beg the ancient privilege of Athens, / As she is mine, I may dispose of her: / Which shall be either to this gentleman / Or to her death, according to our law / Immediately provided in that case.

THESEUS

What say you, Hermia? be advised fair maid: / To you your father should be as a god; / One that composed your beauties, yea, and one / To whom you are but as a form in wax / By him imprinted and within his power / To leave the figure or disfigure it. / Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

HERMIA

So is Lysander.

THESEUS

In himself he is; / But in this kind, wanting your fathers voice, / The other must be held the worthier.

HERMIA

I would my father lookd but with my eyes.

THESEUS

Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

HERMIA

I do entreat your grace to pardon me. / I know not by what power I am made bold, / Nor how it may concern my modesty, / In such a presence here to plead my thoughts; / But I beseech your grace that I may know / The worst that may befall me in this case, / If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

THESEUS

Either to die the death or to abjure / For ever the society of men. / Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires; / Know of your youth, examine well your blood, / Whether, if you yield not to your fathers choice, / You can endure the livery of a nun, / For aye to be in shady cloister mewd, / To live a barren sister all your life, / Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon. / Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood, / To undergo such maiden pilgrimage; / But earthlier happy is the rose distilld, / Than that which withering on the virgin thorn / Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.

HERMIA

So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord, / Ere I will my virgin patent up / Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke / My soul consents not to give sovereignty.

See reply from THESEUS and 5 more

STAGE

Exeunt all but LYSANDER and HERMIA

LYSANDER

How now, my love! why is your cheek so pale? / How chance the roses there do fade so fast?

HERMIA

Belike for want of rain, which I could well / Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.

LYSANDER

Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, / Could ever hear by tale or history, / The course of true love never did run smooth; / But, either it was different in blood,--

HERMIA

O cross! too high to be enthralld to low.

LYSANDER

Or else misgraffed in respect of years,--

HERMIA

O spite! too old to be engaged to young.

LYSANDER

Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,--

HERMIA

O hell! to choose love by anothers eyes.

LYSANDER

Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, / War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, / Making it momentany 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.

HERMIA

If then true lovers have been ever crossd, / 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 fancys followers.

LYSANDER

A good persuasion: therefore, hear me, Hermia. / I have a widow aunt, a dowager / Of great revenue, and she hath no child: / From Athens is her house remote 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 lovest me then, / Steal forth thy fathers 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.

See reply from HERMIA

STAGE

Enter HELENA

HERMIA

God speed fair Helena! whither away?

HELENA

Call you me fair? that fair again unsay. / Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair! / Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongues sweet air / More tuneable than lark to shepherds ear, / 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, / My tongue should catch your tongues sweet melody. / Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, / The rest Id give to be to you translated. / O, teach me how you look, and with what art / You sway the motion of Demetrius heart.

HERMIA

I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.

HELENA

O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!

HERMIA

I give him curses, yet he gives me love.

HELENA

O that my prayers could such affection move!

HERMIA

The more I hate, the more he follows me.

HELENA

The more I love, the more he hateth me.

HERMIA

His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.

HELENA

None, but your beauty: would that fault were mine!

HERMIA

Take comfort: he no more shall see my face; / Lysander and myself will fly this place. / Before the time I did Lysander see, / Seemd Athens as a paradise to me: / O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, / That he hath turnd a heaven unto a hell!

See reply from LYSANDER and 1 more

STAGE

Exit HERMIA

LYSANDER

Helena, adieu: / As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!

STAGE

Exit

HELENA

How happy some oer 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 Hermias eyes, / So I, admiring of his qualities: / Things base and vile, folding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity: / Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; / And therefore is wingd Cupid painted blind: / Nor hath Loves mind of any judgement 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 every where: / For ere Demetrius lookd on Hermias eyne, / He haild down oaths that he was only mine; / And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, / So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt. / I will go tell him of fair Hermias 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.

STAGE

Exit / SCENE II. Athens. QUINCES house. / Enter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING