A Midsummer Night's Dream - IPFW Department of Theatre

[Titania] Come, sit thee down upon this flow'ry bed,

While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,

And stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head,

And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.

[Bottom] Where's Peaseblossom?

[Peaseblossom] Ready!

[Bottom] Scratch my face, Peaseblossom.

Where's Monsieur Cobweb?

[Cobweb] Ready.

[Bottom] Ah, Monsieur Cobweb, good monsieur,

get you your weapons in hand,

and kill me a red-hipped humblebee on the top of a thistle;

And good monsieur,

Bring me the honey bag.

Do not fret yourself too much in the action of it, monsieur;

and, good monsieur ---

[Cobweb] WHAT?!!

[Bottom] Take care the honey bag break not.

I would be loath to have you overflown with honey, signior.

[Bottom] Where's Monsieur Mustardseed?

[Mustardseed] Mmmm. Ready!

[Bottom] Give me your neaf, Mustardseed.

[Mustardseed] What's your will?

[Bottom] Nothing!

But-- to help Cavalery Cobweb to scratch.

[Bottom] Ohhhh. I must to the barber's, methinks,

for I am marvelous hairy about the face,

and I am such a tender ass,

if a hair do but tickle me,

I must scratch.

Scratch.

Scraaaatch!

[Titania] What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?

[Bottom] I have a reasonable good ear in music.

Let's have the tongs and bones.

[music playing]

[music stops]

[Titania] Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat.

[Bottom] Truly, a peck of provender.

Or I could munch your good dry oats.

[trilling]

But, methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay.

Good hay, sweet hay,

hath no fellow.

[Titania] I have a venturous fairy that shall seek

The squirrel's hoard and fetch thee new nuts.

[Bottom] Oh, I pray you, I had rather a handful or two of dried peas.

But I pray you, let none of your people stir me:

I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.

[Titania] Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.

Fairies be gone, and be always away.

O, how I love thee!

How I dote on thee!

[Oberon] Welcome, good Robin.

See'st thou this sweet sight?

Her dotage now I do begin to pity:

For, meeting her of late behind the wood,

Seeking sweet favors for this hateful fool,

I then did ask of her her changeling child;

Which straight she gave me.

And now I have the boy, I will undo

This hateful imperfection of her eyes:

And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp

From off the head of this Athenian swain,

That, he waking when the others do,

May all to Athens back again repair,

And think no more of tonight's accidents,

But as the fierce vexation of a dream.

But first, I will release the Fairy Queen.

Be as thou wast wont to be;

See as thou wast wont to see.

Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower

Hath such force and blessed power.

Now, my Titania, wake you, my sweet Queen.

[Titania] My Oberon, what visions have I seen!

Methought I was enamored of an ass.

[Oberon] There lies your love.

[Titania] Ah! How came these things to pass?

O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!

[Oberon] Silence awhile.

Robin, take off this head.

And Titania, music call; and strike more dead

Than common sleep of all these five the sense.

[Titania] Music, ho!

Music such as charmeth sleep!

[Puck] Now when thou wak'st,

with thine own fool's eyes peep.

[Oberon] Sound, music!

Come my Queen, take hands with me,

And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.

[music]

[Oberon] Now thou and I are new in amity,

And will tomorrow midnight solemnly

Dance in Duke Theseus' house triumphantly.

There shall the faithful pairs of lovers be

Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity.

[bird crowing]

[Puck] Fairy King, attend, and mark:

I do hear the morning lark.

[Oberon] Come my Queen, in silence sad,

Trip we after night's shade.

We the globe can compass soon,

Swifter than the wandering moon.

[Titania] Come, my lord; and in our flight,

Tell me how it came this night,

That I sleeping here was found

With these mortals on the ground.

[Theseus] Go, Philostrate, find out the forester,

For now our observation is performed;

And since we have the vaward of the day,

My love shall hear the music of my hounds.

We will, fair Queen, up to the mountaintop,

And mark the musical confusion

Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,

When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear with hounds of Sparta.

Never did I hear such gallant chiding.

I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

[Theseus] My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind.

A cry more tunable was never cheered.

Judge when you hear.

But soft.

What nymphs are these?

[Egeus] My lord, this is my daughter here asleep;

And this Lysander;

And this Demetrius is;

And this Helena, old Nedar's Helena.

I wonder of their being here together.

[Theseus] No doubt they rose up early,

to observe the rite of May;

and hearing of our intent, came here in grace of our solemnities.

Speak.

Egeus!

Is not this the day that Hermia should give answer of her choice?

It is, my Lord.

[Theseus] Go, bid the hunters wake them with their horns.

[horns blaring]

[Theseus] Good morrow, friends.

Saint Valentine is past.

Begin these wood birds but to couple now?

I bid you all, stand up!

[Lysander] Pardon, my lord.

[Theseus] I know you two are rival enemies.

How comes this gentle concord in the world,

That hatred is so far from jealousy,

To sleep by hate and fear no enmity?

[Lysander] My lord, I shall reply amazedly,

Half sleeping, half waking, but as yet, I swear,

I cannot truly say how I came here.

But, as I think, for truly I would speak,

I came with Hermia hither.

Our intent was to be gone from Athens,

Where we might, without the peril of Athenian law--

[Egeus] Enough! Enough my lord! You have enough.

I beg the law, the law upon his head.

They would have stolen away,

They would, Demetrius, thereby to have defeated you and me,

You of your wife and me of my consent,

Of my consent that she should be your wife.

My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,

Of this, their purpose hither to this wood,

And I, in fury, hither followed them.

Fair Helena in fancy following me.

But, my good lord, I wot not by what power--

--but by some power it is --

my love to Hermia melted as the snow.

And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,

The object and pleasure of mine eye,

Is only Helena.

To her, my lord, was I betrothed ere I saw Hermia.

But, like a sickness did I loathe this food;

But, as in health, come to my natural taste.

Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,

And will forevermore be true to it.

[Theseus] Fair lovers, you are fortunately met.

Of this discourse we more will hear anon.

Egeus, I will overbear your will.

For in the temple, by and by, with us,

These couples shall be eternally knit.

Away with us to Athens.

Three and three, we'll hold a feast in great solemnity.

[Theseus] Come Hippolyta.

[Demetrius] These things seem small and undistinguishable,

like far-off mountains turned into clouds.

[Hermia] Methinks I see these things with parted eye,

When everything seems double.

[Helena] So methinks.

And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,

Mine own and not mine own.

[Demetrius] Are you sure that we are awake?

It seems to me that we sleep, we dream.

Do not you think the Duke was here,

and bid us follow him?

[Hermia] Yea, and my father.

[Helena] And Hippolyta.

[Lysander] And he did bid us follow to the temple.

[Demetrius] Why then, we are awake.

Let's follow him.

And by the way, let us recount our dreams.

[Bottom] When my next cue comes, call me, and I will answer.

My next is, "Most fair Pyramus".

Heigh-ho.

Peter Quince?

Flute, the bellows mender?

Snout, the tinker?

Starveling?

Ah!

Oh.

God's my life, stolen hence and left me asleep.

I have had a most rare vision.

I have had a dream, past the wit of man

to say what dream it was.

Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream.

Methought I was --

but there is no man can tell what.

Methought I was -- and methought I had --

but man is but a patched fool if he offer to say what methought I had.

The ear of man hath not seen.

The eye of man hath not heard.

Man's hand is not able to taste,

not his tongue to conceive,

nor his heart to report what my dream was.

I will get Peter Quince to write me a ballet of this dream.

And it shall be called "Bottom's Dream",

for it hath no bottom.

And, I shall sing it at the latter end of our play before the Duke.

Peradventure to make it the more gracious,

I shall sing it at her death.

Peter Quince! Peter Quince!

Where are these lads? Where are these hearts?

[Quince] Have you sent to Bottom's house?

Is he come home yet?

[Starveling] He can not be heard of.

Out of doubt he is transported.

[Flute] If he come not, then the play is marred.

It goes not forward, doth it?

[Quince] It is not possible.

You have not a man in all Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he.

[Flute] No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in Athens.

[Quince] Yea, and the best person too;

and he is a very paramour for a sweet voice.

[Flute] You must say "paragon."

A paramour is, God bless us, a thing of nought.

[Snug] Masters, the Duke is coming from the temple,

and there are two and three more laird lords and ladies married.

Oh.

If our sport had gone forward, we had all been made men.

[Flute] O sweet bully Bottom.

Thus he hath lost sixpence a day during his life.

He could have not scaped sixpence a day.

And the Duke would not have given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus,

I'll be hanged.

He would have deserved it.

Sixpence a day in Pyramus or nothing.

[Bottom singing, off-stage] The throstle with his note so true,

The wren with little quill,

[all singing] The finch, the sparrow and the lark,

The plain-song cuckoo gray,

Whose note so many a man doth mark,

And dares not answer nay!

[all yelling and exclaiming]

[Bottom] Masters, masters, I am to discourse wonders;

but ask me not what, for if I tell you, I am no true Athenian.

[all exclaiming]

[Bottom] I will tell you everything, right as it fell out.

[Quince] Let us hear, sweet Bottom.

[Bottom] Not a word of me.

All I will tell you is that the Duke hath dined.

Every man look o'er his part and meet presently at the palace.

Every man gather his apparel together, for,

the long and the short of it is:

Our play is preferred!

[all cheering]

Let Thisby have clean linen.

And let not him who plays the lion pare his nails,

for they shall hang out for lion's claws.

And, most dear actors, eat no garlic or onions...

... for we are to utter sweet breath,

and I do not doubt but to hear them say

it is a most sweet comedy.

Well, no more words!

Away! Go away! Go away!

Roar!