Part IV, Chapter 22: "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare, Act 1

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!

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!

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!

Go Philostrate,
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments,
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth

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.

Hippolyta, I wooed 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.

Full of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia.

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
With feigning voice, verses of feigning love,
And stol'n the impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gauds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats—messengers
Of strong prevailment in unhardened youth.

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
With feigning voice, verses of feigning love,
And stol'n the impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gauds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats—messengers
Of strong prevailment in unhardened youth.

With cunning hast thou filched my daughter's heart,
Turned her obedience, which is due to me,
To stubborn harshness.

With cunning hast thou filched my daughter's heart,
Turned her obedience, which is due to me,
To stubborn harshness.

I do entreat your Grace to pardon me.

But I beseech your Grace that I may know
The worst that may befall me in this case
If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

Either to die the death or to abjure
Forever 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 father's choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mewed,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.

Therefore fair Hermia, question your desires,
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mewed,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.

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

Upon that day either prepare to die
For disobedience to your father's will,
Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would,
Or on Diana's altar to protest
For aye, austerity and single life.

Relent, sweet Hermia, and Lysander, yield
Thy crazed title to my certain right.

Scornful Lysander, true, he hath my love:
And what is mine, my love shall render him.
And she is mine, and all my right of her
I do estate unto Demetrius.

Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena,
And won her soul: and she, sweet lady, dotes,
Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,
Upon this spotted and inconstant man.

For you fair Hermia, look you arm yourself,
To fit your fancies to your father's will;
Or else the law of Athens yields you up
(Which by no means we may extenuate)
To death or to a vow of single life.

Demetrius and Egeus, go along:
I must employ you in some business
Against our nuptial, and confer with you
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.

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

If then true lovers have been ever crossed,
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.

If thou lov'st me then,
Steal forth thy father's house tomorrow 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.

If thou lov'st me then,
Steal forth thy father's house tomorrow 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.

Things base and vile, folding no quantity.
Love can transpose to form and dignity.

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear:
So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.

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.

Enter Quince the Carpenter; and Snug the Joiner; and Bottom the Weaver; and Flute the Bellowsmender; and Snout the Tinker; and Starveling the Tailor.

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

A lover that kills himself, most gallant, for love.

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.

This was lofty. Now name the rest of the players.

You may do it extempore: for it is nothing but roaring.

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 and 'twere any nightingale.

I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfit yellow.

But masters here are your 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.