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.
[Exeunt.]
BOTTOM.
[Waking.] When my 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! God’s my life! Stol’n 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—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.
[Exit.]
SCENE II. Athens. A Room in Quince’s House
Enter Quince, Flute, Snout and Starveling.
QUINCE.
Have you sent to Bottom’s house? Is he come home yet?
STARVELING.
He cannot 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?