PUCK.
My mistress with a monster is in love.
Near to her close and consecrated bower,
While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,
A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,
Were met together to rehearse a play
Intended for great Theseus’ nuptial day.
The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort
Who Pyramus presented in their sport,
Forsook his scene and enter’d in a brake.
When I did him at this advantage take,
An ass’s nole I fixed on his head.
Anon, his Thisbe must be answerèd,
And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,
As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun’s report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
So at his sight away his fellows fly,
And at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls;
He murder cries, and help from Athens calls.
Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears, thus strong,
Made senseless things begin to do them wrong;
For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch;
Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch.
I led them on in this distracted fear,
And left sweet Pyramus translated there.
When in that moment, so it came to pass,
Titania wak’d, and straightway lov’d an ass.
OBERON.
This falls out better than I could devise.
But hast thou yet latch’d the Athenian’s eyes
With the love-juice, as I did bid thee do?
PUCK.
I took him sleeping—that is finish’d too—
And the Athenian woman by his side,
That, when he wak’d, of force she must be ey’d.
Enter Demetrius and Hermia.
OBERON.
Stand close. This is the same Athenian.
PUCK.
This is the woman, but not this the man.
DEMETRIUS.
O why rebuke you him that loves you so?
Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.
HERMIA.
Now I but chide, but I should use thee worse,
For thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse.
If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep,
Being o’er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep,
And kill me too.
The sun was not so true unto the day
As he to me. Would he have stol’n away
From sleeping Hermia? I’ll believe as soon
This whole earth may be bor’d, and that the moon
May through the centre creep and so displease
Her brother’s noontide with th’ Antipodes.
It cannot be but thou hast murder’d him.
So should a murderer look, so dead, so grim.
DEMETRIUS.
So should the murder’d look, and so should I,
Pierc’d through the heart with your stern cruelty.
Yet you, the murderer, look as bright, as clear,
As yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere.
HERMIA.
What’s this to my Lysander? Where is he?
Ah, good Demetrius, wilt thou give him me?