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And all my powers address your love and might

To honour Helen, and to be her knight.

[Exit.

To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast!

HER. [starting.] Help me, Lysander, help me! do thy best,

Ah me, for pity!-what a dream was here!

Lysander, look how I do quake with fear!
Methought a serpent ate my heart away,
And you sat smiling at his cruel prey:
Lysander! what, remov'd? Lysander! lord!
What, out of hearing? gone? no sound, no word?
Alack, where are you? speak, an if you hear;
Speak, of all lovesa; I swoon almost with fear.
No?-then I well perceive you are not nigh:

Either death, or you, I'll find immediately.

[Exit.

a

Of all loves. We have this phrase in The Merry Wives of Windsor,' and in 'Othello.'

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k up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid."]

ACT III.

NE I.-The Wood. The Queen of Fairies lying asleep.

QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING.

all met?

t; and here's a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal : à plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our tyring-house; Il do it in action, as we will do it before the duke.

uince,

ay'st thou, bully Bottom?

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re things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby' that will never

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please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that?

b

SNOUT. By 'rlakina, a parlous fear.

STAR. I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.

Bor. Not a whit; I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue: and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords; and that Pyramus is not killed indeed: and, for the more better assurance, tell them, that I Pyramus am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: This will put them out of fear.

QUIN. Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be written in eight and six c.

BOT. No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.

SNOUT. Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?

STAR. I fear it, I promise you.

BOT. Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves: to bring in, God shield us! a lion among ladies, is a most dreadful thing15: for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion, living; and we ought to look to it. SNOUT. Therefore, another prologue must tell he is not a lion.

BOT. Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion's neck; and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect,-Ladies, or fair ladies, I would wish you, or I would request you, or I would entreat you, not to fear, not to tremble: my life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life: No, I am no such thing; I am a man as other men are: and there, indeed, let him name his name; and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner16.

QUIN. Well, it shall be so. But there is two hard things; that is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber: for you know, Pyramus and Thisby meet by moonlight.

SNUG. Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?

BOT. A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac; find out moonshine", find out moonshine.

QUIN. Yes, it doth shine that night.

BOT. Why, then may you leave a casement of the great chamber-window, where we play, open; and the moon may shine in at the casement.

QUIN. Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a lantern, and say, he comes to disfigure, or to present, the person of moonshine. Then there is another thing: we must have a wall in the great chamber; for Pyramus and Thisby, says the story, did talk through the chink of a wall. SNUG. You can never bring in a wall.-What say you, Bottom? Bor. Some man or other must present wall: and let him have some plaster, or some lome, or some rough-cast about him, to signify wall; or let him hold

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s thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisby

may be, then all is well. Come, sit down, every mother's son, se your parts. Pyramus, you begin: when you have spoken your cer into that brake; and so every one according to his cue.

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rry, must you: for you must understand he goes but to see at he heard, and is to come again.

Most radiant Pyramus, most lily white of hue,

Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier, Most brisky juvenal, and eke most lovely Jew,

As true as truest horse that yet would never tire, I'll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny's tomb.

tomb, man: Why, you must not speak that yet; that you answer ■s: you speak all your part at once, cues and all.-Pyramus, enter; s past; it is, never tire.

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cription of Bottom going "to see a noise" is akin to Sir Toby Belch's notion of nose." ('Twelfth Night,' Act II., Scene 3.)

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And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,

[Exit.

Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. Bor. Why do they run away? this is a knavery of them to make me afeard.

Re-enter SNOUT.

SNOUT. O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee?
BOT. What do you see? you see an ass-head of your own: Do you?

a

Re-enter QUINCE.

QUIN. Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art translated.

[Exit.

BOT. I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can: I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid.

The oosel-cock, so black of hue,

With orange-tawny bill 18,

The throstle with his note so true,

The wren with little quill;

[Sings.

TITA. What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

[Waking.

Bor. The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,

The plain-song cuckoo gray,

Whose note full many a man doth mark,

And dares not answer, nay

for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry cuckoo never so?

TITA. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:
Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;

So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;

And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me,

On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thees.

BOT. Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days: The

more the pity, that some honest neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, I can gleekd upon occasion.

TITA. Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.

BOT. Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.

Ass-head. So the quartos; and the folio, even more distinctly-" Asse-head."-The carefullest collation sometimes misses these small matters, and gives us "ass's head."

b With, in the quartos. The folio, and.

• This is the reading of the preceding five lines in the quarto printed by Fisher. In that by Roberts, and in the folio, two of the lines, namely, the third and fourth of Titania's speech, are transposed.

Gleek. This verb is generally used in the sense of to scoff; but we apprehend Bottom only means to say that he can joke.

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