A Midsummer Night’s Dream quotes

In himself he is; But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice, The other must be held the worthier.

I would my father look’d but with my eyes.

Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

Ay me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth;

But, either it was different in blood—

Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, “Behold!” The jaws of darkness do devour it up:

So quick bright things come to confusion.

If then true lovers have ever cross’d, 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.

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so; He will not know what all but he do know: And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes, So I, admiring of his qualities:

Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind: Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:

Demetrius thinks not so; He will not know what all but he do know: And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes, So I, admiring of his qualities: Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind: Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is Love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

It is the lady that Pyramus must love.

Nay, faith, let not me play a woman; I have a beard coming.

That’s all one: you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will.

Have you the lion’s part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.

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

Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me; I will roar, that I will make the duke say “Let him roar again, let him roar again.”

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 an ’twere any nightingale.

You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a sweet-faced man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer’s day; a most lovely gentleman-like man: therefore you must needs play Pyramus.

Enter, from one side, Oberon, with his train; from the other, Titania, with hers.

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence: I have forsworn his bed and company.

The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees. Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

I’ll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes.

Exit.

Do I entice you? do I speak you fair? Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth Tell you, I do not, nor I cannot love you?

And even for that do I love you the more.

I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, The more you beat me, I will fawn on you: Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, Unworthy as I am, to follow you.

Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit, For I am sick when I do look on thee.

And I am sick when I look not on you.

You do impeach your modesty too much, To leave the city and commit yourself Into the hands of one that loves you not; To trust the opportunity of night And the ill counsel of a desert place With the rich worth of your virginity.

I’ll run from thee and hide me in the brakes, And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.

The wildest hath not such a heart as you.

Run when you will, the story shall be changed: Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase; The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind Makes speed to catch the tiger; bootless speed, When cowardice pursues and valour flies.

I pray thee, give it me.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:

I mean, that my heart unto yours is knit So that but one heart we can make of it; Two bosoms interchained with an oath; So then two bosoms and a single troth. Then by your side no bedroom me deny;

For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.

Lysander riddles very prettily: Now much beshrew my manners and my pride, If Hermia meant to say Lysander lied. But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy Lie further off;

O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence!

Love takes the meaning in love’s conference.

I mean, that my heart unto yours is knit So that but one heart we can make of it; Two bosoms interchained with an oath; So then two bosoms and a single troth. Then by your side no bedroom me deny;

Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?

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

Yes, it doth shine that night.

If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down, every mother’s son, and rehearse your parts. Pyramus, you begin: when you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake: and so everyone according to his cue.

What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here,

So near the cradle of the fairy queen? What, a play toward! I’ll be an auditor; An actor too perhaps, if I see cause.

Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand; And the youth, mistook by me, Pleading for a lover’s fee. Shall we their fond pageant see?

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Stand aside: the noise they make Will cause Demetrius to awake.

Then will two at once woo one; That must needs be sport alone;

And those things do best please me That befall preposterously.

Why should you think that I should woo in scorn? Scorn and derision never come in tears: Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, In their nativity all truth appears.

Disparage not the faith thou dost not know, Lest, to thy peril, thou aby it dear. Look, where thy love comes; yonder is thy dear.

Dark night, that from the eye his function takes, The ear more quick of apprehension makes;

Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense, It pays the hearing double recompense. Thou art not by mine eye, Lysander, found; Mine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound. But why unkindly didst thou leave me so?

No, no; he’ll Seem to break loose; take on as you would follow, But yet come not: you are a tame man, go!

Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! vile thing, let loose,

Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent!

she hath urged her height; And with her personage, her tall personage, Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him. And are you grown so high in his esteem, Because I am so dwarfish and so low?

How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;

How low am I? I am not yet so low But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.

O, when she’s angry, she is keen and shrewd! She was a vixen when she went to school;

And though she be but little, she is fierce.

“Little” again! nothing but “low” and “little”! Why will you suffer her to flout me thus? Let me come to her.

Yet but three? Come one more; Two of both kinds makes up four. Here she comes, curst and sad:

Cupid is a knavish lad, Thus to make poor females mad.

Never so weary, never so in woe, Bedabbled with the dew and torn with briers, I can no further crawl, no further go; My legs can keep no pace with my desires. Here will I rest me till the break of day.

Squeezing the juice on Lysander’s eyes. When thou wakest, Thou takest True delight In the sight Of thy former lady’s eye: And the country proverb known, That every man should take his own, In your waking shall be shown:

Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill;

The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well. Exit.

I had rather have 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.

Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away. Exeunt Fairies. So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist; the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. O, how I love thee!

My Oberon! what visions have I seen!

Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.

How came these things to pass? O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!

More strange than true: I never may believe These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination, That, if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Such tricks hath strong imagination, That, if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

But all the story of the night told over, And all their minds transfigured so together, More witnesseth than fancy’s images And grows to something of great constancy; But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

Reads. “The thrice three Muses mourning for the death Of Learning, late deceased in beggary.” That is some satire, keen and critical, Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. Reads. “A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.”

Merry and tragical! tedious and brief! That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.

How shall we find the concord of this discord?

He says they can do nothing in this kind.

The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.

Our sport shall be to take what they mistake: And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect Takes it in might, not merit. Where I have come, great clerks have purposed To greet me with premeditated welcomes;

The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.

Our sport shall be to take what they mistake:

And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect Takes it in might, not merit. Where I have come, great clerks have purposed To greet me with premeditated welcomes;

Trust me, sweet, Out of this silence yet I pick’d a welcome; And in the modesty of fearful duty I read as much as from the rattling tongue Of saucy and audacious eloquence.

Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity In least speak most, to my capacity.

So please your grace, the Prologue is address’d.

This fellow doth not stand upon points.

He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows not the stop.

A good moral, my lord: it is not enough to speak, but to speak true.

He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows not the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not enough to speak, but to speak true.

Indeed he hath played on his prologue like a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.

His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered. Who is next?

Indeed he hath played on his prologue like a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.

His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired, but all disordered.

Who is next?

This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.

The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.

It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.

Stabs himself. Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. Now am I dead, Now am I fled; My soul is in the sky: Tongue, lose thy light; Moon, take thy flight: Exit Moonshine. Now die, die, die, die, die. Dies.

No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one.

Less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing.

Less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing.

With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover, and prove an ass.

How chance Moonshine is gone before Thisbe comes back and finds her lover?

No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse.

Never excuse; for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed.

Marry, if he that writ it had played Pyramus and hanged himself in Thisbe’s garter, it would have been a fine tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very notably discharged. But, come, your Bergomask: let your epilogue alone. A dance.

Marry, if he that writ it had played Pyramus and hanged himself in Thisbe’s garter, it would have been a fine tragedy: and so it is, truly; and very notably discharged. But, come, your Bergomask: let your epilogue alone. A dance.

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve:

Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time. I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn As much as we this night have overwatch’d. This palpable-gross play hath well beguiled The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed.

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve:

Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time.

I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn As much as we this night have overwatch’d. This palpable-gross play hath well beguiled The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed. A fortnight hold we this solemnity, In nightly revels and new jollity. Exeunt.