A Midsummer Night’s Dream, April 23, 2024

AMND – The title page from the first quarto, printed in 1600.

We were celebrating the 460th birth anniversary of William Shakespeare. Many of us will remember the major way in which KRG celebrated the 450th birth anniversary with a week-long festival at David Hall, beginning with an opening ceremony on April 21, 2014.

This comedy from 1595 has one plot line about the marriage of Theseus, ruler of Athens, with Hippolyta, and two sub-plots. The major sub-plot involves two pairs of lovers who are confused about whom to marry because of the magical love juice spread by Puck, at the command of Oberon, King of the Fairies. The other sub-plot is a play within the play conducted by rough working men called ‘mechanicals’ concerning the story of Pyramus and Thisbe which they want to perform for the wedding ceremony of Theseus. Puck’s character is so memorable that ‘puckish’ has become a word to express playful humour.

The business about the wall in the play (the occasion for a very rude scene) is because Pyramus and Thisbe as mentioned by Ovid lived next-door to each other and spoke through the adjoining wall, after being forbidden by their parents to marry. The origin of the Romeo and Juliet story also lies in the same tale of Ovid.

We see many kinds of love on display: unrequited love (between Helena and Demetrius), love quarrels: (between Oberon and Titania). There’s passionate love too, parental love and mad sexual love. Shakespeare depicted them all in this short play. But one thing is assured:

The course of true love never did run smooth (Lysander)

Theseus speaks another truth:

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.

                                                                      

Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Titania and Bottom (1848) painting by Edwin Landseer.

We even hear Bottom (the working man player who becomes the ass of Titania’s affections) exclaim after his other-worldly experience in fairyland:

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.

He is employing a vision of St Paul from the first letter to the Corinthians, verse 2:9, expressing the epiphany that will be revealed to the blessed in the life to come, surpassing all human imagination. Though, being Bottom, he gets the quotation mixed up between ear and eye. Incidentally, the name Bottom comes from the next verse in Tyndale’s translation of the Bible (recall that the St James version came only after Shakespeare’s death): 

But God hath opened them vnto vs by his sprete.

For ye sprete searcheth all thinges ye the bottome of Goddes secretes.

(In the KJV this is rendered

But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.)

After many mixups and fruitless pursuits Oberon intervenes with more love juice to pair the correct lovers, and his own beloved Titania too has been cured of her fascination for the ‘changeling’ and is content to please her husband with a gift of the boy.

All is well and the working men with their play and the lovers with their new-found happiness grace the occasion of the duke’s wedding. 

Puck delivers the parting oration

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber'd here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend:

if you pardon, we will mend:

You have but slumber'd here

Full Account of the Reading Session

Kavita

Egeus is so callous, there's no feeling for his daughter. He's ready to execute her. Oh my God! – exclaimed Kavita. She felt so sad. And just because she's in love with somebody the father didn't choose.

This is what happens –  recall the honour killings in North India. Even in Kerala we've had similar heartlessness. A Christian girl got married to somebody from a lower caste. They killed him. 

HERMIA: I would my father look'd but with my eyes.

THESEUS: Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

In the scene that Kavita chose at the beginning of the play, a patriarchal father Egeus, is aggrieved that his daughter Hermia does not wish to marry the man he chose for her (Demetrius), but insists on another equally worthy one she has fallen in love with (Lysander). The ruler before whom the complaint is brought seems inclined to apply the rule of tradition by which fathers get to choose the bridegroom, and advises the daughter to fall in line. 

This is the exchange:

HERMIA
I would my father look'd but with my eyes.

THESEUS
Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

If she demurs, her punishment will be to spend her life in a nunnery.

Pamela

Pamela chose Helena's soliloquy in Act 1, Scene 1 of AMND. She said she chose a soliloquy because she herself does this sometimes, namely, speaking aloud one's thoughts regardless of listeners being present. Another reason was that Pamela has been in the situation of Helena.

Helena is distraught and frustrated that the person she likes, Demetrius, is now in love with her best friend, Hermia. By all accounts Helena is “as fair” as Hermia and the whole affair makes no sense! What makes it worse is that he used to “hail down oaths” that he was in love with Helena.

Please refer to https://prezi.com/pe99gr5t5qyz/helena-soliloquy/

Pamela liked the analogy of hail to Demetrius' oaths of loyalty to Helena. Helena is trying to say that Hermia has trapped Demetrius into her love net, which is why he doesn't love Helena, believing that Demetrius has built up a fantastic notion of Hermia's beauty that prevents him from recognising Helena's own beauty. See

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/a-midsummer-nights-dream/play-summary

Besides emphasising the arbitrary nature of love, Helena also highlights the gender differences that vex women. Unlike men who can woo whomever they please, women are by tradition not allowed to fight for love; instead, they must passively wait (or flutter eyelashes) until the man of their dreams notices them. Helena described love as “a blind child” because the lover is misled into making a choice and can't see what he or she is getting into.

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

And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind

The lines in the soliloquy sound like an aphorism:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
This caught the attention of Pamela as she herself had experienced rejection from prospective grooms because they looked only with their eyes and not at all with their minds. Pamela said that being rejected didn't exasperate her as they were not rejecting her as a person. They didn't bother to learn about her mind. Most young grooms look only with their eyes. Colour, height, and the amount of dowry is what's on the mind of prospective grooms, calculating as they are.

So the above aphorism is very apt, to teach the contrary lesson. How many of us would be married if our partners were only looking with the eyes, without reflecting on other qualities of equal importance? 

But she was fortunate to find someone who cared not for externals, not for beauty, not for money, but valued her education. KumKum asked did Pamela's husband not value her as a singer?

Helena uses personification in these lines, giving love itself the power to look. She gives love the power of sight and implies that love has a mind of its own. Helena expresses her view of love thus:
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

Pamela is full of admiration for Shakespeare for having mined the mind of a woman in love!

Devika

Devika felt her passage on the conversation between a Fairy and Puck was very bubbly. Saras said they talk about a boy stolen from India. Had India just come onto the world map then? Saras was curious because it was always called Hindustan, wasn't it?

Puck – she as her attendant hath 

A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king

Saras  was quite curious about that actually. Pamela said, no, the land beyond the river Indus was known as India. India pronounced as Inde, Indus; it later became India. It was the land beyond the river Indus, that's what it meant.

Saras thought that though there was trade with India it could not have been so well-known to Shakespeare's audience in the late 1500s.

Pamela said there was the sea-borne spice trade between the Romans and the Arabs with the West coast of India for more than 2000 years. That trade with India must have been well known. You can read about the Muziris excavation where there is evidence from the first century annals of Pliny, the Elder, that Muziris on the Malabar coast could be reached in 14 days sailing from the Red Sea ports in Egyptian coast. 

Thomo said Hindustan was a much later term, at least in Europe. It's only after they got used to the place that they started writing Hindustan. One may ask why they called the Caribbean islands the West Indies. They were looking for India. So too the Western explorer Columbus thought to find India by sailing west and came across N America, landing first in the Bahamas after sailing west for 10 weeks from Spain. Christopher Columbus was looking for India.

Wiki says (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_India):

The name "India" is originally derived from the name of the river Sindhu (Indus River) and has been in use in Greek since Herodotus (5th century BCE). The term appeared in Old English as early as the 9th century and reemerged in Modern English in the 17th century.

In Latin, India is used by Roman writer Lucian (2nd century CE). India was known in Old English language and was used in King Alfred's translation of Paulus Orosius. In Middle English, the name was, under French influence, replaced by Ynde or Inde, which entered Early Modern English as “Indie.” The name "India" then came back to English usage from the 17th century onward, and may be due to the influence of Latin, or Spanish or Portuguese. Pamela mentioned this.

   Saras          

The main theme of AMND is love in its many forms. Love can be fickle and changeable but true love is enduring.

"The course of true love never did run smooth"

says Lysander in Act1, Scene1. Love can be unrequited as is Helena’s love for Demetrius, or that of Demetrius for Hermia. It can also be a jealous love like that of Oberon for Titania.

The passage Saras chose was from Act 2, Sc 1 where Titania attributes all that is wrong in the world to the disagreement that Oberon and she have regarding the sole possession of her ward, a ‘changeling’ child.

It's quite curious that through an entire passage like this, the actors, or actor (in those days women did not act on the stage), they had to hold the attention of this entire crowd of people with a passage like this, which has very little drama in it. So it has to be all contributed by the person who's acting.

Here Shakespeare also mentions the unusual changes in weather the world experiences, climate change was clearly evident even then!

Saras was intrigued by the mention of India, where the changeling child is from:

A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;

Shakespeare mentions sandy deserts, so it was perhaps Rajasthan he had in mind? What is fascinating is that at a time when communications were slow, distances vast, and travel took so long, Shakespeare mentions a country which would be exotic and unknown to the majority of the play-goers. A document titled: Bengal as Shakespeare's India and the Stolen Indian Boy - The Historical Dark Matter of A Midsummer Night's Dream, suggests a tavern conversation took place between Shakespeare and the explorer Ralph Fitch who travelled and explored India for several years beginning 1583, at the behest of London merchants anxious to trade in spices. This meeting took place in one of the many taverns in the Bishopsgate area of London sometime between 1591 and 1595. 

Saras also wondered about the classical references in Shakespeare’s plays – would the common uneducated man of those times understand them? Joe said that Shakespeare's plays had plenty of lewd and vulgar dialogue with a lot of double entendres which made them very popular with the crowds. Much of it is lost to the modern reader as the pronunciation and meanings of words have changed since Elizabethan times.

KumKum said in the olden days, she never understood the Urdu-rich dialogue of Hindi cinema. Nowadays, you see it in translation on the screen at home with streaming movies, which is lovely. Yet we got used to going to see Hindi movies, because of the spectacular drama and scenes that captivated us.

Titania – These are the forgeries of jealousy

Consider the passage as it begins:

These are the forgeries of jealousy:

And never, since the middle summer's spring,

Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,

By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.

Pamela commented that if we had to speak like this now, people would say: can you be more simple? Or some girls might say, “Oh, he's too mushy.”  Talitha will recall we had a session in which somebody asked whether we can translate Shakespeare to local languages. Talitha replied. “Oh, yes, it has been done, WS has been translated into scores of languages.”

If you're wondering whether all the people who went to watch the plays were common people, they were not, opined Talitha. There was this group of groundlings up front who'd be standing and eating oranges and nuts and having a good time. Then you had people on the tiers going up who were more educated and would have understood Graeco-Roman mythology. You need to have a classical education for that.

The common folk might not even have been educated, but they would have been able to read and write if they came to the plays. Their whole attraction would be, as Kumkum said, the interplay of emotion and the dramatic action on stage.

Joe added something that is not taught in schools and took him a long time finding out, and a lot of reading. It was not until he came across a book called Shakespeare's Bawdy by Eric Partridge, that he realised how coarse the actual language is in many, in fact, in all of the plays, including Romeo and Juliet, that luscious play of romance. There is plenty of erotic stuff in it.

In fact, in AMND, that whole scene of the wall is completely lewd if you understood the meaning of it. We don't understand today without helpful annotation, because there's all kinds of anal stuff, pubic hair and so on.

Today we don't understand many of Shakespeare's puns, because unfortunately,  many of the puns cease to be puns since the pronunciation has changed. Joe will refer to this when he comes to the passage he is going to recite.

For example, in Romeo and Juliet, Prof David Crystal points out that there is a phrase right at the beginning in the prologues when the actual dispute between the Montagues and the Capulets is introduced, 

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;

This is a pun that refers to the lovers’ fatal blood lines and their physical relationship. L-O-I-N-S was pronounced ‘lines’ in those days. So this is a pun on the genealogical lines, as well as the blood lines of these two people.

There is so much earthy stuff in Shakespeare that it's a pity we don't teach it, because therein lies a lot of ribald humour.

I mean, Shakespeare does not hesitate to write about farting, pissing, swear words relating to the genital organs, and so on.  Everything is there. The playwright and poet was a capacious person who took in the entire universe in which he moved – and dramatised it, writing the witty stuff in iambic pentameter.

We lose some of it because the pronunciation is different. And don't understand some of the jokes, unless the text is annotated. That wall scene – modern pornography pales beside what he describes in those few lines.

Saras said “This is why I like KRG, because all these thoughts come to the fore; when one is reading, you can't discuss it with somebody, but in KRG, we are so free, we can talk about all these things.”

Saras thanked Joe, for this (bawdy) understanding.

Kumkum

KumKum chose this scene from Act 2, Scene 1 because she found it very tragic, how a "hard-hearted adamant" young man could be so cruel. The woman Helena has been jilted by her beau after he had fallen in love with Hermia, though Hermia did not return his love. Things have not changed since Shakespeare's time. KumKum thought this sort of love triangle continues to happen. Helena’s condition is supposed to be known as the jilted lover's syndrome. When a man or a woman suffers from this syndrome, he/she acts irrationally. Here KumKum noted how irrational Helena was. She even likens herself to a pet spaniel dog of Demetrius!

 

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.
What worser place can I beg in your love,--
And yet a place of high respect with me,--
Than to be used as you use your dog?

I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius, The more you beat me, I will fawn on you

This scene highlights the themes of unrequited love, pursuit, and desperation. Helena's relentless pursuit of Demetrius underscores the complexities of desire and the irrational nature of romantic longing. Demetrius's rejection of Helena and his
single-minded pursuit of Hermia add tension and propel the plot forward, setting the stage for the magical interventions and transformations orchestrated by Oberon and Puck later in the play.

The dialogue between Demetrius and Helena in Act 2, Scene 1 lays the groundwork for the intricate love entanglements that drive the comedic and fantastical elements of the play, ultimately leading to resolution and reconciliation in the enchanted world of the fairy realm.

Here are some beautiful lines from the play:

To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,
A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal,
Through Athens' gates have we devised to steal.

Joe

Here is Joe’s take on the passage from AMND –

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

It is not because Joe is a lover of flowers that he chose this passage, but because he was always struck by the lively way in which poets describe flowers. Perhaps this is the first such passage he came across in poetry that waxed so eloquent, but later he met poets like Vikram Seth who were on par, for example in his sonnet 12.5 from The Golden Gate:
It’s spring! Melodious and fragrant
Pear blossoms bloom and blanch the trees,
While pink and ravishing and fragrant
Quince burst in shameless colonies
On woody bushes, and the slender
Yellow oxalis, brief and tender,
Brilliant as mustard, sheets the ground,
And blue jays croak, and all around
Iris and daffodil are sprouting
With such assurance that the shy
Grape hyacinth escapes the eye,
And spathes of Easter lilies, flouting
Nomenclature, now effloresce
In white and Lenten loveliness.

In 14 lines reference is made tellingly to 7 flowers in their characteristic livery. The 590 sonnets of The Golden Gate are in iambic tetrameter and follow the so-called Onegin stanza.

Here are the flowers below ranged according to Oberon’s list:

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: 

Wild thyme (Thymus polytrichus) is a low-growing, spreading, mat-forming perennial which has a strong scent when crushed

Oxlip or oxlip primrose plant, oxlip (Primula elatior) is a member of the primrose family, commonly confused with a related primula known as cowslip (P. veris), which is looks similar but has smaller, bright yellow flowers with red dots

Violets are beloved for their dainty five-petalled flowers that are borne in profusion in spring (Viola odorata)

Woodbine, also known as honeysuckle – climbing varieties (lonicera) bear sumptuous, often sweetly scented blooms from early summer to autumn

Musk rose – aka rosa moschata, flowers in late summer and lasts into autumn. Ravishing is their scent, which travels far and is most potent at dusk. 

Eglantine roses (Rosa eglanteria) or sweetbriar  are large and sprawling, with single pale pink flowers in late spring and early summer. They are strongly apple-scented and their hips are popular for use in tea. 

Shakespeare here and elsewhere when he wanted to be poetic wrote in iambic pentameter, though he is not meticulously observant of the meter. The passage is written iambic couplets (so-called heroic couplets) for the most part.

Before Joe read the passage he made a well-known observation that the pronunciation (called Original Pronunciation) in Shakespeare’s time was different in respect of many words from Modern English.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s

You can also follow a podcast on the Folger Shakespeare library to understand what you get extra as dramatic return from declaiming WS in OP.

David Crystal, the British linguist, points out that there are rhymes and puns in the plays that don’t work in Modern English, but do work in OP, the Original Pronunciation. He gives the example of the Introduction to Romeo &Juliet where the pronunciation of ‘loins’ as ‘lines’ in OP makes clear the pun between genealogical lines of descent and physical loins from which children arise.

Two households both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;

More important, two-thirds of Shakespeare’s sonnets have rhymes that don’t work in Modern English, that do work in OP. e.g. Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
...
That sonnet ends with the couplet

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Joe mentioned this because the rhyming words p-r-o-v-e and l-o-ve occur in the stanza he was about to read, and in OP ‘prove’ was pronounced like ‘love.’

After he read the passage Joe said what he loved is the fact that all of this exotic scene of flowers is just imagined in the mind. It's not anywhere except in the mind. It's not like an artist who goes out with his easel to the river or the field somewhere and paints what he sees and the trees – this stuff is all imagination.

And it's wonderful how a poet can marry words to the imagination, an imagination that is so rich in detail beyond what ordinary mortals possess. It's the marriage of the rich imagination with euphonious words that makes it sound so exquisite when recited that it simply thrills you.

If you listen to this very short passage, (but you have to hear it from a proper actor on the stage, like Ian McKellen here) and then you will be ravished too.

Talitha added a note to this passage. Even ordinary words take on unfamiliar meanings, for instance 

the snake throws her enamell'd skin,

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:

You might wonder what weed is – here weed means clothes. It does not have the modern meaning of cannabis.

Geetha & Thomo                                                                                                                      

 

The passage chosen by Geetha and Thomo has Bottom, the actor among the ‘mechanicals’ (craftsmen) who will play Pyramus, taken up as a lover by Titania deceived by the love-juice of Puck. The craftsmen meet in the woods to rehearse their play. Out of a sense of delicacy toward the noble ladies in front of whom they will be performing, Bottom declares that certain elements of the play must be changed. He fears that the suicide of Pyramus and the lion’s roaring will frighten the ladies and lead to the actors’ being executed. The other men share Bottom’s concern, and they decide to write a prologue explaining that the lion is not really a lion nor the sword really a sword, and assuring the ladies that no one will really die. They decide also to clarify that the story takes place at night and that Pyramus and Thisbe are separated by a wall; hence, one actor must play the wall and another the moonlight by carrying a bush and a lantern.


As the craftsmen rehearse, Bottom steps momentarily out of view of the others, and Puck transforms Bottom’s head into that of an ass. When the ass-headed Bottom re-enters the scene, the other men become terrified and run for their lives. Delighting in the mischief, Puck chases after them. Bottom, perplexed, remains behind.

In the meantime, Titania wakes up and sees the ass headed Bottom and exclaims, What angel wakes me from my flow’ry bed? 

Titania and Bottom, painting by Henry Fuseli, c.1790, Tate Gallery

She instantly falls in love with Bottom because Oberon, her disgruntled husband, has sprinkled the love juice on her eyelids as she slept. 

The fairies’ magic is one of the main components of the dreamlike atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and it is integral to the plot’s progression. It throws love increasingly out of balance and brings the farce into its most frenzied state. With the four Athenian youths’ love affairs already entangled by the potion, Shakespeare creates further havoc by generating a romance across groups, as the fairy Titania falls in love with the asininity of Bottom. 

Obviously, the delicate fairy queen is no romantic match for the clumsy, monstrous craftsman. Shakespeare develops this romance with fantastic aplomb and heightens the comedy of the incongruity by making Bottom fully unaware of his transformed state. Rather, Bottom is so self-confident that he finds it fairly unremarkable that the beautiful fairy queen should wish desperately to become his lover. Further, his ironic reference to his colleagues as asses and his hunger for hay emphasise the ridiculousness of his lofty self-estimation.

Arundhaty

The dominant theme in A Midsummer Night's Dream is love, a subject to which Shakespeare returns time and again in his comedies. Shakespeare explores how people tend to fall in love with those who appear beautiful to them. Those whom we loved at one time in our lives can later seem not only unattractive, but even repellent. This attraction to beauty might appear to be love at its most intense for a while, but the play reveals that real love is much more than mere physical attraction.

At one level, the story of the four young Athenians asserts (in Lysander’s words) 

The course of true love never did run smooth.

But in the end love triumphs, bringing happiness and harmony in its wake. 

Puck is known as Robin Goodfellow, a common name for the devil in Elizabethan lore — whom some view as fun-loving nature spirits, aligned with a benevolent Mother Nature. Puck in modern times has come to stand for a naughty sense of ‘puckish’  humour. 

Puck applying the love juice to a lover's eyes in the forest

Shakespeare explores nature's enchanting role in providing love juices that make a person yield in love to the first person they set eyes upon waking.  These love potions drive the true lovers apart at first, and then Oberon has it all set right by Puck.

In the passage Arundhaty chose, Oberon, the King of the fairies, bids Puck to lead the two wrangling lovers, Lysander and Demetrius, astray because they are challenging each other to a fight.

Puck pretends to be one or the other of them and misdirects them through the forest until they are tired and exhausted. The plan is to bring all four lovers together, put the crushed herb of love juices into their eyes when they are tired and asleep, so that when they wake all will be well. 

Arundhaty noted that yu can learn a lot of gaalis (abuse) from WS. We all enjoyed the singing of certain passages by Thomo, as Kavita remarked.

Talitha

Talitha chose these famous lines near the end of the play which deal with the imagination, shaping fantasy, the lunatic, the lover and the poet, etc. – all this is very eloquently set forth by Theseus.

We hear WS say in the words of  Theseus:

The lunatic, the lover and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One should look out for all the references to imagination and fantasy.

Act 5 scene 1 of AMND shows us Theseus and Hippolyta reflecting on that night's events in front of their high-born attendants. 

Theseus and Hippolyta Find the Lovers, from A Midsummer Night's Dream – painting by Francis Wheatley (British, 1747–1801)

Theseus is the voice of masculine authority and of “cool reason”, dismissing the events of the night as mere figments of fancy, but the irony of the situation is that he is wrong and Hippolyta is right.

Hippolyta, though as baffled as Theseus by the lovers' stories, senses an underlying coherence behind otherwise disparate – seeming reports. It argues for more than “fancy's images.” The audience knows that the fairies' machinations behind the scenes is real, even if the fairies were created by the “poet's pen.”

We may be seeing Shakespeare's ability to laugh at himself here as he pictures the “poet's eye” rolling in a “fine frenzy” and giving shape and substance to “airy nothing.”

Readings

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Act 1, Sc 1 – Kavita

EGEUS

Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke!

THESEUS

Thanks, good Egeus: what's the news with thee?

EGEUS

Full of vexation come I, with complaint

Against my child, my daughter Hermia.

Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,

This man hath my consent to marry her.

Stand forth, Lysander: and my gracious duke,

This man hath bewitch'd the bosom of my child;

Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,

And interchanged love-tokens with my child:

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,

With feigning voice verses of feigning love,

And stolen the impression of her fantasy

With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,

Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers

Of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth:

With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's heart,

Turn'd her obedience, which is due to me,

To stubborn harshness: and, my gracious duke,

Be it so she; will not here before your grace

Consent to marry with Demetrius,

I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,

As she is mine, I may dispose of her:

Which shall be either to this gentleman

Or to her death, according to our law

Immediately provided in that case.

THESEUS

What say you, Hermia? be advised fair maid:

To you your father should be as a god;

One that composed your beauties, yea, and one

To whom you are but as a form in wax

By him imprinted and within his power

To leave the figure or disfigure it.

Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

HERMIA

So is Lysander.

THESEUS

In himself he is;

But in this kind, wanting your father's voice,

The other must be held the worthier.

HERMIA

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

THESEUS

Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

HERMIA

I do entreat your grace to pardon me.

I know not by what power I am made bold,

Nor how it may concern my modesty,

In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;

But I beseech your grace that I may know

The worst that may befall me in this case,

If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

THESEUS

Either to die the death or to abjure

For ever 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 mew'd,

To live a barren sister all your life,

Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon. 

Act 1, Sc 1 – Pamela

HELENA

How happy some o'er other some can be!

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, folding 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 judgement 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.

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,

So the boy Love is perjured every where:

For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,

He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;

And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,

So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.

I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:

Then to the wood will he to-morrow night

Pursue her; and for this intelligence

If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:

But herein mean I to enrich my pain,

To have his sight thither and back again.

Exit

Act 2, Sc 1 – Devika

Enter, from opposite sides, a Fairy, and PUCK

PUCK

How now, spirit! whither wander you?

FAIRY

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

I do wander everywhere,

Swifter than the moon's sphere;

And I serve the fairy queen,

To dew her orbs upon the green.

The cowslips tall her pensioners be:

In their gold coats spots you see;

Those be rubies, fairy favours,

In those freckles live their savours:

I must go seek some dewdrops here

And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I'll be gone:

Our queen and all our elves come here anon.

PUCK

The king doth keep his revels here to-night:

Take heed the queen come not within his sight;

For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,

Because that she as her attendant hath

A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;

She never had so sweet a changeling;

And jealous Oberon would have the child

Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;

But she perforce withholds the loved boy,

Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:

And now they never meet in grove or green,

By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,

But, they do square, that all their elves for fear

Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.

FAIRY

Either I mistake your shape and making quite,

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite

Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he

That frights the maidens of the villagery;

Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern

And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;

And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;

Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,

You do their work, and they shall have good luck:

Are not you he?

PUCK

Thou speak'st aright;

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon and make him smile

When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:

And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,

In very likeness of a roasted crab,

And when she drinks, against her lips I bob

And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.

The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,

Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;

Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,

And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;

And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,

And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear

A merrier hour was never wasted there.

But, room, fairy! here comes Oberon.

Fairy

And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!

Act 2, Sc 1 – Saras

TITANIA

These are the forgeries of jealousy:

And never, since the middle summer's spring,

Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,

By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which falling in the land

Have every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents:

The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;

The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green

For lack of tread are undistinguishable:

The human mortals want their winter here;

No night is now with hymn or carol blest:

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger, washes all the air,

That rheumatic diseases do abound:

And thorough this distemperature we see

The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,

And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which:

And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension;

We are their parents and original.

Act 2, Sc 1 – KumKum

DEMETRIUS

I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.

Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?

The one I'll slay, the other slayeth me.

Thou told'st me they were stolen unto this wood;

And here am I, and wode within this wood,

Because I cannot meet my Hermia.

Hence, get thee gone, and

 follow me no more.

HELENA

You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;

But yet you draw not iron, for my heart

Is true as steel: leave you your power to draw,

And I shall have no power to follow you.

DEMETRIUS

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?

HELENA

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.

What worser place can I beg in your love,--

And yet a place of high respect with me,--

Than to be used as you use your dog?

DEMETRIUS

Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit;

For I am sick when I do look on thee.

HELENA

And I am sick when I look not on you.

DEMETRIUS

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.

HELENA

Your virtue is my privilege: for that

It is not night when I do see your face,

Therefore I think I am not in the night;

Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,

For you in my respect are all the world:

Then how can it be said I am alone,

When all the world is here to look on me?

DEMETRIUS

I'll run from thee and hide me in the brakes,

And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.

HELENA

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.

Act 2, Sc 1 – Joe

OBERON

Fare thee well, nymph: ere he do leave this grove,

Thou shalt fly him and he shall seek thy love.

Re-enter PUCK

Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.

PUCK

Ay, there it is.

OBERON

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:

And with the juice of this I'll streak her eyes,

And make her full of hateful fantasies.

Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:

A sweet Athenian lady is in love

With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes;

But do it when the next thing he espies

May be the lady: thou shalt know the man

By the Athenian garments he hath on.

Effect it with some care, that he may prove

More fond on her than she upon her love:

And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.

PUCK

Fear not, my lord, your servant shall do so.

Exeunt

Act 3, Sc 1 – Geetha & Thomo

BOTTOM

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.

Sings

The ousel cock so black of hue,

With orange-tawny bill,

The throstle with his note so true,

The wren with little quill,--

TITANIA

[Awaking] What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

BOTTOM

[Sings]

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?

TITANIA

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 thee.

BOTTOM

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 gleek upon occasion.

TITANIA

Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.

BOTTOM

Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to get out

of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.

TITANIA

Out of this wood do not desire to go:

Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.

I am a spirit of no common rate;

The summer still doth tend upon my state;

And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;

I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,

And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;

And I will purge thy mortal grossness so

That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.

Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!

Enter PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB, MOTH, and MUSTARDSEED

Act 3, Sc 2 – Arundhaty

LYSANDER

Where art thou, proud Demetrius? speak thou now.

PUCK

Here, villain; drawn and ready. Where art thou?

LYSANDER

I will be with thee straight.

PUCK

Follow me, then,

To plainer ground.

Exit LYSANDER, as following the voice

Re-enter DEMETRIUS

DEMETRIUS

Lysander! speak again:

Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled?

Speak! In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy head?

PUCK

Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars,

Telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars,

And wilt not come? Come, recreant; come, thou child;

I'll whip thee with a rod: he is defiled

That draws a sword on thee.

DEMETRIUS

Yea, art thou there?

PUCK

Follow my voice: we'll try no manhood here.

Exeunt

Re-enter LYSANDER

LYSANDER

He goes before me and still dares me on:

When I come where he calls, then he is gone.

The villain is much lighter-heel'd than I:

I follow'd fast, but faster he did fly;

That fallen am I in dark uneven way,

And here will rest me.

Lies down

Come, thou gentle day!

For if but once thou show me thy grey light,

I'll find Demetrius and revenge this spite.

Sleeps

Re-enter PUCK and DEMETRIUS

PUCK

Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why comest thou not?

DEMETRIUS

Abide me, if thou darest; for well I wot

Thou runn'st before me, shifting every place,

And darest not stand, nor look me in the face.

Where art thou now?

PUCK

Come hither: I am here.

DEMETRIUS

Nay, then, thou mock'st me. Thou shalt buy this dear,

If ever I thy face by daylight see:

Now, go thy way. Faintness constraineth me

To measure out my length on this cold bed.

By day's approach look to be visited.

Lies down and sleeps

Re-enter HELENA

HELENA

O weary night, O long and tedious night,

Abate thy hour! Shine comforts from the east,

That I may back to Athens by daylight,

From these that my poor company detest:

And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye,

Steal me awhile from mine own company.

Lies down and sleeps

PUCK

Yet but three? Come one more;

Two of both kinds make up four.

Here she comes, curst and sad:

Cupid is a knavish lad,

Thus to make poor females mad.

Re-enter HERMIA

HERMIA

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.

Heavens shield Lysander, if they mean a fray!

Lies down and sleeps

PUCK

On the ground

Sleep sound:

I'll apply

To your eye,

Gentle lover, remedy.

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

Act 5, Sc 1 – Talitha

SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS.

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords and Attendants

HIPPOLYTA

'Tis strange my Theseus, that these

lovers speak of.

THESEUS

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 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!

HIPPOLYTA

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.