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Oberon and Puck, Lines 148-176a
Context and Language Videos
Act 2,
Scene 1
Lines 148-176a

A performance of lines 148-176a by Oberon and Puck in Act 2, Scene 1 of myShakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

myShakespeare | Midsummer Night's Dream 2.1 Performance: Oberon and Puck Lines 148-176a

Oberon

My gentle puck, come hither. Thou rememb’rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music?

Robin 

                                                      I remember.

Oberon

That very time I saw — but thou couldst not —
Flying between the cold moon and the earth
Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took
At a fair vestal thronèd by the west,
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat’ry moon,
And the imperial vot’ress passèd on
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before, milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it “love-in-idleness.”
Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once.
The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids 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.

Robin 

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