2

Lysander

Content with Hermia? No, I do repent
The tedious minutes I with her have spent.
Not Hermia but Helena I love.
Who will not change a raven for a dove?
The will of man is by his reason swayed,
And reason says you are the worthier maid.
Things growing are not ripe until their season;
So I, being young, till now not ripe to reason.
And touching now the point of human skill,
Reason becomes the marshal to my will,
And leads me to your eyes, where I o'erlook
Love's stories written in love's richest book.

Hermia

Lie further off yet; do not lie so near.

Lysander

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 interchainèd 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.

Hermia

Lysander riddles very prettily.

Bottom

First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on,
then read the names of the actors, and so grow to a
point.

Quince

Mary, our play is The Most Lamentable Comedy and
Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe.
[Enter a group of six people who, judging from their dress and speech, are poorly educated laborers. They have decided to contribute to Theseus’ wedding festivities by staging a play which one of them, Quince, has written for the occasion.]

Quince

Is all our company here?

Bottom

You were best to call them generally, man by
man, according to the scrip.
[Enter Quince, Flute, Snout, and Starveling]

Quince

Did you send anyone to Bottom’s house? Has he come home yet? 

Starveling

No one knows where he is. No doubt he’s been kidnapped. 

Flute

If he doesn’t come back, then the play is ruined. We can’t go on, right? 

Quince

Right. It’s not possible to do the play without him. There’s no one else in Athens who could play Pyramus. 

Pages