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EGEUS

It is, my lord.

THESEUS

Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.

[Horns, and shout within. DEMETRIUS, LYSANDER,HERMIA, and HELENA awake and start up.]

Good-morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past;

Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?

LYSANDER

Pardon, my lord.

[He and the rest kneel to THESEUS.]

THESEUS

I pray you all, stand up.

I know you two are rival enemies;

How comes this gentle concord in the world,

That hatred is so far from jealousy

To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?

LYSANDER

My lord, I shall reply amazedly,

Half 'sleep, half waking; but as yet, I swear,

I cannot truly say how I came here:

But, as I think,—for truly would I speak—

And now I do bethink me, so it is,—

I came with Hermia hither: our intent

Was to be gone from Athens, where we might be,

Without the peril of the Athenian law.

EGEUS

Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough;

I beg the law, the law upon his head.—

They would have stol'n away, they would, Demetrius,

Thereby to have defeated you and me:

You of your wife, and me of my consent,—

Of my consent that she should be your wife.

DEMETRIUS

My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,

Of this their purpose hither to this wood;

And I in fury hither follow'd them,

Fair Helena in fancy following me.

But, my good lord, I wot not by what power,—

But by some power it is,—my love to Hermia,

Melted as the snow—seems to me now

As the remembrance of an idle gawd

Which in my childhood I did dote upon:

And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,

The object and the pleasure of mine eye,

Is only Helena. To her, my lord,

Was I betroth'd ere I saw Hermia:

But, like a sickness, did I loathe this food;

But, as in health, come to my natural taste,

Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,

And will for evermore be true to it.

THESEUS

Fair lovers, you are fortunately met:

Of this discourse we more will hear anon.—

Egeus, I will overbear your will;

For in the temple, by and by with us,

These couples shall eternally be knit.

And, for the morning now is something worn,

Our purpos'd hunting shall be set aside.—

Away with us to Athens, three and three,

We'll hold a feast in great solemnity.—

Come, Hippolyta.

[Exeunt THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS, and Train.]

DEMETRIUS

These things seem small and undistinguishable,

Like far-off mountains turnèd into clouds.

HERMIA

Methinks I see these things with parted eye,

When every thing seems double.

HELENA

So methinks:

And I have found Demetrius like a jewel.

Mine own, and not mine own.

DEMETRIUS

It seems to me

That yet we sleep, we dream.—Do not you think

The duke was here, and bid us follow him?

HERMIA

Yea, and my father.

HELENA

And Hippolyta.

LYSANDER

And he did bid us follow to the temple.

DEMETRIUS

Why, then, we are awake: let's follow him;

And by the way let us recount our dreams.

[Exeunt.]

[As they go out, BOTTOM awakes.]

BOTTOM

When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is 'Most fair Pyramus.'—Heigh-ho!—Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God's my life, stol'n hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was.—Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had,—but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. 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. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.

[Exit.]

SCENE II. Athens. A Room in QUINCE'S House

[Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING.]

QUINCE

Have you sent to Bottom's house? is he come home yet?

STARVELING