Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew Read Online Free PDF Page B

this coil is ’long of you:
    Nay, go not back.

    HELENA
    I will not trust you, I,
    Nor longer stay in your curst company.
    Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray,
    My legs are longer though, to run away.

    HERMIA
    I am amazed, and know not what to say.

ACT III. Scene II (447–463).

    O beron is not pleased with the mess Puck has made, but Puck says he was very entertained by the whole thing. The two begin the task of setting everything right. Oberon gives Puck a new magic flower that counteracts the “love” flower, then sets off to lift the spell on Titania. Puck, on Oberon’s orders, leads the young lovers in a chase across the forest. He uses his magic to trick and taunt them until they are so weary they lay down on the ground to sleep. Then he creeps close to apply the magic flower to Lysander’s eyes.

PUCK
    On the ground
    Sleep sound:
    I’ll apply
    To your eye,
    Gentle lover, remedy.

    PUCK (cont.)
    When thou wakest,
    Thou takest
    True delight
    In the sight
    Of thy former lady’s eye:

    PUCK (cont.)
    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.

ACT IV. Scene I (75–101).

    O beron finds Titania sleeping in her bower with the monstrous Bottom. He squeezes another flower into her eyes, and she wakes, free from the spell.

TITANIA
    My Oberon! what visions have I seen!
    Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.
    OBERON
    There lies your love.
    TITANIA
    How came these things to pass?
    O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!

    OBERON
    Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head.
    Titania, music call; and strike more dead
    Than common sleep of all these five the sense.
    TITANIA
    Music, ho! music, such as charmeth sleep!

    PUCK
    Now, when thou wakest, with thine own fool’s eyes peep.

    OBERON
    Sound, music! Come, my queen, take hands with me,
    And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.
    Now thou and I are new in amity,
    And will to-morrow midnight solemnly
    Dance in Duke Theseus’ house triumphantly,
    And bless it to all fair prosperity:
    There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be
    Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity.

    PUCK
    Fairy king, attend, and mark:
    I do hear the morning lark.

    OBERON
    Then, my queen, in silence sad,
    Trip we after the night’s shade:
    We the globe can compass soon,
    Swifter than the wandering moon.

    TITANIA
    Come, my lord, and in our flight
    Tell me how it came this night
    That I sleeping here was found
    With these mortals on the ground.

ACT IV. Scene I (137–198).

    A s Oberon and Titania depart, Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus arrive near the edge of the forest, intending to enjoy a hunt before Hippolyta and Theseus’s wedding later that day. Instead, they find the young lovers sleeping together in a clearing.

THESEUS
    Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.
    Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past:
    Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?

    LYSANDER
    Pardon, my lord.

    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 do I bethink me, so it is,—
    I came with Hermia hither: our intent
    Was to be gone from Athens, where we might,
    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 stolen 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