A Midsummer Night's Dream

"I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could."

"And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days."

"Be kind and courteous to this gentleman; Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes; Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, To have my love to bed and to arise; And pluck the wings from painted butterflies To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes: Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies."

"The moon methinks looks with a watery eye; And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforced chastity."

"How now, mad spirit! What night-rule now about this haunted grove?"

"My mistress with a monster is in love."

"There is no following her in this fierce vein."

"I go, I go; look how I go, Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow."

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

"And those things do best please me, That do befall preposterously."

"So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted; But yet an union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem."

"Hang off, thou cat, thou burr!"

"Follow! nay, I’ll go with thee, cheek by jole."

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

"Cupid is a knavish lad Thus to make poor females mad."

"Thou painted maypole."

"She was a vixen when she went to school; And though she be but little, she is fierce."

"Night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger; At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all, That in crossways and floods have burial, Already to their wormy beds are gone."

"Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill. The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well."

"I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch."

"I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let’s have the tongs and the bones."

"I have an exposition of sleep come upon me."

"A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac; find out moonshine, find out moonshine."

"My Oberon! what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour’d of an ass."

"Music, ho! music, such as charmeth sleep!"

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

"My love shall hear the music of my hounds."

"These things seem small and undistinguishable, Like far-off mountains turned into clouds."

"It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream."

"I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was."

"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."

"Where are these lads? where are these hearts?"

"And, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath."

"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 a 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!"

"But all the story of the night told over, And their minds transfigured so together, More witnesseth than fancy's images, And grows to something of great constancy; But, howsoever, strange and admirable."

"Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have, To wear away this long age of three hours Between our after-supper and bed-time? Where is our usual manager of mirth? What revels are in hand? Is there no play, To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?"

"Merry and tragical! tedious and brief! That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow. How shall we find the concord of this discord?"

"Hard-handed men, that work in Athens here, Which never labour’d in their minds till now."

"For never any thing can be amiss, When simpleness and duty tender it."

"The true beginning of our end."

"Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade, He bravely broach’d his boiling bloody breast."

"The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them."

"A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience."

"I am a-weary of this moon: would he would change!"

"All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog."

"Theseus: This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad. Hippolyta: Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man."

"Now am I dead, Now am I fled; My soul is in the sky: Tongue, lose thy light; Moon, take thy flight: Now die, die, die, die, die."

"No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse."

"The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve: Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time."