A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 2 Scene 1

Well, spirit — where are you wandering to?

Over hill, over valley,

through bush, through briar,

over park, over fence,

through flood, through fire —

I wander everywhere,

faster than the moon's orbit.

I serve the fairy queen,

putting dew on her fairy rings in the grass.

The tall cowslips are her bodyguard.

You can see spots on their gold coats —

those are rubies, gifts from the fairies,

and their sweet scent lives in those freckles.

I must go and find some dewdrops here

and hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

Goodbye, you lump of a spirit — I'm off.

Our queen and all her elves will be here shortly.

The king is holding his celebrations here tonight.

Make sure the queen doesn't come near him.

Oberon is in a savage temper,

because she has as her attendant

a lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king.

She's never had such a sweet stolen child.

Jealous Oberon wants the boy

as a knight in his own retinue, to roam the wild forests.

But she stubbornly keeps the boy,

crowns him with flowers and makes him her whole delight.

And now they never meet in wood or meadow,

by clear spring or under glittering starlight,

without quarrelling — so that all their elves, terrified,

creep into acorn cups and hide.

Either I'm badly mistaken about your shape,

or you're that cunning, mischievous spirit

called Robin Goodfellow. Aren't you the one

who frightens the village girls,

skims the cream off the milk, jams the hand-mill,

and makes the housewife churn butter for nothing?

And sometimes stops the beer from getting a head,

and leads travellers astray at night and laughs at their trouble?

But those who call you Hobgoblin and sweet Puck —

you do their chores for them and bring them luck.

Aren't you him? (Two names for the same creature: an insult and a flattery. He answers to whichever you use.)

You've got it right.

I am that merry night-wanderer.

I make jokes for Oberon and get him laughing

when I trick a fat, well-fed horse

by neighing like a young mare.

And sometimes I hide in a chattering old woman's cup

disguised as a roasted crab apple,

and when she drinks I bob against her lips

and pour the ale down her wrinkled neck.

The most sensible old woman, telling the most solemn story,

sometimes mistakes me for a three-legged stool.

Then I slip out from under her and down she goes,

crying 'tailor!' and dissolving into coughing.

And then the whole company holds their sides laughing,

laughing harder and sneezing and swearing

that no merrier hour was ever spent.

But make room, fairy — here comes Oberon.

And here's my mistress. I wish he'd go away!

An unwelcome meeting by moonlight, proud Titania.

What — jealous Oberon! Fairies, let's go.

I've sworn off his bed and his company.

Stay where you are, you reckless creature. Aren't I your husband and master?

Then I must be your wife. But I know

about the times you've slipped away from fairyland

and sat all day disguised as a shepherd,

playing straw pipes and writing love poems

to some lovestruck shepherdess. Why are you here,

come all the way from the far mountains of India?

Only because, of course, that strapping Amazon,

your booted mistress, your warrior sweetheart,

is marrying Theseus — and you've come

to bless their marriage bed with joy and prosperity.

How can you shamelessly, Titania,

insinuate things about me and Hippolyta,

when you know I know about you and Theseus?

Didn't you lead him through the glimmering night

away from Perigenia, whom he raped?

And make him break his promises to fair Aegle,

and to Ariadne, and to Antiopa? (Theseus's romantic history is a list of abandoned and assaulted women. Shakespeare puts it in the play and then moves on.)

These are lies invented by jealousy.

And never, since the start of midsummer,

have we met on hill, in valley, forest or meadow,

by pebbled spring or reedy stream,

or on the sandy edge of the sea,

to dance our circles to the whistling wind,

without you disrupting it with your quarrelling.

So the winds, piping to us for nothing,

have sucked up poisonous fogs from the sea

in revenge — and those, falling on the land,

have made every little river so swollen

that they've burst their banks.

So the ox has pulled his yoke for nothing,

the ploughman has sweated for nothing, and the green wheat

has rotted before it even ripened.

The sheepfold stands empty in the flooded field

and crows grow fat on the diseased flock.

The village game-pitch is choked with mud,

and the winding paths cut in the green

have grown over for want of anyone walking them.

Human beings are missing their winter festivals.

No night is blessed with hymn or carol now.

So the moon, who governs the tides,

pale with anger, floods the air with damp,

so that colds and fevers are everywhere.

And through this disorder we see

the seasons change places: white frosts settle

deep in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,

and on old Winter's thin icy crown

a fragrant wreath of sweet summer buds

is set as if in mockery. Spring, summer,

fruitful autumn and angry winter have swapped

their usual uniforms, and the bewildered world,

seeing what each produces, can't tell one from another.

And this whole brood of disasters comes

from our argument, from our quarrel.

We are their parents and their origin. (Two people fall out and the climate collapses. It sounds like a fairy tale until you read it now.)

Then fix it. It's in your power.

Why should Titania defy her Oberon?

All I'm asking for is one small stolen boy

to be my page.

Give up the idea.

The whole of fairyland couldn't buy that child from me.

His mother was a devotee of my order.

And in the spiced Indian air at night

she often sat gossiping beside me,

sat with me on the sea's yellow sands

watching the merchant ships out on the water.

We used to laugh to see the sails grow pregnant

and swell big-bellied with the playful wind —

which she, with a pretty gliding walk

and her own womb full of my young page,

would imitate, sailing across the land

to fetch me trinkets, and come back again

as though from a voyage, laden with cargo.

But she was mortal, and she died giving birth to him.

So for her sake I'm raising her boy,

and for her sake I won't give him up. (The child isn't a possession to her. It's the last thing left of a friend she loved.)

How long do you intend to stay in this wood?

Perhaps until after Theseus's wedding.

If you'll join our circle dance calmly

and watch our moonlight celebrations, come with us.

If not, avoid me, and I'll stay away from your places.

Give me the boy and I'll come with you.

Not for your entire kingdom. Fairies, away!

We'll have a real row if I stay any longer.

Fine, go. But you won't leave this wood

until I've made you suffer for this insult.

Gentle Puck, come here. Do you remember

the time I sat on a headland

and heard a mermaid riding a dolphin

singing so sweetly and harmoniously

that the rough sea grew calm at her song

and several stars shot wildly out of their orbits

to hear the sea-maid's music?

I remember.

At that same moment I saw — though you couldn't —

Cupid flying between the cold moon and the earth,

fully armed. He took careful aim

at a beautiful virgin enthroned in the west

and loosed his love-arrow sharply from the bow

as if to pierce a hundred thousand hearts.

But I could see young Cupid's burning arrow

quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon,

and the royal virgin passed on,

lost in maidenly thought, untouched by love. (A compliment to Queen Elizabeth, who was in the audience's mind if not the room.)

But I noticed where Cupid's arrow landed.

It fell on a little western flower,

milk-white before, now purple with love's wound,

and girls call it love-in-idleness.

Fetch me that flower — the plant I showed you once.

Its juice, dropped on sleeping eyelids,

will make a man or woman fall madly in love

with the next living creature they see.

Fetch me this plant, and be back here

before a sea-monster can swim three miles.

I'll put a belt around the earth

in forty minutes.

Once I have this juice

I'll wait for Titania to fall asleep

and drop the liquid in her eyes.

Then the first thing she looks at on waking —

whether it's a lion, a bear, a wolf, a bull,

a meddling monkey or a busy ape —

she'll chase after with her whole soul.

And before I lift the spell from her eyes —

which I can do with another herb —

I'll make her hand over her page to me.

But who's this? I'm invisible,

and I'll eavesdrop on their conversation.

I don't love you, so stop chasing me.

Where are Lysander and fair Hermia?

I'll kill him; she's killing me.

You told me they'd slipped away into this wood,

and here I am, going mad in this wood

because I can't find my Hermia.

Go away. Stop following me.

You pull me to you, you hard-hearted magnet —

but it isn't iron you're drawing, because my heart

is true as steel. Give up your power to attract

and I'll have no power to follow.

Do I lead you on? Do I speak kindly to you?

Or do I not, in the plainest possible terms,

tell you I don't and can't love you?

And that makes me love you even more.

I'm your spaniel — and, Demetrius,

the more you beat me, the more I'll fawn on you.

Just treat me as your dog: kick me, hit me,

ignore me, abandon me — only let me,

unworthy as I am, follow you.

What lower place could I beg for in your love —

and yet it would be a high honour to me —

than to be treated the way you treat your dog? (This is the play's most uncomfortable speech, and it isn't played for laughs.)

Don't push my loathing too far.

I feel sick when I look at you.

And I feel sick when I'm not looking at you.

You compromise your reputation badly

by leaving the city and putting yourself

in the hands of a man who doesn't love you,

trusting the opportunity of darkness

and the bad ideas a deserted place suggests

with something as valuable as your virginity.

Your decency is my protection. Because

it isn't night when I can see your face,

so I don't think I'm in the dark at all.

And this wood isn't short of company either —

as far as I'm concerned you are the whole world.

So how can anyone say I'm alone

when the whole world is here looking at me?

I'll run away and hide in the thickets

and leave you to the mercy of wild animals.

The wildest of them hasn't got a heart like yours.

Run whenever you like — the old story gets rewritten:

Apollo runs and Daphne does the chasing;

the dove hunts the griffin; the gentle deer

races to catch the tiger — running for nothing,

when cowardice does the chasing and courage runs.

I won't stay to argue. Let me go.

And if you follow me, don't imagine

I won't do you harm in this wood. (That is a threat of rape, and it is the second time he has made it.)

Yes — in the temple, in the town, in the fields,

you do me harm. Shame on you, Demetrius!

The way you treat me disgraces all women.

We can't fight for love the way men can.

We should be courted; we weren't made to do the courting.

I'll follow you and make a heaven out of hell,

and die at the hand of the man I love so much.

Farewell, girl. Before he leaves this wood

you'll be running from him and he'll be begging for your love.

Do you have the flower? Welcome back, wanderer.

Yes, here it is.

Give it to me, please.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blooms,

where cowslips and nodding violets grow,

completely canopied with lush honeysuckle,

sweet musk-roses and wild roses.

Titania sleeps there part of the night,

lulled among these flowers by dancing and delight.

And there the snake sheds her enamelled skin,

And with the juice of this I'll anoint her eyes

and fill her with hateful fantasies.

Take some of it and search through this wood.

A sweet Athenian lady is in love

with a scornful young man. Anoint his eyes —

but do it so that the next thing he sees

will be the lady. You'll know the man

by the Athenian clothes he's wearing. (Everything that goes wrong in this play goes wrong because of that instruction.)

Do it carefully, so that he ends up

more besotted with her than she is with him.

And make sure you meet me before the first cock crows.

Don't worry, my lord. Your servant will do it.