§8. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. SHAKSPEARE. Tediousness of Expectation. Thes How slow This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, This man hath witch'd the bosom of my child: Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes, And interchang'd love tokens with my child: heart: Turn'd her obedience, which is due to me, To stubborn harshness. A Father's Authority. To you your father should be as a god: One that compos'd your beauties; yea, and one To whom you are but as a form in wax By him imprinted; and within his power To leave the figure, or disfigure it. Nun. Thes. Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires, Know of your youth, examine well your blood, moon. Thrice blessed they, that master so their blood, Lys. Ah me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth: And, ere a man hath pow'r to say-Behold! When Phoebe doth behold Things base and vile, holding no quantity, And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind; Cowslips, and Fairy Employment. In those freckles live their savors; Puck, or Robin Good-fellow. I am that merry wand'rer of the night. I jest to Oberon, and make him smile, When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal; And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab; And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale; Fairy Jealousy, and the Effects of it. sport: Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, corn Hath rotted, ere its youth attain'd a beard ; Love in Idleness. That very time I saw (but thou couldst not) [wound, It fell upon a little western flow'r, A Fairy Bank. I know a bank, whereon the wild thyme blows, Quite over-canopy'd with luscious woodbine, Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows; There sleeps Titania, sometime of the night, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine; Lull'd in these flow'rs with dances and delight. Fairy Courtesies. Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes ; Be kind and courteous to this gentleman: Swiftness of Fairy's Motion. I go, I go, look how I go: Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow. Sense of Hearing quickened by Loss of Sight. Dark night, that from the eye his function takes, Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense, The ear more quick of apprehension makes. It pays the hearing double recompense. Female Friendship. Is all the council that we two have shar'd, The sister vows, the hours that we have spent, When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us: O! and is all forgot? All school-days' friendship, childhood innoWe, Hermia, like two artificial gods, [cence? Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion; Both warbling of one song, both in one key; As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, Had been incorporate; so we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition : Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; So with two seeming bodies, but one heart: Two of the first like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crowned with one crest. And will you rend our ancient love asunder, To join with men in scorning your poor friend? It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly: Our sex as well as I may chide you for it; Lover's Hate the greatest Harm. Female Timidity. I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen, Let her not hurt me; I was never curst; I have no gift at all in shrewishness; I am a right maid for my cowardice. Day-break. Night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast, And vonder shines Aurora's harbinger; At whose approach, ghosts wandering here Troop home to church-yards. [and there, Embracing. So doth the woodbine the sweet honey-suckle Gently entwist-the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. Dew in Flowers. That same dew, which sometime on the buds Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls, Stood now within the pretty flowret's eyes Hunting, and Hounds. Thes. We will, fair queen, up to the mounAnd mark the musical confusion [tain's top, Of hounds and echo in conjunction. Hip. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once, So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung Then, my queen, in silence sad Confused Remembrance. [able, These things seem small and undistinguishLike far-off mountains turned into clouds. The Power of Imagination. 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 phrensy rolling, Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to And, as imagination bodies forth [heav'n, The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy noA local habitation and a name. [thing Simpleness and modest Duty always acceptable. Philost. No, my noble lord, It is not for you. I have heard it over, Thes. I will hear that play: Hip. I love not to see wretchedness o'erAnd duty in his service perishing. [charg'd, Thes. Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing Our Noble respect takes it in might, not merit. Clock. The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. And the wolf bebowls the moon; That the graves, all gaping wide, By the triple Hecat's team, § 9. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. SHAKSPEARE. Peace inspires Love. BUT now I am return'd, and that war thoughts Have left their places vacant, in their rooms Friendship in Love. Friendship is constant in all other things, Save in the office and affairs of love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own Let every eye negotiate for itself, [tongues, And trust no agent: beauty is a witch, Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. Merit always modest. It is the witness still of excellency, Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never, But let them go, Favourites compared to Honey-suckles, &c. -Bid her steal into the pleached bower, Scheme to captivate Beatrice. To praise him more than ever man did merit: Angling, &c. The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, And greedily devour the treacherous bait : So angle we for Beatrice. A scornful and satirical Beauty. Nature never fram'd a woman's heart Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice. Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, Misprising what they look on: and her wit Values itself so highly, that to her All matter else seems weak; she cannot love, Nor take no shape, nor project of affection, She is so self-endear'd. I never yet saw man, [tur'd, If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; And, truly, I'll devise some honest slanders, To stain my cousin with; one doth not know How much an ill word may empoison liking. Beatrice's Recantation. What fire is in mine ears? can this be true? Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much? Contempt farewell! and maiden pride adieu ! No glory lives behind the back of such. And, Benedick, love on, I will requite thee, Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand; If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee To bind our loves up in a holy band: For others say thou dost deserve; and I Believe it better than reportingly. Dissimulation. O, what authority and show of truth Can cunning sin cover itself withal! Comes not that blood as modest evidence To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear, All you that see her, that she were a maid, I never tempted her with word too large; Her. And seem'd I ever otherwise to you? Clau. Out on thy seeming! I will write against it: You seem to me as Dian in her orb; An injured Lover's Abjuration of Love. A Father lamenting his Daughter's Infamy. Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes; For, did I think thou wouldst not quickly die, Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames, Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches, Took up a beggar's issue at my gates? No; rather I will go to Benedick, And counsel him to fight against his passion: This shame derives itself from unknown loins.” But mine, and mine I lov'd, and mine I prais'd, And mine that I was proud on; mine so much Hath drops too few to wash her clean again! Innocence discovered by Countenance. A thousand blushing apparitions In angel whiteness, bear away those blushes; Resolution. I know not: if they speak but truth of her, These hands shall tear her: if they wrong her honor, The proudest of them shall well hear of it. Nor fortune made such havoc of my means, The Desire of loved Objects heightened by their Loss. This, well carried, shall, ou her behalf Change slander to remorse; that is some good: But not for that dream I on this strange course, But on this travail look for greater birth. She dying, as it must be so maintain'd, Upon the instant that she was accus'd, Shall be lamented, pity'd, and excus'd Of every hearer. For it so falls out, That what we have, we prize not to the worth While we enjoy it, but being lack'd and lost, Why, then we rack the value; then we find The virtue that possession would not show us While it was ours. So will it fare with Claudio: When he shall hear she died upon his words, The idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination; And every lovely organ of her life Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit, More moving, delicate, and full of life Into the eye and prospect of his soul, Than when she liv'd indeed. Then shall he (If ever love had interest in his liver) [mourn And wish he had not so accused her; No, though he thought his accusation true. Let this be so, and doubt not but success Will fashion the event in better shape Than I can lay it down in likelihood. But, if all aim but this be levell'd false, The supposition of the lady's death I Counsel of no Weight in Misery. pray thee, cease thy counsel, Which falls into my ears as profitless As water in a sieve: give not me counsel; Nor let no comforter delight mine ear, But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine. Bring me a father that so lov'd his child, With candle-wasters: bring him yet to me, But there is no such man; for, brother, men [sel; The like himself: therefore give me no counMy griefs cry louder than advertisement. Ant. Therein do men from children nothing differ. [blood: Leo. I pray thee, peace-I will be flesh and For there was never yet philosopher, That could endure the tooth-ach patiently, However they have writ the style of gods, And made a pish at change and sufferance. [do, An aged Father's Resentment of Scandal. Tush, tush, man! never fleer and jest at me; I speak not like a dotard nor a fool; As, under privilege of age, to brag What I have done, being young, or what would Were I not old. Know Claudio, to thy head, Thou hast so wrong'd my innocent child and That I am forc'd to lay my rev'rence by; [me, And, with gray hairs, and bruise of many days, To challenge thee to trial of a man. say, thou hast belied mine innocent child; Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart, And she lies buried with her ancestors: Talking Braggarts. |