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  • Title: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Quarto 1, 1600)
  • Editor: Suzanne Westfall
  • ISBN: 978-1-55058-465-3

    Copyright Suzanne Westfall. This text may be freely used for educational, non-profit purposes; for all other uses contact the Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Suzanne Westfall
    Not Peer Reviewed

    A Midsummer Night's Dream (Quarto 1, 1600)

    A Midsommer nightes dreame.
    1990Pat as I told you: yonder she comes. Enter Thisby.
    This. O wall, full often hast thou heard my mones,
    For parting my faire Pyramus, and mee.
    My cherry lips haue often kist thy stones;
    Thy stones, with lime and hayire knit now againe.
    1995Pyra. I see a voice: now will I to the chinke,
    To spy and I can heare my Thisbyes face. Thysby?
    This. My loue thou art, my loue I thinke.
    Py. Thinke what thou wilt, I am thy louers Grace:
    And, like Limander, am I trusty still.
    2000This. And I, like Helen, till the fates me kill.
    Pyra. Not Shafalus, to Procrus, was so true.
    This. As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.
    Pyr. O kisse mee, through the hole of this vilde wall.
    This. I kisse the walles hole; not your lips at all.
    2005Pyr. Wilt thou, at Ninnies tombe, meete me straight way?
    Thy. Tide life, tyde death, I come without delay.
    Wal. Thus haue I, Wall, my part discharged so;
    And, being done, thus wall away doth goe.
    2010Duk. Now is the Moon vsed between the two neighbors.
    Deme. No remedy, my Lord, when wals are so wilfull, to
    heare without warning.
    Dutch. This is the silliest stuffe, that euer I heard.
    2015Duke. The best, in this kinde, are but shadowes: and
    the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.
    Dutch. It must be your imagination, then; & not theirs.
    Duke. If we imagine no worse of them, then they of thē-
    selues, they may passe for excellent men. Here come two
    2020noble beasts, in a man and a Lyon.
    Enter Lyon, and Moone-shine.
    Lyon. You Ladies, you (whose gentle hearts do feare
    The smallest monstrous mouse, that creepes on floore)
    May now, perchance, both quake and tremble here,
    2025When Lyon rough, in wildest rage, doth roare.
    Then know that I, as Snug the Ioyner am
    A