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HERMIA, and HELENA.]

       THESEUS

       Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.—

       Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love

       Accompany your hearts!

       LYSANDER

       More than to us

       Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed!

       THESEUS

       Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have,

       To wear away this long age of three hours

       Between our after-supper and bedtime?

       Where is our usual manager of mirth?

       What revels are in hand? Is there no play

       To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?

       Call Philostrate.

       PHILOSTRATE

       Here, mighty Theseus.

       THESEUS

       Say, what abridgment have you for this evening?

       What masque? what music? How shall we beguile

       The lazy time, if not with some delight?

       PHILOSTRATE

       There is a brief how many sports are ripe;

       Make choice of which your highness will see first.

       [Giving a paper]

       THESEUS

       [Reads]

       ‘The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung

       By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.’

       We’ll none of that: that have I told my love,

       In glory of my kinsman Hercules.

       ‘The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,

       Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.’

       That is an old device, and it was play’d

       When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.

       ‘The thrice three Muses mourning for the death

       Of learning, late deceas’d in beggary.’

       That is some satire, keen and critical,

       Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.

       ‘A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus

       And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.’

       Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!

       That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.

       How shall we find the concord of this discord?

       PHILOSTRATE

       A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,

       Which is as brief as I have known a play;

       But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,

       Which makes it tedious: for in all the play

       There is not one word apt, one player fitted:

       And tragical, my noble lord, it is;

       For Pyramus therein doth kill himself:

       Which when I saw rehears’d, I must confess,

       Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears

       The passion of loud laughter never shed.

       THESEUS

       What are they that do play it?

       PHILOSTRATE

       Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,

       Which never labour’d in their minds till now;

       And now have toil’d their unbreath’d memories

       With this same play against your nuptial.

       THESEUS

       And we will hear it.

       PHILOSTRATE

       No, my noble lord,

       It is not for you: I have heard it over,

       And it is nothing, nothing in the world;

       Unless you can find sport in their intents,

       Extremely stretch’d and conn’d with cruel pain,

       To do you service.

       THESEUS

       I will hear that play;

       For never anything can be amiss

       When simpleness and duty tender it.

       Go, bring them in: and take your places, ladies.

       [Exit PHILOSTRATE.]

       HIPPOLYTA

       I love not to see wretchedness o’ercharged,

       And duty in his service perishing.

       THESEUS

       Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.

       HIPPOLYTA

       He says they can do nothing in this kind.

       THESEUS

       The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.

       Our sport shall be to take what they mistake:

       And what poor duty cannot do,

       Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.

       Where I have come, great clerks have purposed

       To greet me with premeditated welcomes;

       Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,

       Make periods in the midst of sentences,

       Throttle their practis’d accent in their fears,

       And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off,

       Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,

       Out of this silence yet I pick’d a welcome;

       And in the modesty of fearful duty

       I read as much as from the rattling tongue

       Of saucy and audacious eloquence.

       Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity

       In least speak most to my capacity.

       [Enter PHILOSTRATE.]

       PHILOSTRATE

       So please your grace, the prologue is address’d.

       THESEUS

       Let him approach.

       [Flourish of trumpets. Enter PROLOGUE.]

       PROLOGUE

       ‘If we offend, it is with our good will.

       That you should think, we come not to offend,

       But with good will. To show our simple skill,

       That is the true beginning of our end.

       Consider then, we come but in despite.

       We do not come, as minding to content you,

       Our true intent is. All for your delight

       We are not here. That you should here repent you,

       The actors are at hand: and, by their show,

       You shall know all that you are like to know,’

       THESEUS

       This fellow doth not stand upon points.

       LYSANDER

       He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows not the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not enough to speak, but to speak true.

       HIPPOLYTA

       Indeed he hath played on this prologue like a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.

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