صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

§8. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. SHAKSPEARE.

Tediousness of Expectation.

Thes How slow

This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame, or a dowager,
Long withering out a young man's revenue.
The Witchcraft of Love.
My gracious duke,

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:
Thou hast by moon-light at her window sung,
With feigning voice, verses of feigning love;
And stol'n the impression of her fantasy
With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gauds, con-
ceits,
[sengers
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, mes-
Of strong prevailment in unharden'd youth:
With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's

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,
Whether (if you yield not to your father's choice)
You can endure the livery of a nun;
For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd;
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless

moon.

Thrice blessed they, that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage!
But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,
Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,
Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.
Her. So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,
Ere I will yield my virgin-patent up
Unto his lordship, to whose unwish'd yoke
My soul consents not to give sovereignty.
True Love ever crossed.

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:
But either it was different in blood,
Or else misgrafted in respect of years;
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends:
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it;
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heav'n and
earth:

And, ere a man hath pow'r to say-Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion !

[blocks in formation]

When Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass.
Love.

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the
mind,

And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind;
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste:
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste;
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd :
As waggish boys in games themselves forswear;
So the boy Love is perjur'd every where.

Cowslips, and Fairy Employment.
In their gold coats spots you see;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
Those be rubies, fairy favors;

In those freckles live their savors;
I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

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;
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot-stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And rails or cries, and falls into a cough:
And then the whole quire hold their hips and
loffe;
[swear
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and
A merrier hour was never wasted there.

Fairy Jealousy, and the Effects of it.
These are the forgeries of jealousy ; ̧
And never, since the middle summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or on the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our

sport:

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,
Have every pelting river made so proud,
That they have overborne their continents.
The ox has therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat: and the green

corn

Hath rotted, ere its youth attain'd a beard ;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain stock;
The nine men's morris is filled up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread is undistinguishable.
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest;
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And, thorough this distemperature, we see
The seasons alter; hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hyems' chin, and icy crown,
An od'rous chaplet of sweet summer-buds
Is, as in mock'ry, set: the spring, the summer,
The chilling autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the 'mazed world
By their increase now knows not which is
which.

Love in Idleness.
Thou remember'st
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music.

That very time I saw (but thou couldst not)
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid, all arm'd: a certain aim he took
At a fair vestal, throned by the west;
And loos'd his love-shaft sinartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry
And the imperial vot'ress passed on, [moon;
In maiden meditation, fancy free.
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

[wound,

It fell upon a little western flow'r,
Before milk-white; now purpled-with love's
And maidens call it, "Love in Idlenesss."
Virtuous Love's Protection and Reliance.
Your virtue is my privilege for that.
It is not night when I do see your face,
Therefore I think I am not in the night;
Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company;
For you in my respect are all the world.
Then how can it be said, I am alone,
When all the world is here to look on me?

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 ;
Feed him with apricots and dewberries;
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;
The honey-bags steal from the humble bees,
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes ;
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs,
To have my love to bed, and to arise;
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,
To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes;
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.

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;
Though I alone do feel the injury.

Lover's Hate the greatest Harm.
What can you do me greater harm than hate?

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
Like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail.

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,
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the boar
With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear
Such gallant chiding. For, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, ev'ry region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry; I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
Thes. My hounds are bred out of the Spar-
tan kind,

So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd, like Thessalian
bulls,
[bells,
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never halloo'd to, nor cheer'd with horn.
Fairy Motion.

Then, my queen, in silence sad
Trip we after the night's shade:
We the globe can compass soon
Swifter than the wand'ring moon.

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,
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.

Thes. I will hear that play:
For never any thing can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.

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
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 accents 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-ty'd simplicity,
In least speak most, to my capacity.

Clock.

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.
Night.
Now the hungry lion roars,

And the wolf bebowls the moon;
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
All with weary task fore-done.
Now the wasted brands do glow,
Whilst the screech-owl screeching loud,
Puts the wretch that lies in woe,
In remembrance of a shroud.
Now it is the time of night,

That the graves, all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his spright
In the church-yard paths to glide.
And we fairies that do run,

By the triple Hecat's team,
From the presence of the sun,
Following darkness like a dream,
Now are frolic; not a mouse
Shall disturb this hallow'd house;
I am sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behind the door.

§ 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
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is.

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,
To put a strange face on his own perfection.
A Song.

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never,
Then sigh not so,

But let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny nonny.

Favourites compared to Honey-suckles, &c.

-Bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where honey-suckles ripened by the sun
Forbid the sun to enter; like favorites
Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
Against that power that bred it.

Scheme to captivate Beatrice.
Let it be thy part

To praise him more than ever man did merit:
My talk to thee must be, how Benedick
Is sick in love with Beatrice: Of this matter
Is little Cupid's crafty arrow made,
That only wounds by hearsay.

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,
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely fea-
But she would spell him backward; if fair
fac'd,
[sister;
She'd swear the gentleman should be her
If black, why Nature drawing of an antic,
Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed;
If low, an agate very vilely cut;

If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds;
If silent, why, a block, moved with none.
So turns she every man the wrong side out:
And never gives to truth and virtue that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.
Slandering the Object, a Way to destroy
fection.

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,
By these exterior shows? But she is none :
She knows the heat of a luxurious bed;
Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.
Female Seeming.

I never tempted her with word too large;
But as a brother to a sister show'd
Bashful sincerity and comely love.

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;
As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown:
But you are more intemperate in your blood
Than Venus, or those pamper'd animals
That rage in savage sensuality.

An injured Lover's Abjuration of Love.
O Hero! what a hero hadst thou been,
If half thy outward graces had been plac'd
About the thoughts and counsels of thy heart!
But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! farewell,
Thou pure impiety, and impious purity!
For thee I'll lock up all the gates of love,
And on my eye-lids shall conjecture hang,
To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm,
And never shall it more be gracious.

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,
Strike at thy life.-Griev'd I, I had but one?
Chid I for that at frugal nature's frame?
O, one too much by thee! why had I one?
Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes?
Why had I not, with charitable hand,

Took up a beggar's issue at my gates?
Who smeared thus, and mir'd with infamy,
Af-I might have said, "No part of it is mine;

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
That I myself was to myself not mine,
Valuing of her; why she-O she is fallen
Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea

Hath drops too few to wash her clean again!
And salt too little, which may season give
To her foul tainted flesh!

Innocence discovered by Countenance.
-I have mark'd

A thousand blushing apparitions
To start into her face, a thousand innocent
shames,

In angel whiteness, bear away those blushes;
And in her eye there hath appear'd a fire
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth. Call me a fool ;
Trust not my reading, nor my observations,
Which with experimental seal doth warrant
The tenor of my book; trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here
Under some biting error.

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.
Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine,
Nor age so eat up my invention,

Nor fortune made such havoc of my means,
Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends,
But they shall find, awak'd in such a kind,
Both strength of limb, and policy of mind,
Ability in means, and choice of friends,
To quit me of them throughly.

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

[ocr errors][merged small]

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,
Whose joy of her is overwhelm'd like mine,
And bid him speak of patience: [mine,
Measure his love the length and breadth of
And let it answer every strain for strain;
As thus for thus, and such a grief for such,
In every lineament, branch, shape, and form:
If such a one will smile and stroke his beard,
In sorrow wag; cry hem! when he should groan;
Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune
drunk

With candle-wasters: bring him yet to me,
And I of him will gather patience.

But there is no such man; for, brother, men
Can counsel, and give comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but tasting it,
Their counsel terns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage;
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread;
Charm ach with air, and agony with words.
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow;
But no man's virtue, nor sufficiency,
To be so moral when he shall endure

[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:
O! in a tomb where never scandal slept,
Save this of hers, fram'd by thy villany.

Talking Braggarts.
Cla. Away, I will not have to do with you.

« السابقةمتابعة »