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OBERON How long within this wood intend you stay? TITANIA Perchance till after Theseus’ wedding-day. If you will patiently dance in our round, And see our moonlight revels, go with us; If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts. OBERON Give me that boy and I will go with thee. TITANIA Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away. We shall chide downright if I longer stay. Exit TITANIA with her train OBERON Well, go thy way; thou shalt not from this grove Till I torment thee for this injury. My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb’rest 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. PUCK I remember. OBERON 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 smartly 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 moon; And the imperial vot’ress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free. Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell. It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, And maidens call it Love-in-idleness. Fetch me that flow’r, the herb I showed thee once. The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees. Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again Ere the leviathan can swim a league. PUCK I’ll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes. Exit PUCK OBERON Having once this juice, I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep, And drop the liquor of it in her eyes; The next thing then she waking looks upon, Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, On meddling monkey, or on busy ape, She shall pursue it with the soul of love. And ere I take this charm from off her sight, As I can take it with another herb, I’ll make her render up her page to me. But who comes here? I am invisible; And I will overhear their conference. Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him DEMETRIUS I love thee not, therefore pursue me not. Where is Lysander and fair Hermia? The one I’ll slay, the other slayeth me. Thou told’st me they were stol’n unto this wood, And here am I, and wood within this wood, Because I cannot meet my Hermia. Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more. |