A Midsummer Night’s Dream - страница 4

BOTTOM A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a

merry. Now, good Peter Quince, call forth your

actors by the scroll. Masters, spread yourselves.

QUINCE Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.

BOTTOM Ready. Name what part I am for, and

proceed.

QUINCE You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.

BOTTOM What is Pyramus—a lover or a tyrant?

QUINCE A lover that kills himself most gallant for love.

BOTTOM That will ask some tears in the true performing

of it. If I do it, let the audience look to their

eyes. I will move storms; I will condole in some

measure. To the rest.—Yet my chief humor is for a

tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a

cat in, to make all split:

The raging rocks

And shivering shocks

Shall break the locks

Of prison gates.

And Phibbus’ car

Shall shine from far

And make and mar

The foolish Fates.

This was lofty. Now name the rest of the players.

This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein. A lover is more

condoling.

QUINCE Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.

FLUTE Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE Flute, you must take Thisbe on you.

FLUTE What is Thisbe—a wand’ring knight?

QUINCE It is the lady that Pyramus must love.

FLUTE Nay, faith, let not me play a woman. I have a

beard coming.

QUINCE That’s all one. You shall play it in a mask, and

you may speak as small as you will.

BOTTOM An I may hide my face, let me play Thisbe too.

I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice: “Thisne,

Thisne!”—“Ah Pyramus, my lover dear! Thy Thisbe

dear and lady dear!”

QUINCE No, no, you must play Pyramus—and, Flute,

you Thisbe.

BOTTOM Well, proceed.

QUINCE Robin Starveling, the tailor.

STARVELING Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE Robin Starveling, you must play Thisbe’s

mother.—Tom Snout, the tinker.

SNOUT Here, Peter Quince.

QUINCE You, Pyramus’ father.—Myself, Thisbe’s

father.—Snug the joiner, you the lion’s part.—

And I hope here is a play fitted.

SNUG Have you the lion’s part written? Pray you, if it

be, give it me, for I am slow of study.

QUINCE You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but

roaring.

BOTTOM Let me play the lion too. I will roar that I will

do any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar that

I will make the Duke say “Let him roar again. Let

him roar again!”

QUINCE An you should do it too terribly, you would

fright the Duchess and the ladies that they would

shriek, and that were enough to hang us all.

ALL That would hang us, every mother’s son.

BOTTOM I grant you, friends, if you should fright the

ladies out of their wits, they would have no more

discretion but to hang us. But I will aggravate my

voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking

dove. I will roar you an ’twere any nightingale.

QUINCE You can play no part but Pyramus, for Pyramus

is a sweet-faced man, a proper man as one

shall see in a summer’s day, a most lovely gentlemanlike

man. Therefore you must needs play

Pyramus.

BOTTOM Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I

best to play it in?

QUINCE Why, what you will.

BOTTOM I will discharge it in either your straw-color

beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain

beard, or your French-crown-color beard,

your perfit yellow.

QUINCE Some of your French crowns have no hair at

all, and then you will play barefaced. But, masters,

here are your parts, giving out the parts, and I am

to entreat you, request you, and desire you to con

them by tomorrow night and meet me in the palace

wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight. There

will we rehearse, for if we meet in the city, we shall

be dogged with company and our devices known. In

the meantime I will draw a bill of properties such as

our play wants. I pray you fail me not.

BOTTOM We will meet, and there we may rehearse

most obscenely and courageously. Take pains. Be

perfit. Adieu.

QUINCE At the Duke’s Oak we meet.

BOTTOM Enough. Hold or cut bowstrings.

They exit.

Scene 1

Enter a Fairy at one door and Robin Goodfellow at

another.

ROBIN

How now, spirit? Whither wander you?

FAIRY

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire;

I do wander everywhere,

Swifter than the moon’s sphere.

And I serve the Fairy Queen,