Scene 1 A forest near Athens
A fairy from one side, and Xec (the naughty elf) on the other
Xec
Hey, elf! Where are you strolling to?
Fairy
Over hill and dale,
Through wood and thorn,
Over garden and fence,
Through flood and fire,
I wander about,
Faster than the moon;
I serve the Fairy Queen,
And give her green fields sprinkled with dewdrops.
The tall primroses are her attendants;
Look, the spots on their golden garments;
Rubies given by the fairies,
In these spots are alive their breath;
I will seek some dewdrops here,
And hang one for each primrose's ear.
Farewell, you fools among the elves; I am going.
Our queen and her elves are coming.
Herculean
This night the king is going to revel here;
Beware, do not let him see the queen here;
Obron is now becoming fierce and furious,
because she has stolen
a lovely boy from the king of the Indies to be her attendant.
She had never stolen so lovely a child;
and the jealous Oblong wanted the boy
to join his guards in their travels through the woods of the wilderness;
but she preferred to keep the lovely boy,
and she crowned him with flowers, and made him her whole joy.
Now they never met in the bushes or in the meadows,
by the clear spring or by the bright starlight,
and they rushed, and their little fairies were so frightened that they
dug all the way down into their acorn shells and hid.
Fairy
Either I've misread you, if I've guessed correctly,
then you're the cunning, deceitful elf,
named Robin the Good. Are you not that fellow,
who loves to frighten the country maidens,
skimming the skins off the milk, and sometimes pushing the mill desperately,
so that the panting housewife can't churn out the cream;
and sometimes makes the wine foam,
and sometimes leads the nightwalkers astray, and gloats and laughs?
Whoever calls you a naughty demon or a cute persecutor,
you work for them and give them good luck.
Is this you?
Herc
You're right:
I am the happy nightwalker.
I tell jokes to Oblong and make him laugh,
When I want to please a fat, stocky horse,
I neigh like a filly;
Sometimes I take the form of a baked wild apple,
hide in a long-tongued woman's ale-bowl,
and when she drinks, I spring to her lips,
Spilling ale onto the skin of her parched throat.
Sometimes I was a three-legged stool,
and when the wise woman told the saddest story,
I slid under her buttocks, and let her fall headlong,
crying, "Good man," and coughing from the fall;
so that everyone around me laughed, propped up on their bottoms.
Then all the people around her laughed on their asses, and the more they laughed, the more they sneezed, and swore
that they had never had a happier time.
But get out of the way, fairy, here comes Oblong.
Fairy
My mistress has come too. He had better go away.
Obron and Titania and attendants, each on either side
Obron
What a misfortune to meet you in the moonlight, proud Titania.
Titania
Ha, jealous Oblong! Begone, fairies;
I have sworn to leave his bed and his company.
Obron
Wait, rash shrew; am I not your master?
Titania
Then I must be your lady, too;
But I know that you once stole out of Fairyland,
and assumed the form of a shepherd, and sat all day long,
playing the wheat-flute, and playing love-songs to amorous
shepherdesses. Why
have you come here from the farthest steppes of India?
Nothing but because that tall Amazonian woman,
your boot-clad mistress, your martial lover,
was about to be married to Theseus, and didst thou come to
bless their marriage-bed with joy and beauty?
Obron
Are you not ashamed of this? Titania,
How dare you scorn my honor with Hippolyta,
You understood long ago that I knew you were in love with Theseus.
Was it not you who led him through the hazy night,
away from Peliguna, which he had ravaged?
That made him turn his back on the beautiful Igor,
Eliadne and Antiope?
Titania
These are fabrications full of jealousy;
Since the beginning of midsummer,
when we have gathered on the hillocks, in the valleys of the streams, in the woods, in the meadows,
beside the flat-flowing springs, the streams full of lambs-root,
or on the sandy beaches by the seashore,
and have wanted to meet the winds of the whistling, and have danced Our ring dance,
You always noisily disturb our game.
The winds, for whistling at us in vain,
in retaliation, sucked up
poisonous mists from the sea; they descended to the earth,
and made every thin stream so proud,
that they flooded the land.
The oxen drew the yoke in vain,
the farmer sweated in vain, and the green grain
rotted before it drew its beard;
empty sheep-folds stood up in the flooded fields,
the plague-dead flocks fattened the ravens;
the places where the nines had been played were full of mud,
and those strange in the disordered grasses of the labyrinth,
are unrecognizable because no one has trodden them.
Those earthly mortals yearned for winter,
Now there are no more hymns and sacred carols in the night;
The moon that ruled over the flood,
pale with anger, washed over the whole air,
and made the rheumatic germs pervade everywhere.
Because of this disorder, we see
that the seasons are also changed: the white-haired frost,
lies down on the fresh legs of the scarlet rose;
and on the thin crown of ice of the winter god,
mockingly puts a summer bud woven into a wreath of
fragrant flowers. Spring, summer,
pregnant autumn, and furious winter,
all changed their usual attire; and bewildered mankind,
could no longer tell who was who, according to their output.
All these evils come from
our quarrels, from our discords;
we are their parents and source.
O Brown
Then you should remedy it. It's up to you.
Why is Titania fighting against her Oblong?
I merely pleaded to have a stolen little boy
as my attendant.
Titania
Die;
Taking all of Fairyland would not buy this boy of mine.
Her mother was a devotee of mine;
she used to gossip beside me on Indian nights when the air was fragrant;
sitting with me on the yellow sands of the sea,
counting the merchant ships on the water that were laden with goods;
we laughed at the sight of the sails pregnant,
enlarged by the fierce winds belly;
and with a lovely swim-her womb
was pregnant with me, her young attendant-
mimicking the sails, and fetching me all sorts of sundries ashore,
and she returned as if she were returned from a voyage,
laden with goods.
But, being mortal, she died by bearing that child;
for her sake I brought up her child;
for her sake I will not part with him.
Obron
How long will you stay in these woods?
Titania
Perhaps until after the wedding of Theseus.
If you have the patience to dance with us,
and see our moonlit revels, come with me;
otherwise, avoid me, and I will not disturb your wanderings.
Obron
Give me the little boy, and I will go with you.
Titania
Your fairy kingdom can't change him. Fairies, let's go!
Stay any longer, and we'll have to have a complete fight.
Titania and attendants down
Obron
Well, go your way; and for this insult,
you shall not come out of these woods till you have received my punishment.
My gentle persecutor, come hither. Do you remember,
that once I was sitting on a promontory,
and heard a mermaid on the back of a dolphin,
whispering so beautifully and melodiously,
that the raging sea also subsided by her song,
and that to listen to the music of this maiden of the sea several of the stars also
were frantically dancing out of their constellations.
Compulsion
I remember.
O'Browne
It was at that time that you could not see,
but I saw Cupid, armed to the teeth,
flying between the cold moon and the earth;
and he took aim at one of the fair virgins on the throne of the West,
and dexterously loosed from his bow his arrow of love,
as if it could pierce A hundred thousand hearts;
But I saw little Cupid's burning arrow,
Extinguished in the crystal-bright moonlight;
The virginal queen unharmed,
Immersed in the innocent virgin's contemplation.
But I noticed where Cupid's heavy arrow had crashed.
It fell on a small flower in the west,
which had been milky white, but was now purple with the wounds of love,
which the maidens called "pansies".
Pick the flower for me, I showed you the grass.
If its sap were dropped on the eyelids of a sleeping person,
men and women would be frantic to give themselves to the first living creation they saw.
It is the first thing they have seen, and it is the first thing they have seen.
Pick that grass for me, and then you will return here,
before the sea monster has swum a mile.
Herculean
I can put a belt on the earth in forty minutes
.
Next
O'Browne
Once I had got this flower-juice,
I kept my eyes open until Titania was asleep,
and dropped this juice on her eyelids;
and the first thing she saw when she awoke,
whether it was a lion, or a bear, or a wolf, or a bull,
a a good-natured monkey, or a busy orangutan,
she would chase it down with a passionate soul.
Before I undo this magic with another herb,
I will make her give me her boy.
But who is coming? I cannot be seen by the naked eye;
I am coming to overhear their conversation.
Dimitrios goes up, and Helena follows him
Dimitrios
I don't love you, so stop chasing me.
Where are Lassander and the beautiful Hermia?
One is the one I tried to kill, and the other is the one who put me to death.
You told me that they fled to these woods,
and now I am here, and the woods are these woods,
and I have not met my Hermia.
Go, you go away and stop following me.
Helena
It is you who are attracting me, you cruel stone;
but it is not iron you are attracting, for my heart
is as firm as steel. Please remove your attraction,
and I will be powerless to chase you away.
Dimitrios
Have I tempted you? Have I spoken well to thee?
And, moreover, have I not told thee most plainly,
that I do not love thee, nor will I love thee?
Helena
In spite of this, I love you all the more.
I am your puppy; Dimitrios,
The more you beat me, the more I will please you;
Just think of me as your puppy, kick me, beat me,
neglect me, forsake me; as long as you will allow me to
follow you, even though I am not worthy of you.
What worse bit could I ask for in your love?
But for me, what bit is more honorable? --
To be treated like your dog?
Dimitrius
Do not stir up my inner hatred too much.
I get hard when I see you.
Helena
But it is hard for me not to see you.
Dimitrios
You have so little regard for your own decency,
that you have left the city, and given yourself into the hands of
a man who does not love you;
to rely on the luck of the dark night,
and on the misguidance given by a wasteland,
without caring for how precious your chastity is.
Helena
Your virtue is my safeguard;
When I see your face, the night is no longer night,
for I feel that I am not in the darkness of the night;
There is no lack of companionship in these woods,
for I feel that you are the whole world;
If the whole world were here to looking at me,
how can I say I am alone?
Dimitrios
I will run away from you and hide in the bushes,
leaving you to the mercy of wild beasts.
Helena
The most brutal beasts have not a heart like yours.
Go if you will; that story is about to be rewritten:
Apollo fled, Daphne in pursuit;
Doves chased the lion-bodied monstrous eagles; the meek doe
quickened her pace to catch the tigers; what a useless stride,
the timid in pursuit, the brave in flight.
Dimitrius
I do not want to hear you ask questions any more; let me go;
If you still follow me, do not think
that I will not hurt you in the woods.
Helena
Alas, in the temple, in the market-place, in the field,
you have hurt me. Bah, Dimitrios!
Your transgressions are nothing short of insulting us women.
We cannot fight for love as men do;
We should be wooed by others, not forced to do so.
(Under Dimitrios)
I will follow thee, and go and turn hell into heaven,
and die by the hand of him whom I love.
Next
Obron
Farewell, fair girl! Before he leaves the woods,
You shall flee from him, and he shall pursue your love.
(Persecution on again)
Did you find flowers there? Welcome, wanderer.
Herc
Yes, there it is.
Obron
Please give it to me.
I know a slope where the wild musk-herb blooms,
where the primrose and the waving violet grow,
where the sweet honeysuckle, the sweet musk-rose, and the
many-flowered roses, almost cover the slope;
and where Titania sometimes sleeps at night,
amongst the flowers, and is by dances and merriment Introduced to dreamland.
There the serpent sheds her variegated skin,
like a tunic broad enough to wrap a little fairy in;
I will sprinkle her eyes with the juice of this blossom,
and fill her with abominable visions.
Take with you a little of this flower-juice, and go to the grove and seek:
There is a lovely Athenian maiden, who has fallen in love with a
sighted youth, and anoints his eyes;
but see to it, that the first thing he sees
has to be that maiden. You will recognize the man,
who is dressed as an Athenian.
Do it carefully, so that the fascination he develops for her
exceeds the love she has for him.
Meet me again before the first cockcrow.
Compulsion
Don't worry, master; your servant will get to it.
Next