Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream- Info & Quotes

Dreams/moon Time bend/change
6 things wrong with nature • Diseased fogs• Crops dying• Animals dying• Fun canceled• Disease• Seasons mixed up
“The course of true love, never did run smooth.” – Lysander says to HermiaMeaning: True love isn’t always easy
“And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays!” – Bottom says to TitaniaMeaning: Using common sense and falling in love don’t always go together
“If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear.” – Puck says to the audienceMeaning: If you didn’t like the play, pretend it was a dream
“Lord what fools these mortals be!” Puck to Oberon
“Give me your hands, if we be friends” – Puck says to the audienceMeaning: Clap if you like the play
Soliloquy – long speech made alone on stage- character reveals emotion or a plan
When was Shakespeare born? April 23 1564
When did Shakespeare die? April 23 1616
Peter Quince Prologue/Director. He’s a carpenter
Francis Flute Thisbe. He’s a bellows-mender
Tom Snout Wall. He’s a tinker
Robin Starveing Moonshine. He’s a tailor
Snug Lion. He’s a joiner
What’s the play that the workmen perform called? The most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe
What is the love flowers name and meaning? Pansy, means “Love in Idleness”
What’s happening to nature and why? The seasons are all mixed up because Titania and Oberon are fighting
What do the workmen think they need to fix about their play? – Have an introduction to say the killing isn’t real- Have another introduction to say that the lion isn’t real- Have the lion costume show part of Snug’s face
What goes wrong in the workmen’s play? – Quince gives away the whole plot, talks too fast, and mixes words up- Bottom refuses to die and constantly stops the play to make comments- Robin Starveling is frustrated about being interrupted and yells at the audience
Who ruled in Shakespeare’s time? Queen Elizabeth and King James
Who was Shakespeare’s rival? Christopher Marlow
How many plays did Shakespeare write? 37
How many sonnets did Shakespeare write? 154
What were the three types of plays Shakespeare wrote? Comedies, Tragedies, and Historicals
Want was the disease that caused theaters to be closed called? The Black Plague
What were the poor people who stood on the ground called? Groundlings
Lysander “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
Helena “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
Hermia “O, hell! to choose love by another’s eyes.”
Snug “I am slow of study.”
Puck “I’ll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes.”
Oberon “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”
Bottom “A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.”
Puck “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
Prologue (Quince) “The true beginning of our end.”
Theseus “For never anything can be amiss, When simpleness and duty tender it.”
Titania “Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.”
Helena “O weary night, O long and tedious night, Abate thy hour!”
Hermia “Methinks I see these things with parted eye, When every thing seems double.”
Oberon “What thou seest when thou dost wake, do it for thy true-love take. Love and languish for his sake.”
Puck “When thou wakest, thou takest true delight in the sight of thy former lady’s eye.”
Bottom “Where are these lads? Where are these hearts?”
Hippolyta “But all the story of the night told over, and all their minds transfigured so together.”
Puck “Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.”
Helena “Call you me fair? That fair again unsay.”
Egeus “Full of vexation come I, with complaint Against my child, my daughter Hermia.”
Lysander “If thou lovest me, then Steal forth from thy father’s house tonight.”
Helena “I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight.”
Bottom “Let me play the lion too.”
Puck “Thou speakest aright I am the merry wanderer of the night I jest to Oberon and make him smile.”
Titania “And this same progeny of evil comes. From our debate, from our dissention: We are their parents and original.”
Oberon “Thou shalt know the man By the Athenian garments he hath on.”
Helena “I am your spaniel.”
Lysander “Not Hermia but Helena I love; who would not change a raven for a dove?”
Quince “O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted. Pray masters, fly masters! Help!”
Titania “I am a spirit of no common rate. The summer still doth tend upon my state. And I do love thee.”
Helena “Most ungrateful maid! Have you conspired, have you with these contrived To bait me with this foul derision?”
Titania “How came these thing to pass? O! How mine eyes do loathe his visage now!”
Demetrius “Why then, we are awake. Let’s follow him And by the way let us recount our dreams.”
Hippolyta “This is the silliest stuff that I ever heard.”
Lysander “Get you gone you dwarf; You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; you bead, you acorn!”
Hermia “Do thy best To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast”
Theseus “I woo’d thee with my sword”
Helena “The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind Makes speed to catch the tiger”
Hermia “By all the vows that ever men have broke”
Puck “How now, spirit! whither wander you?”
Bottom “I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you, as ’twere any nightingale.”
Hippolyta “Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow new-bent in Heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities,”
Egeus “Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord; this man hath my consent to marry her. Stand forth, Lysander: and my gracious duke, this man hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child,”
Egeus “With feigning voice, verses of feigning love, and stolen the impression of her fantasy. With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits, knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeals, messengers,”
Egeus “As she is mine, I may dispose of her: Which shall be either to this gentlemen [Demetrius] or to her death, according to our law,”
Theseus “But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice, the other must be held worthier,”
Theseus “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.”
Theseus “Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, grows lives and dies in single blessedness,”
Hermia “So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord, Ere I will yield my virgin patent up Unto his lordship.”
Lysander “I am, my lord, as well derived as he, as well possess’d, my love is more than his; my foruntes every way as fairly rank’d, if not with vantage”
Theseus “For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself to fit your fancies to your fathers will, or else the law of Athens yields you up,”
Hermia “Belike for want of rain, which I could well, Between them from the tempest of my eyes,”
Hermia “O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, that he hath turn’d a heaven unto a hell!”
Lysander “Through Athens’ gates have we devised to steal.”
Helena “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 loves mind of any judgement taste; Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste: and therefore love is said to be a child.”
Bottom “If I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms,”
Bottom “We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely,”
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,”
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,”
Puck “She never had so sweet a changeling, and jealous Oberon would have the child knight of his train, to trace the forests wild; but she perforce with holds the loved boy, crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy,”
Fairy “Are not you he that frights the maidens of the villagery, skim milk and sometimes labour in the queen, and bootless make the breath less housewife churn; and sometime make the drink to bear no barm,”
Puck “Thou speak’st aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night,”
Titania “Your buskin’d mistress and your warrior love, to Theseus must be wedded, and you come to give their bed joy and prosperity,”
Oberon “Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, knowing I know thy love to Theseus,”
Titania “These are the forgeries of jealousy: and never, since the middle summer’s spring,”
Titania “But she, being mortal, of that boy did die; and for her sake do I rear up her boy; and for her sake I will not part with him,”
Oberon “Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew’d thee once: the juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid, will make of man or woman madly dote, upon the next live creature that it sees,”
Demetrius “I love thee not, therefore pursue me not,”
Demetrius “You do impeach your modesty too much, to leave the city and commit yourself into the of one that loves you not; trust the opportunity of the night,”
Helena “For you in my respect are all the world, then how can it be said I am alone,”
Helena “Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex: we cannot fight for love, as men may do; we should be woo’d, and were not mad to woo. I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell, to die upon the hand I love so well,”
Oberon “And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes, and make her full of hateful fantasies,”
Puck “That work for bread upon Athenian stalls, were met together, to rehearse a play. intended for great Theseus’ nuptial-day,”
Oberon “This falls out better than I could devise,”
Puck “This is the woman, but not this the man,”
Lysander “Look when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, in their nativity all truth appears,”
Helena “If you were civil and knew courtesy, you would not do me thus much injury,”
Helena “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,”
Hermia “I am amazed at your passionate words, I scorn you not; it seems you scorn me,”
Hermia “You thief of love what have you come by night and stolen my love’s heart from him,”
Helena “She was a vixen when she went to school; And though she by but little, she is fierce,”
Oberon “And back to Athens shall the lovers wend, with league whose date till death shall never end,”
Puck “On the ground sleep sound, I’ll apply to your eye, gentle lover, remedy,”
Puck “Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill,”
Lysander “One turf shall serve as a pillow for us both. One heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth.”
Demetrius “Oh, why rebuke you him that loves you so? Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.”
Hermia “If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep, Being o’er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep, And kill me too.”
Demetrius “So should the murdered look, and so should I, Pierced through the heart with your stern cruelty. Yet you, the murderer, look as bright, as clear, As yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere.”
Hermia “Out, dog! Out, cur! Thou drivest me past the bounds Of maiden’s patience. Hast thou slain him then? Henceforth be never numbered among men? Oh, once tell true, tell true even for my sake- Durst thou have looked upon him being awake, And hast thou killed him sleeping? O brave touch! Could not a worm, an adder, do so much?”
Helena “These vows are Hermia’s. Will you give her o’er?”
Helena “Your vows to her and me, put in two scales, Will even weigh, and both as light as tales.”
Demetrius “O Helena, goddess, nyph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne? Crystal is muddy. Oh, how ripe in show Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!”
Hermia “What love could press Lysander from my side?”
Lysander “Why seek’st thou me? Could not this make thee know The hate I bear thee made me leave thee so?”
Hermia “‘Puppet’? Why so? -Ay, that way goes the game. Now I perceive that she hath made compare Between our statures. She hath urged her height, And with her personage, her tall personage, Her height, forsooth, she hath prevailed with him.
Oberon “Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye,”
Oberon “Welcome, good Robin. Seest thou this sweet sight? Her dotage now I do begin to pity.”
Oberon “Be as thou wast wont to be. See as thou was wont to see.”
Lysander “My lord, I shall reply amazedly, Half asleep, half waking. But as yet, I swear, I cannot truly say how I came here.”
Egeus “Enough, enough, my lord. You have enough! I beg the law, the law, upon his head.”
Demetrius “But by some power it is – my love to Hermia, Melted as the snow, seems to me now As the remembrance of an idle gaud Which in my childhood I did dote upon”
Bottom “I have had a dream – past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.”
Hippolyta “‘Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.”
Theseus “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact.”
Puck “If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended – That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream”
July 17, 2019