PUCK: How now, spirit! Wither 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 of the fairy queen, to dew her orbs upon the green. The cowslips tall her pensioners be. In their gold coats, spots you see. Those be rubies fairy favors. In those freckles live their savors. I must go seek some dewdrops here, and hang a pearl in every cowslips ear. Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll be gone. Our queen and all our elves come here anon.
PUCK: The king doth keep his revels here tonight. Take heed the queen come not within his sight. For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, because that she as her attendant hath a lovely boy stolen from an Indian King. 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 withholds the loved boy, crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy. And now they never meet in grove or green, by fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen. But they do square that all their elves for fear creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.
FAIRY: Either I mistake your shape and making quite, or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow.
[PUCK LAUGHS]
Are not you he that frights the maidens of the villagery? Skim milk and sometimes labor in the quern, and bootless make the breathless housewife churn? And sometime make the drink to bare no barm? Mislead night wanderers laughing at their harm?
[PUCK LAUGHS]
Knows that hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck. You do their work and they shall have good luck. Are not you he?
PUCK: Thou speakest aright. I am that merry wanderer 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 withered 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 tailor cries and falls into a cough. And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh. And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear. A merrier hour was never wasted there. But, room, Fairy. Here comes Oberon.
FAIRY: And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!
[TENSE MUSIC]
OBERON: Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.
TITANIA: What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence. I have forsworn his bed and company.
OBERON: Tarry, rash wonton. Am not I my Lord?
TITANIA: Then I must be thy lady. But I know when thou hast stolen away from fairy land, and in the shape of Corin sat all day playing on pipes of corn and versing love to amorous Phillida. Why art thou here? Come from the farthest steppe of India, but that forsooth the bouncing Amazon. Your buskined mistress and your warrior love to Theseus must be wedded. And you come to give their bed joy and prosperity?
OBERON: How canst thou thus for shame, Titania? Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, knowing I know thy love to Theseus? Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night from Perigenia, whom he ravished? And make him with fair Aegle break his faith with Ariadne and Antiopa?
TITANIA: These are the forgeries of jealousy. And never, since the middle summer spring, met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, by people fountain or by rushy brook, or in the beached margent of the sea to dance our ringlets to the whistling wind. But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.
[OBERON SIGHS]
Therefore, the winds piping to us in vain, as in revenge, have sucked 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 hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain. The plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard. The fold stands empty in the drowned field, and crows are fatted with the murrion flock. The nine men's morris is filled up with mud, and the quaint mazes in the wanton green, for lack of tread, are undistinguishable.
The human mortals want their winter here. No night is now with hymn or carol blessed, 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 Hiems' thin and icy crown, an odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds is, as in mockery, set.
The spring, the summer, the childing autumn, angry winter, change their wonted liveries. And the mazed world, by their increase, now knows not which is which. And this same progeny of evils comes from our debate, from our dissension. We are their parents, and original.
OBERON: Do you amend it, then? It lies in you. Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy to be my henchman.
TITANIA: Set your heart at rest. The fairy land buys not the child of me. His mother was a votaress of my order. And in the spiced Indian air by night full often hath she gossiped by my side, and sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands, marking the embarked traders on the flood. When we have laughed to see the sails conceive and grow big bellied with the wanton wind, which she-- with pretty and with swimming gait-- following her womb-- then rich with my young squire-- would imitate and sail upon the land to fetch me trifles and return again, as from a voyage rich with merchandise.
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: 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.
OBERON: Well, go thou way. Thou shalt not from this grove till I torment thee for this injury. My gentle Puck, come hither.
[PUCK LAUGHS]
Thou rememberest 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 could not, flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all armed. A certain aim he took at a fair vestal throned by the west, and loosed his love shaft smartly from his bow as it should pierce 100,000 hearts.
[PUCK LAUGHS]
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon. And the imperial votaress passed on in maiden meditation, fancy free. Yet, marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell. It fell upon our little western flour, before milk white, now purple with love's wound. And maidens call it love it in idleness.
[PUCK SIGHS]
Fetch me that flower, 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 40 minutes.
[FOREBODING MUSIC]
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.