Prescanned Shakespeare.com
presented by Acoustic Learning
Athens, at Quince's house.
[Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING]
QUINCE
Have you sent to Bottom's house? is he come home yet?
STARVELING
He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is transported.
FLUTE
If he come not, then the play is marred. it goes not forward, doth it?
QUINCE
It is not possible: you have not a man in all Athens, able to discharge
Pyramus but he.
FLUTE
No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in Athens.
QUINCE
Yea, and the best person too, and he is a very paramour, for a sweet voice.
FLUTE
You must say, paragon. A paramour is (God bless us) a thing of naught.
[Enter SNUG]
SNUG
Masters, the duke is coming from the temple, and there is two or three lords
and ladies more married. If our sport had gone forward, we had all been made
men.
FLUTE
O sweet bully Bottom: thus hath he lost sixpence a day, during his life; he
could not have 'scaped sixpence a day. And the duke had not given him
sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I'll be hanged. he would have deserved
it. Sixpence a day in Pyramus, or nothing.
[Enter BOTTOM]
BOTTOM
Where are these lads? where are these hearts?
QUINCE
Bottom, O most courageous day! O most happy hour!
BOTTOM
Masters, I am to discourse wonders; but ask me not what. For if I tell you,
I am no true Athenian. I will tell you everything right as it fell out.
QUINCE
Let us hear, sweet Bottom.
BOTTOM
Not a word of me: all that I will tell you, is, that the duke hath dined. Get
your apparel together, good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your
pumps, meet presently at the palace, every man look ore his part: for the
short and the long is, our play is preferred: in any case let Thisby have
clean linen: and let not him that plays the lion, pare his nails, for they
shall hang out for the lion's claws. And most dear actors, eat no onions,
nor garlic; for we are to utter sweet breath, and I do not doubt but to hear
them say, it is a sweet comedy. No more words: away, go away.
[Exeunt]