Athens. 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: an 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 every thing,
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 o’er 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 pair 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!
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