“Ay me! For aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.”
Lysander (1.1.132–34)
“I’ll put a girdle round the earth
In forty minutes.”
Puck (2.1.175–76)
“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;
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throw her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.”
Oberon (2.1.249–56)
“You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen,
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong.
Come not near the fairy queen.”
First Fairy (2.2.9–12)
“Lord what fools these mortals be!”
Puck (3.2.115)
“The eye of man hath not heard,
the ear of man hath not seen,
man’s hand is not able to taste,
his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report,
what my dream was.”
Bottom (4.1.211–14)
“Not a mouse
Shall disturb this hallow’d house.
I am sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behind the door.”
Puck (5.1.387–90)
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumb’red here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue
We will make amends ’re long;
Else the Puck a liar call.
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.”
Puck (5.1.423–38)
