A Midsummer Night’s Dream Quotes

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.
And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,
The object and the pleasure of mine eye,
Is only Helena. To her, my lord,
Was I betrothed ere I saw Hermia,
But like a sickness did I loathe this food,
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,
And will for evermore be true to it.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Demetrius professes his complete affection for Helena, declaring that she is his one true love. He analyzes his brief crush on Hermia as a momentary lapse of his normal taste. Using a simile, he says that his infatuation for Hermia is "melted as the snow." He uses a metaphor to compare it to "an idle gaud" or cheap trinket that he used to love as a child. Employing a food metaphor he describes the changing tastes of love. Engaged to Helena before he ever saw Hermia, he was like a sick man who could not stand "this food." But now being healthy again, his normal taste had returned, and all he wanted was Helena.

Fair lovers, you are fortunately met.
Of this discourse we more will hear anon. –
Egeus, I will overbear your will,
For in the temple, by and by, with us,
These couples shall eternally be knit.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Theseus overrules Egeus’ commmand that his daughter Hermia must marry Demetrius. He decrees that later in the temple the marriages of Lysander and Hermia and Demetrius and Helena will take place along with his own. The two sets of young Athenian lovers achieve their happy ending – with the help of the Duke’s intervention and the magic love juice which Demetrius is still under the spell of.

These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turnèd into clouds.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Morning has arrived and the fairy charms have worn off for the four Athenian lovers. Standing alone in the morning light, they begin to consider what has happened to them. Demetrius is confused and doesn’t know if everything is real or not. Using a simile, he compares what happened to distant mountains touching the sky, you can’t tell what is mountain and what is cloud.

Are you sure
That we are awake? It seems to me
That yet we sleep, we dream.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Demetrius says this after all the confusing events of the play are resolved. He says that the lovers feel as though they have been dreaming. He cannot tell whether everything is real or not. Shakespeare is suggesting that love is like a dream, real and vivid when you’re experiencing it, but then when it’s over you look back and think it wasn’t real.

I have had a most rare vision. 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. Methought I was – there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had – but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. 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. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, because it hath no bottom.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Bottom is at his bombastic and comic best when he wakes up in the forest, ass-head gone, and makes this speech about the previous night’s strange happenings. As he thinks back on Fairy Queen Titania taking him as her lover, he decides that it was all simply a dream. He says that a man would have to be "an ass" if he thought he could explain the dream – ironically Bottom was an ass at the time! Still he believes his dream is worthy of turning into art, he hopes that Quince will write a ballad about it and call it "Bottom’s Dream." In his speech Bottom manages to be both serious and funny at the same time. His attempt to rewrite the Bible is very funny, as he mangles the quote from 1 Corinthians 2:9 – "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." In his garbled version, he gets all the body senses mixed up.

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.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. When Bottom wakes up after a night of passion with Queen Titania, we are treated to some wonderful examples of Bottom-speak. He manages to bastardize the English language and the Bible, as he tells us of his strange "dream." In his garbled quotation from Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians, he has the eye hearing, ear seeing, hand tasting, tongue conceiving, and heart reporting.

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.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 2. With Bottom gone missing, Flute bemoans that Bottom has missed the chance to perform for the Duke and earn a pension of sixpence a day in reward for playing Pyramus.

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 Thisbe 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.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 2. The irrepressible Bottom, ass-head gone and magically restored to normal, gives his fellow actors advice on how to best please the royal audience with their play. With comic irony he warns them to avoid onions and garlic so that they will have agreeable breath for the "sweet comedy" they are to perform for the Duke.

More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
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.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold:
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy.
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear?

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Theseus’ speech on the imagination, made at his wedding feast, is one of the most widely quoted speeches from the play. The lovers have told their strange story of what happened in the woods the previous night to the Duke and Hippolyta. But Theseus believes that it is entirely a fantasy, and not rooted in reality. He equates lovers to madmen and poets, saying that each is ruled by a fantastical imagination. The madman sees devils everywhere. The lover can see the beauty of Helen of Troy in somebody unattractive. The poet conjures up connections between heavenly and earthly things and makes the unreal appear real. It is very easy to confuse a bush with a bear at night, Theseus points out.

But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy’s images
And grows to something of great constancy,
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Despite Theseus’s skepticism about the lovers’ story of the night in the woods, Hippolyta believes them. The fact that they all told their story in the same way convinces her that their strange tale must be true. Hippolyta speaks of "their minds transfigured so together." This is alluding to the fact that a transformation has taken place, with Hippolyta saying that something positive and enduring can come from such change.

THESEUS: Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have
To wear away this long age of three hours
Between our after-supper and bed-time?
Where is our usual manager of mirth?
What revels are in hand? Is there no play
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?
Call Philostrate.
PHILOSTRATE: Here, mighty Theseus.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. In Shakespeare’s England the Master of Revels had the important role of arranging entertainment at the royal court. Philostrate is Theseus’ Master of Revels. Among his responsibilities was selecting the best plays to entertain the Duke and his courtiers.

THESEUS: Say what abridgment have you for this evening,
What masque, what music? How shall we beguile
The lazy time if not with some delight?
PHILOSTRATE: [giving Theseus a paper] There is a brief how many sports are ripe.
Make choice of which your Highness will see first.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Theseus asks royal party planner Philostrate what he has lined up for their evening entertainent. The Master of Revels hands the Duke a list of all that is available.

"Merry" and "tragical"? "Tedious" and "brief"?
That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow!
How shall we find the concord of this discord?

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Theseus reads a list of plays that the amateur players are ready to perform. Last on the list and the one he chooses is the love story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Theseus’ obvious puzzlement and amusement are foreshadowing of how ridiculous and foolish the play will be. He employs a series of oxymorons and metaphors to describe its contradictions.

A play there is, my lord, some ten words long
(Which is as brief as I have known a play),
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious; for in all the play,
There is not one word apt, one player fitted.
And tragical, my noble lord, it is.
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself,
Which, when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,
Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Philostrate tries to dissuade Theseus from choosing the Mechanicals’ play about Pyramus and Thisbe for the night’s entertainment. The play is brief, he tells him, but it is so tedious and badly played that its short length is still too long. The tragic story of Pyramus’ suicide will bring tears to the eyes, but from laughter, he warns the Duke.

Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
Which never laboured in their minds till now,
And now have toiled their unbreathed memories
With this same play, against your nuptial.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Philostrate is not enamored of the group of Mechanicals who want to put on a play for Duke Theseus’ wedding. He tells Theseus that they are uneducated manual workers who have never had to do anything that required thinking. They have overtaxed their under-exercised minds to create this play, he maintains.
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