A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act I, Scene i

 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream.         Act 1, Scene 1.      Helena

(This text is featured in our interview with Willow Geer, Melora Marshall and Ellen Geer)

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Click here to open up Willow Geer’s version

1. How happy some o’er other some can be!
2  Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
3  But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
4  He will not know what all but he do know:
5  And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
6  So I, admiring of his qualities:
7  Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
8  Love can transpose to form and dignity:
9  Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
10  And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind:
11  Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgement taste;
12  Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
13  And therefore is Love said to be a child,
14  Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
15  As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
16  So the boy Love is perjured every where:
17  For ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne,
18  He hail’d down oaths that he was only mine;
19  And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
20  So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.
21  I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight:
22  Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
23  Pursue her; and for this intelligence
24  If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
25  But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
26  To have his sight thither and back again.

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