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)
Click here to open a scanned version.
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.
[…] Click here to follow along with the text. […]