Robin Goodfellow

Robin
How now, spirit? Whither wander you?

Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow.

Fairy

Over hill, over dale,
 Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
 Thorough flood,
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Oberon
My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb’rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.

I’ll put a girdle round about the Earth
In forty minutes.
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Oberon
Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.
Robin
Ay, there it is.
Oberon
I pray thee give it me.
 Robin gives him the flower.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
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Oberon
I wonder if Titania be awaked;
Then what it was that next came in her eye,
Which she must dote on in extremity.
 Enter Robin Goodfellow.
Here comes my messenger. How now, mad spirit?
What night-rule now about this haunted grove?

When in that moment, so it came to pass,
Titania waked and straightway loved an ass.
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Oberon, to Robin
What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite
And laid the love juice on some true-love’s sight.
Of thy misprision must perforce ensue
Some true-love turned, and not a false turned true.

Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Robin
Then fate o’errules,
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Oberon, to Robin
This is thy negligence. Still thou mistak’st,
Or else committ’st thy knaveries willfully.
Robin 
Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.
Did not you tell me I should know the man
By the Athenian garments he had on?
And so far blameless proves my enterprise
That I have ’nointed an Athenian’s eyesAphesis;
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Helena
O weary night, O long and tedious night,
 Abate thy hours! Shine, comforts, from the east,
That I may back to Athens by daylight
 From these that my poor company detest.
And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye,
Steal me awhile from mine own company.
 She lies down and sleeps.

And sleep,
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Bottom
Will it please you to see the Epilogue or to hear
a Bergomask dance between two of our company?
Theseus
No epilogue, I pray you. For your play needs
no excuse. Never excuse. For when the players are
all dead, there need none to be blamed. Marry, if
he that writ it had played Pyramus and hanged
himself in Thisbe’s garter,
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Robin
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.

That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
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