| (to LYSANDER) Sweet, do not scorn her so. | Helena: Oh, excellent! |
| Lysander, whereto tends all this?(holds LYSANDER back) | Demetrius: Quick, come. |
| Why are you grown so rude? What change is this,Sweet love? | Lysander: Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! Vile thing, let looseOr I will shake thee from me like a serpent. |
| Do you not jest? | Lysander: Thy love? Out, tawny Tartar, out!Out, loathèd medicine! O hated potion, hence! |
| What, can you do me greater harm than hate?Hate me? Wherefore? O me! What news, my love?Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?I am as fair now as I was erewhile.Since night you loved me. Yet since night you left me.Why then, you left me—Oh, the gods forbid!—In earnest, shall I say? | Lysander: What, should I hurt her, strike her, kill her dead?Although I hate her, I’ll not harm her so. |
| O me!(to HELENA) You juggler! You canker-blossom!You thief of love! What, have you come by nightAnd stol’n my love’s heart from him? | Be certain, nothing truer. ‘Tis no jestThat I do hate thee and love Helena. |
| “Puppet”? Why so?—Ay, that way goes the game.Now I perceive that she hath made compareBetween our statures. She hath urged her height,And with her personage, her tall personage, she hath prevailed with him.—And are you grown so high in his esteemBecause I am so dwarfish and so low?How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak.How low am I? I am not yet so lowBut that my nails can reach unto thine eyes. | Helena: Fine, i’ faith!Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,No touch of bashfulness? What, will you tearImpatient answers from my gentle tongue?Fie, fie! You counterfeit, you puppet, you! |
| “Lower”? Hark, again! | HELENA(to LYSANDER and DEMETRIUS)I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,Let her not hurt me. I was never cursed.I have no gift at all in shrewishness.I am a right maid for my cowardice.Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,Because she is something lower than myself,That I can match her. |
| Why, get you gone! Who is ‘t that hinders you | HELENAGood Hermia, do not be so bitter with me.I evermore did love you, Hermia,Did ever keep your counsels, never wronged you—Save that, in love unto Demetrius,I told him of your stealth unto this wood.He followed you. For love I followed him.But he hath chid me hence and threatened meTo strike me, spurn me—nay, to kill me too.And now, so you will let me quiet go,To Athens will I bear my folly backAnd follow you no further. Let me go.You see how simple and how fond I am. |
| What, with Lysander? | A foolish heart, that I leave here behind |
| “Little” again? Nothing but “low” and “little”!—Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?Let me come to her. | HELENAOh, when she’s angry, she is keen and shrewd!She was a vixen when she went to school.And though she be but little, she is fierce. |
| You, mistress, all this coil is long of you.Nay, go not back. | DEMETRIUS”Follow”? Nay, I’ll go with thee, cheek by jowl |
| I am amazed and know not what to say. | I will not trust you, I,Nor longer stay in your curst company.Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray.My legs are longer though, to run away. |
Hermia; Midsummer Night’s Dream
August 15, 2019