Page 2699 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

ACT V IT

Scene I IT

Enter Theseus, Hippolyta; Lords and Attendants, among them
Philostrate.

HIPPOLY T A

’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.

T HESEUS

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 [5]
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, [10]
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 [15]
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: [20]
Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!

HIPPOLY T A

But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur’d so together,