Page 2701 - Shakespeare - Vol. 1

‘The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung
By an Athenian eunuch to the harp’? [45]
We’ll none of that; that have I told my love
In glory of my kinsman Hercules.
(Reads.)
‘The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage’?
That is an old device, and it was play’d [50]
When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.
(Reads.)
‘The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
Of learning, late deceas’d in beggary’?
That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. [55]
(Reads.)
‘A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe, very tragical mirth’?
Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief?
That is hot ice, and wondrous strange snow!
How shall we find the concord of this discord? [60]

PHILOST RAT E

A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,
Which is as brief as I have known a play;
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious; for in all the play
There is not one word apt, one player fitted. [65]
And tragical, my noble lord, it is,
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself;
Which, when I saw rehears’d, I must confess
Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed. [70]

T HESEUS

What are they that do play it?

PHILOST RAT E

Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
Which never labour’d in their minds till now;
And now have toil’d their unbreath’d memories
With this same play, against your nuptial. [75]