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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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[Giving a paper] THESEUS ‘The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.’ We’ll none of that: that have I told my love, In glory of my kinsman Hercules. ‘The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.’ That is an old device, and it was play’d When I from Thebes came last a conqueror. ‘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. ‘A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus And his love Thisby; 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? PHILOSTRATE 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. 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. THESEUS What are they that do play it? PHILOSTRATE Hard-handed men that work in Athens here, Which never labour’d in their minds till now; And now have toil’d their unbreathed memories With this same play against your nuptial. THESEUS And we will hear it. PHILOSTRATE No, my noble lord, It is not for you. I have heard it over, And it is nothing, nothing in the world; Unless you can find sport in their intents, Extremely stretch’d and conn’d with cruel pain, To do you service. THESEUS I will hear that play; For never anything can be amiss When simpleness and duty tender it. Go, bring them in; and take your places, ladies. Exit PHILOSTRATE HIPPOLYTA I love not to see wretchedness o’er-charged, And duty in his service perishing. THESEUS Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing. HIPPOLYTA He says they can do nothing in this kind. THESEUS The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing. Our sport shall be to take what they mistake; And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect Takes it in might, not merit. Where I have come, great clerks have purposed To greet me with premeditated welcomes; Where I have seen them shiver and look pale, Make periods in the midst of sentences, Throttle their practis’d accent in their fears, And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off, Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet, Out of this silence yet I pick’d a |
