"A Midsummer Night's Dream," Vocabulary from Act 1

O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires

Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;

Turn melancholy forth to funerals;
The pale companion is not for our pomp.

Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.

Full of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia.

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
With feigning voice verses of feigning love

With cunning hast thou filch'd my daughter's heart,
Turn'd her obedience, which is due to me,
To stubborn harshness

I do entreat your grace to pardon me.

Either to die the death or to abjure
For ever the society of men.

Upon that day either prepare to die
For disobedience to your father's will,
Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would;
Or on Diana's altar to protest
For aye austerity and single life.

Relent, sweet Hermia: and, Lysander, yield
Thy crazed title to my certain right.

For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fancies to your father's will;
Or else the law of Athens yields you up--
Which by no means we may extenuate--
To death, or to a vow of single life.

If then true lovers have been ever cross'd,
It stands as an edict in destiny:
Then let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary cross

Things base and vile, folding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity

And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured every where:

Here is the scroll of every man's name, which is thought fit, through all Athens, to play in our interlude before the duke and the duchess, on his wedding-day at night.

Marry, our play is, the most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.

A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.

That will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some measure.

You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.