Dallas: Fireside Folktales presents A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Act 1, Scene 1.
Philostrate: SA.
Theseus: Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws on apace. Four happy days bring in another moon. But, oh, methinks, how slow this old moon wanes. She lingers my desires like to a step dame or a dowager, long withering out a young man's revenue.
Hippolyta: Four days will quickly steep themselves in night. Four nights will quickly dream away the time. And then the moon, like to a silver bow new bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities.
Theseus: Go, Philostrate. Stir up the Athenian youth to merriment. Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth. Turn melancholy forth to funerals. A pale companion is not for our pomp.
Dallas: Yes, my lord.
Theseus: Hippolyta, I wooed 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 reveling.
Hippolyta: Here come the youths.
Dallas: Now.
Egeus: Happy be Theseus, our renowned duke.
Theseus: Thanks, good Aegeus. What's the news with thee?
Egeus: Full of vexation come I with complaint against my child, my daughter, Hermia. Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord, this man hath my consent to marry her. Stand forth, Lysander. And, my gracious duke, this man hath bewitched the bosom of my child.
Dallas: Thou.
Egeus: Thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes and interchanged love tokens with my child. Thou hast by moonlight at her window, sung with feigning voice verses of feigning love, and stolen the impression of her fantasy, with bracelets of thy hair rings, gauds, conceits, knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats. Those are messengers of strong prevailment and unhardened youth. My lord, with cunning hast thou filched my daughter's heart, turned her obedience, which is due to me, to stubborn harshness. And, my gracious duke, be it so. She will not hear before your grace consent to marry with Demetrius. I beg the ancient privilege of Athens. As she is mine, I may dispose of her, which shall be either to this gentleman or to her death, according to our law, immediately provided in that case.
Theseus: What say you, Hermia? Be advised, Fairmyde, to you your father should be as a God, one that composed your beauties, yea, and one to whom you are but as a form in wax by him imprinted, and within his power to leave the figure or disfigure it. Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.
Philostrate: So is Lysander in himself.
Theseus: He is but in this kind, wanting your father's voice, the other must be held the worthier.
Philostrate: I would my father looked but with my eyes.
Theseus: Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.
Philostrate: I do entreat your grace to pardon me. I know not by what power I am made bold, nor how it may concern my modesty in such a presence here to plead my thoughts. But I beseech your grace that I may know the worst that may befall me in this case. If I. I refuse to wed Demetrius.
Theseus: Either to die the death or to abjure forever the society of men. Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires. Know of your youth, examine well your blood, whether, if you yield not to your father's choice, you can endure the livery of a nun. For I to be in shady cloister, mewed to live a barren sister all your life, chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon. Thrice blessed they that master sow their blood to undergo such maiden pilgrimage. But earthlier happy is the rose distilled than that which, withering on the virgin thorn grows, lives, and dies single blessedness.
Philostrate: So will I grow. So live, so die, my lord, ere I will yield my virgin paten up unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke my soul consents not to give sovereignty.
Theseus: Take time to pause, and by the next new moon, the sealing day betwixt my love and me, for everlasting bond of fellowship 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.
Hermia: You have her father's love, Demetrius. Let me have Hermia's. Do you marry him, Scornful Lysander?
Egeus: True, he hath my love, and what is mine, my love shall render him. And she is mine, and all my right of her I do estate unto Demetrius.
Hermia: I am, my lord, as well derived as he, as well possessed. My love is more than his, my fortunes every way as fairly ranked, if not with vantage, as Demetrius, and which is more than all these boasts can be. I am beloved of beauteous Hermia. Why should not I then prosecute my right Demetrius? I'll avouch it to his head, made love to Nadar's daughter Helena, and won her soul. And she, sweet lady, dotes, devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry upon this spotted and inconstant man.
Theseus: I must confess that I have heard so Much, and with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof, but being overfull of self affairs, my mind did lose it. But Demetrius, come, and. Come, Aegeus, you shall go with me. I have some private schooling for you both. 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. Come. My Hippolyta would cheer my love. Demetrius and Aegeus, go along. I must employ you in some business against our nuptial, and confer with you of something nearly that concerns yourselves with duty and desire.
Egeus: We follow you.
Hermia: How now, my love. Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there do fade so fast?
Philostrate: Be like for want of rain, which I could well beteen them for the tempest of my eyes.
Hermia: Ay me, for aught that I could ever read, could ever hear. By Taylor History. The course of true love never did run smooth. But either it was different in blood.
Philostrate: Oh, cross too high to be enthralled.
Hermia: To low, or else misgrafet in respect.
Philostrate: Of years too old to be engaged.
Hermia: To young, or else it stood upon the choice of friends.
Philostrate: Oh, well. To choose love by another's eyes.
Hermia: Or if there were a sympathy in choice, war, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, making it momentony as a sound, swift as a shadow, short as any dream, but brief as the lightning in the collie night, that in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, and ere a man hath power to say, behold, the jaws of darkness do devour it up, so quick bright things come to confusion.
Philostrate: If then true lovers have ever crossed, it stands as an edict in destiny. Then let us teach our trial patience. Because it is a customary cross as due to love, as thoughts and dreams and sighs, wishes and tears poor Fancy's followers.
Hermia: A good persuasion. Therefore hear me, Hermia. I have a widow aunt, a dowager of great revenue, and she hath no child. From Athens is her house, remote seven leagues, and she respects me as her only son. There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee, and to that place the sharp Athenian law cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me, then steal forth thy father's house to morrow night, and in the wood, a league without the town where I did meet thee once with Helena, to do observance to a morn of May, there I stay for thee.
Philostrate: O my good Lysander. Oh, I swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow, by the Best arrow with the golden head, by the simplicity of Venus doves, by that which knitteth souls and prospers loves. And by that fire which burned the Carthage queen when the false Trojan under sail was seen. By all the vows that ever men have broke, in number more than ever women spoke. In that same place thou hast appointed me. Tomorrow truly will I meet with thee.
Hermia: Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.
Philostrate: Godspeed, fair Helena. Wither away.
Lysander: Call you me fair? That fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair. Your eyes are lodestars, and your tongue sweet air more tunable than lark to shepherd's ear. When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear, sickness is catching. O, where favors so yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go, My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, my tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody. Were the world mine, Demetrius, being bated, the rest I'd give to be to you translated. Oh, teach me how you look, and with what art you sway the motion of Demetrius heart.
Philostrate: I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.
Lysander: Oh, that your frowns would teach my smiles.
Philostrate: Such skill I give him. Curses. Yet he gives me love.
Lysander: O, at my prayers could such affections move.
Philostrate: The more I hate, the more he follows me.
Lysander: The more I love, the more he hateth me.
Philostrate: His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.
Lysander: None but your beauty. What that fault were mine, take comfort.
Philostrate: He no more shall see my face. Lysander and myself will fly this place. Before the time I did Lysander see, seemed Athens as a paradise to me. Oh, then what graces in my love do dwell, that he hath turned heaven into hell?
Hermia: Helen, to you our minds we will unfold tomorrow night, when Phoebe doth behold her silver visage in the watery glass, decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass. A time that lovers flights doth still conceal. Through Athens gates we have devised to steal.
Philostrate: And in the wood, where often you and I upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie, emptying our bosoms of their council. Sweet, there my Lysander and myself shall meet. And thence from Athens turn away our eyes to seek new friends and stranger companies. Farewell, sweet playfellow. Pray thou for us, and good luck grant thee thy Demetrius. Keep word, Lysander. We must starve our sight from lovers. Food till morrow. Deep midnight.
Hermia: I will, my Hermia. Helena, adieu. As you want him, Demetrius, do it on you.
Lysander: How happy some or other, some can be. Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so he will not know what all but he doth know. And as he errs doting on Hermia's eyes, so I admiring of his qualities, Things base and vile, holding no quantity love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste wings, and no eyes figure unheedy haste 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 everywhere. For ere Demetrius looked on Hermia's eyne, he held down oaths that he was only mine and when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, so he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt. I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight Then to the wood will he tomorrow night pursue her. And for this intelligence if I have thanks, it is a dear expense but herein mean I to enrich my pain to have his sight thither and back again.
Dallas: This episode of A Midsummer Night's Dream featured the vocal talents of Hayden Ezekiel Felix as Theseus, Diana, Helen Kennedy as Hippolyta, Josephine Kim as Philostrate, Delvin Green as Aegis, Danielle Ellet as Hermia, Christopher Wilson as Demetrius, Ezra Wayne as Lysander and Emma Sherjarco as Helena. A Midsummer Night's Dream was produced and directed by Dallas Hawthorne with the assistance of Roz Ray Powers. Cole Burkhart was the sound designer. Allie Hilton composed the music, Adam Raimonda composed the theme song. This show would not have been possible without the support of friends, family and many, many, many of our respected peers in the audio drama sp. If you want to provide your support to the cast and crew of the show, please consider donating to our KO Fi page which you can find linked in the Show Notes. If you wish to donate directly to a cast or crew member of your choosing, you can find out how to do that in the Show Notes as well. Transcriptions of each episode, including the edits made made during production, can also be found linked in the Show Notes. Generally, anything you might need to know should be down in the Show Notes. Thank you for listening.