Brick Shakespeare: The Comedies—A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (17 page)

HELENA

I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,

Let her not hurt me: I was never curst;

I have no gift at all in shrewishness;

I am a right maid for my cowardice:

Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,

Because she is something lower than myself,

That I can match her.

HERMIA

Lower! hark, again.

HELENA

Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me.

I evermore did love you, Hermia,

Did ever keep your counsels, never wrong’d you;

Save that, in love unto Demetrius,

I told him of your stealth unto this wood.

He follow’d you; for love I follow’d him;

But he hath chid me hence and threaten’d me

To strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too:

And now, so you will let me quiet go,

To Athens will I bear my folly back

And follow you no further: let me go:

You see how simple and how fond I am.

HERMIA

Why, get you gone: who is’t that hinders you?

HELENA

A foolish heart, that I leave here behind.

HERMIA

What, with Lysander?

HELENA

With Demetrius.

LYSANDER

Be not afraid; she shall not harm thee, Helena.

DEMETRIUS

No, sir, she shall not, though you take her part.

HELENA

O, when she’s angry, she is keen and shrewd!

She was a vixen when she went to school;

And though she be but little, she is fierce.

HERMIA

“Little” again! nothing but “low” and “little”!

Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?

Let me come to her.

LYSANDER

Get you gone, you dwarf;

You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made;

You bead, you acorn.

DEMETRIUS

You are too officious

In her behalf that scorns your services.

Let her alone: speak not of Helena;

Take not her part; for, if thou dost intend

Never so little show of love to her,

Thou shalt aby it.

LYSANDER

Now she holds me not;

Now follow, if thou darest, to try whose right,

Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.

DEMETRIUS

Follow! nay, I’ll go with thee, cheek by jole.

HERMIA

You, mistress, all this coil is ’long of you:

Nay, go not back.

HELENA

I will not trust you, I,

Nor longer stay in your curst company.

Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray,

My legs are longer though, to run away.

HERMIA

I am amazed, and know not what to say.

ACT III. Scene II (447–463).

O
beron is not pleased with the mess Puck has made, but Puck says he was very entertained by the whole thing. The two begin the task of setting everything right. Oberon gives Puck a new magic flower that counteracts the “love” flower, then sets off to lift the spell on Titania. Puck, on Oberon’s orders, leads the young lovers in a chase across the forest. He uses his magic to trick and taunt them until they are so weary they lay down on the ground to sleep. Then he creeps close to apply the magic flower to Lysander’s eyes.