No Fear Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Get this No Fear to go!
Act 1, Scene 2, Page 5
Original Text |
Modern Text |
|
|
BOTTOM
I will discharge it in either your straw-color beard, your
orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French
crown-color beard, your perfect yellow.
|
BOTTOM
I’ll play the part wearing either a straw-colored
beard, or a sandy beard, or a red beard, or one of those bright
yellow beards that’s the color of a French coin.
|
|
|
QUINCE
Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then you will
play barefaced.—But masters, here are your parts. And I
am to entreat you, request you, and desire you to con them by
tomorrow night and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without the
town, by moonlight. There will we rehearse, for if we meet in the
city we shall be dogged with company, and our devices known. In the
meantime I will draw a bill of properties such as our play wants. I
pray you, fail me not.
|
QUINCE
Some French people don’t have beards at all, because
syphilis has made all their hair fall out, so you might have to play
the part clean-shaven.—But gentlemen, here are your
scripts, and I beg you to please learn them by tomorrow night. Meet
me in the duke’s forest a mile outside of town.
It’s best to rehearse there, because if we do it here in
the city, we’ll be bothered by crowds of people and
everyone will know the plot of our play. Meanwhile, I’ll
make a list of props that we’ll need for the play. Now
make sure you show up, all of you. Don’t leave me in the
lurch.
|
|
|
40 |
BOTTOM
We will meet, and there we may rehearse most obscenely and
courageously. Take pains. Be perfect. Adieu.
|
BOTTOM
We’ll be there, and there we’ll rehearse
courageously and wonderfully, truly obscenely. Work hard, know your
lines. Goodbye.
|
|
QUINCE
At the duke’s oak we meet.
|
QUINCE
We’ll meet at the giant oak tree in the
duke’s forest.
|
|
|
BOTTOM
Enough. Hold, or cut bowstrings.
|
BOTTOM
Got it? Be there, or don’t show your face again.
|
|
Exeunt |
They all exit. |
