No Fear Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Get this No Fear to go!
Act 2, Scene 1, Page 4
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TITANIA
These are the forgeries of jealousy.
And never, since the middle summer’s spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By pavèd fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or in the beachèd margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have sucked up from the sea
Contagious fogs, which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents.
The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.
The fold stands empty in the drownèd field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock.
The nine-men’s-morris is filled up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable.
The human mortals want their winter here.
No night is now with hymn or carol blessed.
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension.
We are their parents and original.
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TITANIA
These are nothing but jealous lies. Since the beginning of
midsummer, my fairies and I haven’t been able to meet
anywhere to do our dances in the wind without being disturbed by you
and your arguments. We haven’t been able to meet on a hill or in a valley, in
the forest or a meadow, by a pebbly fountain or a rushing stream, or
on the beach by the ocean without you disturbing us. And because you
interrupt us so that we can’t dance for them, the winds
have made fogs rise up out of the sea and fall down on the rivers so
that the rivers flood, just to get revenge on you. So all the work
that oxen and farmers have done in plowing the fields has been for
nothing, because the unripe grain has rotted before it was ripe.
Sheep pens are empty in the middle of the flooded fields, and the
crows get fat from eating the dead bodies of infected sheep. All the
fields where people usually play games are filled with mud, and you
can’t even see the elaborate mazes that people create in
the grass, because no one walks in them anymore and
they’ve all grown over. It’s not winter here
for the human mortals, so they’re not protected by the
holy hymns and carols that they sing in winter. So the pale, angry
moon, who controls the tides, fills the air with diseases. As a
consequence of this bad weather and these bad moods the seasons have
started to change. Cold frosts spread over the red roses, and the
icy winter wears a crown of sweet summer flowers as some sick joke.
Spring, summer, fertile autumn and angry winter have all changed
places, and now the confused world doesn’t know which is
which. And this is all because of our argument. We are responsible
for this.
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