A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Уильям Шекспир
Why are you grown so rude? what change is this,
Sweet love?
LYSANDER
Thy love! out, tawny Tartar, out!
Out, loathèd medicine! hated potion, hence!
HERMIA
Do you not jest?
HELENA
Yes, sooth; and so do you.
LYSANDER
Demetrius, I will keep my word with thee.
DEMETRIUS
I would I had your bond; for I perceive
A weak bond holds you; I’ll not trust your word.
LYSANDER
What! should I hurt her, strike her, kill her dead?
Although I hate her, I’ll not harm her so.
HERMIA
What! can you do me greater harm than hate?
Hate me! wherefore? O me! what news, my love?
Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?
I am as fair now as I was erewhile.
Since night you lov’d me; yet since night you left me:
Why then, you left me,—O, the gods forbid!—
In earnest, shall I say?
LYSANDER
Ay, by my life;
And never did desire to see thee more.
Therefore be out of hope, of question, doubt,
Be certain, nothing truer; ‘tis no jest
That I do hate thee and love Helena.
HERMIA
O me! you juggler! you cankerblossom!
You thief of love! What! have you come by night,
And stol’n my love’s heart from him?
HELENA
Fine, i’ faith!
Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,
No touch of bashfulness? What! will you tear
Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?
Fie, fie! you counterfeit, you puppet, you!
HERMIA
Puppet! why so? Ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures; she hath urg’d her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him.—
And are you grown so high in his esteem
Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.
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 farther. 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 hind’ring 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 dar’st, to try whose right,
Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.
DEMETRIUS
Follow! nay, I’ll go with thee, cheek by jole.
[Exeunt LYSANDER and DEMETRIUS.]
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.
[Exit.]
HERMIA
I am amaz’d, and know not what to say.
[Exit, pursuing HELENA.]
OBERON
This is thy negligence: still thou mistak’st,
Or else commit’st thy knaveries willfully.
PUCK
Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.
Did not you tell me I should know the man
By the Athenian garments