l asleep under the
magic influence of Puck.

Theseus wonders how the lovers came to the wood, and says to the father of
Hermia:

_"But speak, Egeus; is not this the day
That Helena should give answer of her choice?"_

Egeus:

_"It is, my lord."_

Theseus:

_"Go bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns._
(Expresses surprise at their situation.)
_How comes this gentle concord in the world,
That hatred is so far from jealousy,
To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity."_

The lovers are reconciled to their natural choice, and Theseus decides
against the father:

_"Egeus, I will overbear your will,
For in the temple by and by, with us
These couples shall eternally be knit."_

Bottom wakes and tells his theatrical partners:

_"I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say
what dream it was.
Man is but an ass, a patched fool.
Eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath
not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his
tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report,
what my dream was!"_

The vast audience laughed heartily at the befuddled language of Bottom, the
weaver, and imagined themselves under the like spell of fantastic fairies.

The fifth and last act opens up with Theseus and his Amazonian Queen in the
palace, prepared for the nuptial rites, and also the marriage of Lysander
and Demetrius to their choice.

[Illustration]

Theseus speaking of the strange conduct of lovers, delivers this great bit
of philosophy:

_"More strange than true, I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains--
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact;
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman; the lover all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt;
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name!"_

The play of Pyramus and Thisby is then introduced to the palace audience,
when Bottom and his Athenian mechanics amuse Theseus and Hippolyta with
their crude, rustic conception of lo