A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream, written in 1595 or 1596, is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare.

Act I

• Four days will quickly steep themselves in nights;
  Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
  And then the moon, like to a silver bow
  New bent in heaven, shall behold the night
  Of our solemnities.
  • Hippolyta, scene i

Simple: Four days will go by quickly, and then we will see the night when we wed.

About the quote: They are planning to get married, but the guy is very anxious

• Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
  Could ever hear by tale or history,
  The course of true love never did run smooth.
  • Lysander, scene i

Simple: For all I have ever read in history, true love never goes easily/smoothly

• O, hell! to choose love by another’s eye.
  • Hermia, scene i

• Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
  Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
  That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
  And ere a man hath power to say, — Behold!
  The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
  So quick bright things come to confusion.
  • Lysander, scene i

• Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
  And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
  • Helena, scene i

• Masters, spread yourselves.
  • Bottom, scene ii

• This is Ercles’ vein.
  • Bottom, scene ii

• I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice.
  • Bottom, scene ii

• I am slow of study.
  • Snug, scene ii

• That would hang us, every mother’s son.
  • All, scene ii

• I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you, an ’twere any nightingale.
  • Bottom, scene ii

• A proper man, as one shall see in a summer’s day.
  • Quince, scene ii

Act II

• Over hill, over dale,
  Thorough bush, thorough briar,
  Over park, over pale,
  Thorough flood, thorough fire,
  I do wander everywhere,
  Swifter than the moon's sphere;
  And I serve the fairy queen,
  To dew her orbs upon the green.
  The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
  In their gold coats, spots you see;
  Those be rubies, fairy favours,
  In their freckles live our savours.
  I must go seek some dew-drops here,
  And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
  Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll be gone;
  My queen and all her elves come here anon!
  • Fairy, scene i

• The human mortals.
  • Titania, scene i

• Once I sat upon a promontory,
  And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
  Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
  That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
  And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
  To hear the sea-maid’s music.
  • Oberon, scene i

• And the imperial votaress passed on,
  In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
  Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
  It fell upon a little western flower,
  Before, milk-white, now purple with love’s wound, —
  And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
  • Oberon, scene i

• I’ll put a girdle round about the earth
  In forty minutes.
  • Puck, scene i

• My heart
  Is true as steel.
  • Helena, scene i

• I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
  Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows;
  Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
  With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
  • Oberon, scene i

Other websites

• A Midsummer Night's Dream on Wikipedia