"Midsummer Night" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentle mortal, sing again: Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note, So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape; And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me, On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... all the sweet and beautiful things in the Bible would not make one play of Shakespeare; all the philosophy in the world would not make one scene in Hamlet; all the beauties of the Bible would not make one scene in the Midsummer Night's Dream; all the beautiful things about woman in the Bible would not begin to create such a character as Perditu or ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... things—and only to be found in very homoeopathic doses among our Aristarchuses. Sheep and d[onkeys] have no taste for truffles. "Good hay, sweet hay, has not its equal in the world," as the artist-philosopher Zettel very truly says in the "Midsummer Night's Dream"! Moreover, dear friend, things didn't and don't go any better with other better fellows than ourselves. We need not make any fancies about it, but only go onward ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... would have no trouble in keeping up his expression. But Elizabeth Eliza objected to the picture in Dr. Schliemann's book; she did not like it for Agamemnon,—it was too slanting in the eyes. So it was decided he should take the part of Nick Bottom, in "Midsummer Night's Dream." He could then wear the ass's head, which would have the same advantage as a mask, and would conceal his own face entirely. Then he could be making up any face he pleased in the ass's head, and would ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... passage amounts to this: the contents, or structure (to wit, of the show to be exhibited), breaks down in the performer's zeal to the subject which it presents. Johnson very properly adduces a much happier expression of the same thought from A Midsummer Night's Dreame: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... all their rules, if you please, from "the ancients." Like Voltaire, they reckoned Shakespeare a barbarian with native wood-notes wild. They took his plays and "made them into plays." They improved The Tempest, Timon of Athens, The Midsummer Night's Dream, and goodness knows how many more. Davenant, in search of material for entertainments, began it; Dryden continued it; even Shadwell had his dirty fingers in it. And this matters to us, for some of Purcell's most ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... she said; "my poor papa's name was H. M. It was marked on his shirt and han'k'chief, Daddy says. And my poor mamma's name was Helena, just like Helena in 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'" The motherly hand trembled, and the lady's voice faltered as she said, "Star, my dear sister's name was Helena, too. Is not that ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... interesting to hear that in this church Mendelssohn's Wedding March was first played at a wedding. The 'Midsummer Night's Dream' music had just been published as a pianoforte duet, when Mr Samuel Reay, of Tiverton, made an arrangement of it for the organ, and the first marriage at which the march was played was that of Mr Tom Daniel and Miss Dorothea Carew, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... dimly saw the same thick wall of greenery. Presently she espied a strange-looking long face peering out from its recesses. On their voyage home from Nassau, Gerald had sometimes read aloud to them from "The Midsummer Night's Dream." Could it be that there were such creatures in the woods as Shakespeare described? A closet adjoining her room had been assigned to Tulee. She opened the door and said, "Tulee, are you there? Why don't you come?" There was no ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... of Lilliput. Yet with what ease, elegance, and lingering love does he draw his petty Pucks, till, though too tiny for touch, they become palpable to vision! On the whole, had not the "Tempest" and the "Midsummer Night's Dream" existed before the "Rape of the Lock," the machinery in it would have proclaimed Pope a man of creative imagination. As it is, it proves wonderful activity of fancy. Shakspeare's delicate creations are touched again without crumbling at the touch, clad in new down, fed on ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... Kentucky, on a midsummer night, in 1787, just before the gray light of morning, John Merrill, attracted by the barking of his dog, went to the door of his cabin to reconnoiter. Scarcely had he left the threshold, when he received the fire of six or seven Indians, by which his arm and thigh were both broken. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... hushed midsummer night. The hum of busy footsteps had long since died away, and the twinkling lights had faded, one by one, from the huge bulk of the metropolis. To the lonely night watcher, there was enough of light in the mild effulgence of the moon to distinguish whether the pale ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... artistic vocation that claimed him. But the next year a work was written, the score of which is marked "Berlin, August 6, 1826," when it must be remembered that he was seventeen years of age, which of itself was sufficient to rank him among the immortals—the overture to the "Midsummer Night's Dream." Full of lovely imaginings, with a wonderful fairy grace all its own, and a bewitching beauty, revealing not only the soul of the true poet, but also the musician profoundly skilled in all the art of orchestral effect, it is hard to believe that it is the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... the separate quarto plays, Othello sold for twenty-nine pounds, eight shillings; King Lear and the Merry Wives of Windsor for twenty-eight pounds each; Henry the Fifth for twenty-seven pounds, six shillings; A Midsummer Night's Dream for twenty-five pounds, ten shillings; and Much Ado about Nothing for the same sum. The first edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets went for three pounds, nineteen shillings. Steevens's copies of the Merry Wives of Windsor and the Sonnets fetched respectively three ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... the earth in forty minutes," prophesied Puck in "Midsummer Night's Dream." The boastful fairy did not succeed in accomplishing this wonder until midnight on the Fourth of July, 1903. On that day the Pacific cable from the United States to Hawaii, to Midway Island, to Guam, and to Manila, began operations. The men worked hard that last day of the cable ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... a midsummer night. The alder-tree sent forth its perfume. The moonlight lay in silver veils upon the earth. There was great rejoicing in the village. Tar-barrels were lighted, and the farm-servants and maids were dancing on the green. ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... and tried to disengage myself. One word again made me a captive: that word was now "Lafontaine;" and at the same moment I saw the sylph bounding to my side. What was I to think of this extraordinary combination? All was as strange as a midsummer night's dream. The "colonel," as if fatigued, leaned against the pillar, and slightly removing his mask, I saw, with sudden rejoicing, the features of that gallant young friend, whom I had almost despaired of ever seeing again. "Wait in this spot until I return," was all that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... Laura, after the "midsummer night's dream" that often comes to girls of seventeen, woke up to find that youth and love were no match for age and common sense. Philip had been flying about the world like a thistle-down for five-and-twenty years, generous-hearted, frank, and kind, but with never ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... Shakespeare wrote with a current pen, heedless of blots and little changes. He was, it is evident, not one of the correct authors. But it seems unlikely that no pains of rewriting went to the making of the speeches in A Midsummer Night's Dream or Hamlet's address to the skull. Shakespeare, one feels, is richer than any other author in the beauty of first thoughts. But one seems to perceive in much of his work the beauty of second thoughts too. There have been few great writers who have ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... possible manipulation. Every director of school dramatics knows the delight of utilizing the same material over and over again. Here is one instance. An interior set, neutral in tones and with no marked characteristics of style and period, was built to serve in Acts I and V of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hangings, furniture, costumes gave it the proper appearance. Later it was used in Ulysses. It has also housed Moliere's Doctor in Spite of Himself (Le Medecin Malgre Lui) and The Wealthy Upstart (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme), Carrion and Aza's Zaragueeta, Sudermann's The Far-Away ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... between what was perhaps the last of Shakespeare's completed works, and that early drama which first gave undoubted proof that his imagination had taken wings. The points of resemblance between The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream, their common atmosphere of romance and magic, the beautiful absurdities of their intrigues, their studied contrasts of the grotesque with the delicate, the ethereal with the earthly, the charm of their lyrics, the verve of their vulgar comedy—these, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... cried. "You must be crazy! For there isn't a single person in all Pleasant Valley that hasn't heard Kiddie Katydid singing his tiresome song on a fine midsummer night." ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... first." A story, "White Poppies," by May Kendall, which ran through Sylvia's Journal, is a little too grown-up to be included; nor can the "Heroines of the Poets," which appeared in the same place, be dragged in to augment the scanty list, any more than the "Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Keats's Poems." It is singular that the fancy of Mr. Anning Bell, which seems exactly calculated to attract a child and its parent at the same time, has not been more frequently requisitioned for this purpose. ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... fought on a midsummer night, when less than three thousand British and Canadian troops fought six hours against a much superior force, led by the ablest officers who had taken part in the war. For three hours, from six to nine o'clock at night, less than two thousand held the height, which was ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... if the fires of heaven were threatening this stolen marriage; but the friar and Eberhard both exclaimed, "The Needfire alight already!" And she recollected how often she had seen these bonfires on Midsummer night shining red on every hill around Ulm. Loud shouts were greeting the uprising flame, and the people gathering thicker and thicker on the slope. The friar undid the door to hasten out into the throng, and ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... long dead. But she bade Ironbeard go to Frankland, for it was so written. "A great kingdom waits," she said—"not for you, but for the seed of your loins." And Biorn shuddered, for they were the words spoken in her hut on that unforgotten midsummer night. ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... by the way- A spot in the circle of white- A grey, craggy spur plunging stark through the deep-splintered ice. A trifle! you say, but a glow of warm land may suffice To brighten a day Prolonged to a midsummer night. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... friends &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and Tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loves Labors Lost, his Love Labours Wonne, his Midsummer Night Dreame, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy his Richard the 2., Richard the 3., Henry the 4., {11} King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speake with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin, so I say that the Muses would speak with ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... returns for his means, and will be very urgent that repayment be made on the day named in the bill. He hath empowered me to take your bill at two months,—for him, mind you,—for L10, the payment to be assured, as you wished, by the pledge of your two new plays in manuscript,—"Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Romeo and Juliet,"—for which bill he will at my strong instance, and because you are a friend to me, give L5. My charge for services in this behalf, which hath consumed much time, will be L1, which ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... Demetrius' "Well roar'd, Lion!" in act v, scene 1 of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The lion, of course, is the familiar Christian symbol ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... squarer I take to be a cholerick, quarrelsome fellow, for in this sense Shakespeare uses the word to square. So in Midsummer Night's Dream it is said of Oberon and Titalia, that they never meet but they square. So the sense may be, Is there no hot-blooded youth that will keep him company through all his ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... name of one of the "homespun actors" in "Midsummer Night's Dream," and is no doubt there used as a ludicrous name. The ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream I shall never forget ... Hildreth as Titania in her green tights ... I sat in the back (she would not allow me in the front because it might fluster her, she pleaded) and enjoyed a sense of blissful ownership in her, as she glided about, through the Shakespearean ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... from his "Alceste"—and the actually correct way of interpreting and playing it; (b) a passage from the scherzo of Mendelssohn's string quartet,—to show how a gay subject can be treated in the minor mood—and M. Saint-Saens adds: "Mendelssohn's scherzo of his 'Midsummer Night's Dream' is in sol minor but it evokes no idea of sadness, although oftentimes those who play it, deceived by its minor mood, give it a melancholy character, which is very far from ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... incontrovertible custom, and to show how plastic it is, and how easily pierced, and how readily transformed. He has a malicious pleasure in confusing the boundaries of nature and fancy, and mocking the purblind understanding. In the "Midsummer Night's Dream" we have an ambiguous and bewildering light, with the horizon always shifting, and the boundaries of fact and fable confused with an inseparable mingling of forms; both outwardly, as when Theseus enters ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... about what we have lost, and welcome them when they come again with greater tenderness and love, with clearer eyes to see, and purer hearts to understand, the spirit that dwells in them. We cannot do without the 'winter of our discontent.' Shakspere surely saw that when he makes Titania say, in A Midsummer Night's Dream: ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... exquisite "best" as America possessed in her Colonial houses and gardens and furnishings should ever have been discarded for the atrocities of the period after the Civil War, is comparable to nothing but Titania's Midsummer Night's Dream madness that made her believe an ass's features more beautiful than those ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... that he drove over with Mary Arden, his wife, sitting on the front seat holding the baby, and all the other seven children sitting on the straw behind. And we may be sure that the eldest boy in that brood never forgot the day. In fact, in "Midsummer Night's Dream" he has called on his memory for certain features of the show. Elizabeth was forty-one years old then, but apparently very attractive and glib of tongue. No doubt Kenilworth was stupendous in its magnificence, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... tone on which the melody should float. Most pianists play them too fast. Mozart and Schumann protested against the tendency to take their slow pieces too fast, and Chopin suffers still more from this pernicious habit. Mendelssohn in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and Weber in "Oberon," have given us glimpses of dreamland, but Chopin's nocturnes take us there bodily, and plunge us into reveries more delicious than the visions of an opium eater. They should be played in the twilight and in solitude, for the slightest foreign sound breaks the spell. ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... oriole's, robin's, and thrush's notes), making the day on which you first hear it memorable. This is one of the few birds that sing at night. A soft, sweet, rolling warble, heard when the moon is at its full on a midsummer night, is more than likely to come from ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare says there was a law in Athens, that if a daughter refused to marry the husband selected for her by her father, she might be put to death. Eg[e]us (3 syl.), an Athenian, promised to give his daughter, Hermia, in marriage to Dem[e]trius; but, as the lady ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the word all the editors take: which is right, I do not know; I doubt if either is. The word in A Midsummer Night's Dream, ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... rain, and the afternoon of clearing wind and clouds, the evening of Mrs. Merrick's party passed into one of those strange, unearthly nights when the whole world seems resolved into moonlight and a midsummer night's dream. So while gas and hot-house flowers had it all their own way in the house at Merricksdale, over the rest of the outside world the wondrous moonlight reigned supreme. Not white and silvery, but as it were gilded and mellowed ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... at the time into fashion. But quick on these lighter comedies followed two in which his genius started fully into life. His poetic power, held in reserve till now, showed itself with a splendid profusion in the brilliant fancies of the "Midsummer Night's Dream"; and passion swept like a tide of resistless delight ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... like a fair. The St. John bonfire was not a religious ceremony, but its character lifted it above the ordinary burning of brushwood at night. The most dignified Kaskaskians, heretics as well as papists, came out to see it lighted; the pagan spell of Midsummer Night more ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Milton resemble in their imagery and tone of coloring those of Shakspeare, particularly in the phraseology and manner of describing flowers. I think, were a certain number of passages from Lycidas and Comus interspersed with a certain number from Midsummer Night's Dream, the imagery, tone of thought, and style of coloring, would be found so nearly identical, that it would be difficult for one not perfectly familiar to distinguish them. You ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Theatre in Bristol in many child's parts. When my father went to the wall over the Lincoln Circuit, Mr. Chute engaged him as an actor, and I went with him. I remember in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'—I was Mustard Seed, I think, or Peas Blossom; at any rate, some small character that required very prettily dressing, and plenty of flowers on my little costume. I am as fond of flowers to-day as I was then. Well, when once I got ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... After all, a bad actor is an infliction, and it is better to have gentlemen who have not spent centuries in mastering the intricacies of their profession than a noisy personage who tears his passions to atoms. The recent revivals of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Taming of the Shrew at the Globe Theatre show how pleasing Shakspearian representations may be made, even when their success depends less upon elocution than scenic effect. The first of these plays was simply delightful, with its fairy glades and "built-up" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... him. It had been an oversight not to secure them! He was glad the watch was safe: that he had put in the closet before!—but it mattered little when the cup was missing! He went to the stable, got out his horse, and rode home in the still gray of a midsummer night. ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... went to Chicago and studied harmony and counterpoint under Clarence Eddy, and the piano under Ledochowski. It is interesting to note that Kelley was diverted into music from painting by hearing "Blind Tom" play Liszt's transcription of Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" music. I imagine that this idiot-genius had very little other influence of this sort ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... apply to others and by which they justify their punishment of others, are fools and scoundrels, does not date from the Dark Lady complication: he seems to have been born with it. If in The Comedy of Errors and A Midsummer Night's Dream the persons of the drama are not quite so ready for treachery and murder as Laertes and even Hamlet himself (not to mention the procession of ruffians who pass through the latest plays) it is certainly not because they ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... festive revelry is thus ghastly, rendering the most awful secrets made known by our God in order to warm man from sin into a mere antic laughing-stock. Laughter should be moved by what is fair and laughter-worthy—even like such sports as our own "Midsummer Night's Dream." I have read that the bloody temper of Rome fed itself in gladiator shows, and verily, what we beheld to-night betokens something at once grisly and light-minded in ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have that," said the Queen; "all must be happy here, especially on midsummer night. Go, Slyboots, and command them ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... to express the character or the ways of "the too deferential man." "Flatterers be the Devil's chaplains, that sing aye Placebo."—"Parson's Tale."), or with the fantastic machinery in which Pluto and Proserpine anticipate the part played by Oberon and Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." On the other hand, Chaucer is capable of using goods manifestly borrowed or stolen for a purpose never intended in their original employment. Puck himself must have guided the audacious hand which could turn over the leaves of so respected a Father of the Church as St. Jerome, in order ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... drama, is frail. Its movement, indeed, is not more indolent than that of its lovely prototypes in Shakespeare, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream. With all the pastorals Time ambles. But, on the other hand, Tennyson's piece is not a match for either of those Shakespearean works, in massiveness of dramatic signification or in the element of opportunity for the art of acting. ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... more than one reference to the man in the moon, and so have most of the older poets. Shakespeare not only refers frequently to 'a' man, but in the Midsummer Night's Dream Peter Quince distinctly stipulates that the man who is to play 'the moon' shall carry 'a bush ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... all-important matter of the yearly Christmas play at court has been settled; the Master of the Revels has chosen from the rich stores of his manuscripts "The Midsummer Night's Dream", graciously adding that "for wit and mirth it is like to please her Majesty exceedingly." A high honor, indeed, for its author. For, not then, as now, were plays written primarily for the recreation and approval of the audience ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... foliage of the tree whose pale blossoms were still murmurous with bees. Eric was leaning back in an easy chair, with Wildney sitting on the grass, cross-legged at his feet, while Montagu, resting on one of the mossy roots, read to them the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and the ladies were busy ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... for this new composition. To begin with, Felix and Fanny made their first acquaintance with Shakespeare in this year through the medium of a German translation, and they fell completely under the spell of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' Then the summer proved to be an exceptionally fine one, and led to many hours being spent in the beautiful garden—in fact, there is no doubt that the garden began it. It is not difficult to imagine how the ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... and his consciousness seemed to travel even more slowly back from the fairy doings of a midsummer night. Under the observant eyes bent upon it, his face changed extraordinarily from the face of untroubled, almost immortal childhood to the face of struggling and ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... after the alarms and excitements of that disastrous day. The strain had been the greater after sitting up all night, and I for one could barely realise all that had happened in the twenty-four hours. It seemed incredible that the same midsummer night and day should have seen the return of Raffles and our orgy at the club to which neither of us belonged; the dramatic douche that saluted us at the Albany; the confessions and conferences of the night, the overthrow of the money-lender in the morning; and then the untimely disappearance of ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... reading at the window, his curly head buried in a well-worn Shakespeare opened at Midsummer Night's Dream. Lyddy was sitting under her favorite pink apple-tree, a mass of fragrant bloom, more beautiful than Aurora's morning gown. She was sewing; lining with snowy lawn innumerable pockets in a square basket that she held ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... gray dawn lightens the darkness of a midsummer night soon after two o'clock. Philip watched it come, knowing that it was his last sight of day,—as we reckon ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... women do Is there none shall bring thee some delight?" "To lie down and die where lay we two Upon Midsummer night." ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... lips, beyond inquiries as to the second performance, and as to whether Devrient or some one else would appear in it. I heard, moreover, that he had responded with equal indifference to the earnest warmth of my allusions to his own music for the Midsummer Night's Dream, which was being frequently played at that time, and which I had heard for the first time. The only thing he discussed with any detail was the actor Gern, who was playing in Zettel, and who he ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... she, with her gem-dripping finger enamels the wreath of the year; She, she, when the maid-bud is nubile and swelling, winds—whispers anear, Disguising her voice in the Zephyr's—'So secret the bed! and thou shy? 'She, she, when the midsummer night is a-hush draws the dew from on high; Dew bright with the tears of its origin, dew with its weight on the bough, Misdoubting and clinging and trembling— 'Now, now must ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Tropics, about summer evenings, and about some mysterious glory of the grave. It seems metaphysical to say so, but yet it is true that I knew him, speaking scholastically, through a priori ideas—I remember him transcendenter—and, were it not for the midsummer night's dream which glorified his return, to me he would have remained forever that absolute stranger, which, according to the prosaic interpretation of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... blackness of the midsummer night paled, the broken towers and wrecked walls of the monastery loomed up dim and stark in the gray light. The long-drawn sigh of a waking world crept through the air and rustled the ivy leaves. The pitying angel of dreams, who had striven all night ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... tells us his thoughts, if we will take the trouble to learn them. 120. Three stages of thought that men go through on religious matters. Hereditary belief. Scepticism. Reasoned belief. 121. Shakspere went through all this. 122. Illustrations. Hereditary belief. "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Fairies chiefly an adaptation of current tradition. 123. The dawn of doubt. 124. Scepticism. Evil spirits dominant. No guiding good. 125. Corresponding lapse of faith in other matters. Woman's ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... to play the part of Hermia in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Her family shared her pleasure—they felt that a great distinction had come to them. Gyp and Jerry, particularly, were immensely excited. Jerry, who had only been to the theatre twice in her life, thought Isobel ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... dimension, crowds it with agents in rank and order, as quickly reduces the big reality to be the glimpses of the moon. These tricks of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. Can any biography shed light on the localities into which the Midsummer Night's Dream[626] admits me? Did Shakspeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? The forest of Arden,[627] the nimble air ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was changed. In a midsummer night He roam'd with his Winifred, blooming and young; He gazed on her face by the moon's mellow light, And loving and warm were the words on his tongue. Thro' good and thro' evil, he swore to be true, And love through all fortune his Winnie alone; And he saw the red blush o'er her cheek ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... One midsummer night, while leaning over the rail of an ocean steamer and watching the white foam thrown up by the prow, the expanse of dark, heaving water, the vast dome of sky studded with the brilliant jewels of space, an ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... In the Midsummer Night's Dream, again, he gives us a most amusing picture of the straits to which theatrical managers of his day were reduced by the want of proper scenery. In fact, it is impossible to read him without seeing that he is constantly protesting against the two special limitations of the Elizabethan ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... weary year went on, and Midsummer Night came round—the seventh since the night when ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... lord, who, disgusted with the vices of Court, city, and country, has withdrawn from the world with his two sons, Slipper and Nano, turned Stoic, lives in a tomb, and talks broad Scotch. King Oberon has nothing in common with the fairy king of A Midsummer Night's Dream, except the name. The main plot of the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... "'Midsummer Night's Dream,' you midget!" exclaimed Mrs. Eberstein. "Have you read that? And everything else you ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... people who will deny this, but there are people who will deny anything. There are some who will say that St. Paul would not have condemned the Falstaff plays, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and almost everything that Shakspeare ever wrote; but there is no arguing against this. 'Every man,' said Dr. Johnson, 'has a right to his own opinion, and every one else has a right to knock him down for it.' But even granting that generosity ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... allowed the like liberty, for describing things which really exist not, if they are founded on popular belief. Of this nature are fairies, pigmies, and the extraordinary effects of magic; for it is still an imitation, though of other men's fancies: and thus are Shakespeare's "Tempest," his "Midsummer Night's Dream," and Ben Jonson's "Masque of Witches" to be defended. For immaterial substances, we are authorised by Scripture in their description: and herein the text accommodates itself to vulgar apprehension, in giving angels the likeness of beautiful young men. Thus, after the pagan divinity, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... commonplace doggrel about brokers, proctors, lousy fox-eyed serjeants, blue and red noses, and so forth, to make room for the bright light interlude of fairyland child's-play which might not unfittingly have found place even within the moon-charmed circle of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Even in that all heavenly poem there are hardly to be found lines of more sweet and radiant simplicity ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... is the mysterious little water-ouzel, or 'oiselle,' properly the water-blackbird,—Buffon's 'merle d'eau'—for ouzel is the classic and poetic word for the blackbird, or ouzel-cock, "so black of hue," in 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' Johnson gives it from the Saxon 'osle'; but in Chaucer it must be understood simply as the feminine of oiseau. The bird in question might, however, be more properly called, as Bewick calls it, 'water pyot,' or water magpie, for only its ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... executions, and pageants have held their august procession; the rain has wet many a May-day and many a harvesting, whose traditional color (through tender English verses) is gaudy with yellow sunshine. The revellers of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" would find a wet turf eight days out of ten to disport upon. We think of Bacon without an umbrella, and of Cromwell without a mackintosh; yet I suspect both of them carried these, or their equivalents, pretty constantly. Raleigh, indeed, threw his velvet cloak into the mud ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... poetry, and then think of Dr. Samuel Johnson! Think of all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and unwieldy; think of his huge bulk, the Elephant! and then—and then think of the 'Tempest'—the 'Midsummer Night's ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... long-sought original of the plot of "The Tempest." It is noteworthy, by the way, that the romanticists were attracted to the poetic, as distinguished from the dramatic, aspect of Shakspere's genius; to those of his plays in which fairy lore and supernatural machinery occur, such as "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... enthusiastically devoted to his profession, and enjoys his acting quite as much as his auditors. In putting his pieces on the stage, he is lavish of expense, and whenever he can control this part of the performance, it leaves nothing to be desired. Some years ago he brought out "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at a Philadelphia theater, in a style of magnificence rarely witnessed on any stage. The scenery was exquisite, and was a collection of artistic gems. The success of the piece was very decided in Philadelphia, but when it was reproduced, with the same scenery and appointments, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... perusing them by turns. No doubt this was what people call "desultory reading," but I did not hear the criticism till later, and then too often for my comfort. Memory holds a picture, more vivid than most, of a small boy reading the "Midsummer Night's Dream" by firelight, in a room where candles were lit, and some one touched the piano, and a young man and a girl were playing chess. The Shakespeare was a volume of Kenny Meadows' edition; there are fairies in it, and the fairies seemed to come ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... some species of drama," as Ward has said, "time and place are so purely imaginary and so much a matter of indifference that the adoption of a purely conventional standard of manners, or at least the exclusion of any definitely fixed one, is here desirable." This is shown in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... The cry rang in Maurice's ears, the yell of the swarming mob that filled the boulevards on that midsummer night of frenzied madness when he had determined to enlist. The gentle breeze had become a devastating hurricane; there had been a terrific explosion, and all the sanguine temper of his nation had manifested itself in his absolute, enthusiastic confidence, which had vanished utterly at the very ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... sunset. The full stream is peaceably disgorged again through the narrow station-door, and distributes itself along the tea-tables. Sleep comes down upon tired limbs and easy consciences, and the day's glory throws the rich shadows of some Midsummer Night's Dream far into the bright ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... in life. There are several, on the other hand, that may be read with great interest and profit by almost any one, while those who have read The Tempest as we have recommended, should find some measure of enjoyment in all. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a charming fairy story; The Merchant of Venice is a good story, contains fine characters and shows some of Shakespeare's most beautiful thoughts, although some people are inclined to believe he has dealt too severely with the Jew. Much Ado About Nothing is a jolly comedy to match ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... an idea that he went for a time as a soldier to the Low Countries under the Earl of Leicester, whose splendid pageants in honour of a visit from Queen Elizabeth may have inspired some of the fantasy of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... rifle—but what was the good of a dead rabbit—besides, they looked so happy! He put the glasses down and went towards his greenhouse to get a drawing block, thinking to sit on the wall and make a sort of Midsummer Night's Dream sketch of flowers and rabbits. Someone was there, bending down and doing something to his creatures. Who had the cheek? Why, it was Sylvia—in her dressing-gown! He grew hot, then cold, with anger. He could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... discouraging all that was best in it. It is true that the ideal Englishman was too much of a squire; but it is just to add that the ideal squire was a good squire. The best squire I know in fiction is Duke Theseus in "The Midsummer Night's Dream," who is kind to his people and proud of his dogs; and would be a perfect human being if he were not just a little bit prone to be kind to both of them in the same way. But such natural and even pagan good-nature is consonant with the warm wet woods and comfortable clouds ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... pompous spectacle that midsummer night upon those narrow seas. The moon, which was at the full, was rising calmly upon a scene of anxious expectation. Would she not be looking, by the morrow's night, upon a subjugated England, a reenslaved Holland—upon the downfall of civil and religious liberty? Those ships of Spain, which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... author, keep them in a division almost to themselves. The mythological or pastoral character of their subject in most cases might not of itself have prevented their marking an advance in the dramatic composition of English playwrights. A Midsummer Night's Dream and much other work of Shakespere's show how far from necessary it is that theme, or class of subject, should affect merit of presentment. But Lyly's work generally has more of the masque than the play. It sometimes includes charming lyrics, such as the famous Campaspe song and ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... is in sight with a gun at all. He argues, indeed, in favor of nationalism; but, before he begins, he whispers to you, confidentially, that he is not much of a nationalist after all. Like Bottom, in "Midsummer Night's Dream," he is anxious not to scare anybody, and so lets out the secret that he is not a "truly" lion, but is only "taking the part." In effect he tells the audience that "I will roar you as ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... borrowing, as EMERSON said, and in his new Fantasy Sir JAMES BARRIE has given us a very charming variation on A Midsummer Night's Dream (with echoes of Peter Pan and The Admirable Crichton). Certainly I got far more fun out of his deluded lovers in the Magic Wood than I ever extracted from the comedy of errors which occurred between the ladies and gentlemen of the Court ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... and must, after all, be referred to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What was it—that something more profound than the well of Democritus—which lay far within the pupils of my beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a passion to discover. Those eyes! those large, those shining, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sweetness, since the very sprig, Profuse of blossom and of essences, He smells not, who in a paltering hand Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming face Propped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime, Your curfew secrets out in fervid scent To the attendant shadows! Tinge the air Of the midsummer night that now begins, At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to dusk And downward caper of the giddy bat Hawking against the lustre of bare skies, With something of th' unfathomable bliss He, who lies dying there, knew once of old In the serene trance of a summer night When with th' abundance of his ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... we won't even go indoors to be amused. Hence the outdoor theatre. Why go to a play when it's so lovely outside? But to go to a play out-of-doors in an enchanting Greek theatre with a real moon rising above it—that's another matter. I shall never forget "Midsummer Night's Dream" as given by the Theosophical Society at Point Loma. Strolling through the grounds with the mauve and amber domes of their temples dimly lighted I found myself murmuring: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree." ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... forgot the snow, What magic airs about them blow? They read, in wondering voices low, The Midsummer Night's Dream! ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... parted. But yet a union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem." 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' act iii, ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... a smaller pageant, the costumed personages being the characters in Shakespeare's comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream." This was the most important play ever given in the grove, and as an out-door production, it antedated any similar performance in America. I have seen "A Midsummer Night's Dream" given in the open several times since, but the magic ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... considered a demon, and allowed to retain the magic power which the missionaries had wrested from the god Frey. In England and France the king of the fairies was known by the name of Oberon; he governed fairyland with his queen Titania, and the highest revels on earth were held on Midsummer night. It was then that the fairies all congregated around ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... half-mad vision of William Blake—how the far freer, far firmer fantasy that wrote "Midsummer Night's Dream"—would have revell'd night or day, and beyond stint, in one of our American corn fields! Truly, in color, outline, material and spiritual suggestiveness, where any more inclosing theme for idealist, poet, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... stillness of the midsummer night had settled again, except for the voices of the whippoorwill and ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... The short midsummer night left us little waiting; and as soon as day broke, the first thing we saw, within a league of us, and bearing right across our course, was the stranger in full chase. She was a brigantine fully armed, and carrying ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... Orcheston St. Mary in which this grass grows is only two acres and a half in extent, its produce in a favourable season, is said to have exceeded twelve tons of hay. Shakspere, to whom all natural and rural objects were familiar, alludes to the "hindering knot-grass", in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iii. sc. ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... interest was deep, and the heroine improved in her beauty. So with you and that dear little creature. See her again, and you'll tease, me no more to give you that portrait of Titania at watch over Bottom's soft slumbers. All a Midsummer Night's Dream, Lionel. Titania fades back into the arms of Oberon, and would not be Titania if you could make ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cots on Christmas Eve, "under the belief that at the exact hour and minute when the infant Jesus was born this plant puts forth its blossom." Another belief is that the blossoming occurs again on Midsummer Night (448. 492). ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... JEAN. Beer on midsummer night—thank you, no! I have something better than that myself. [Takes bottle of wine from drawer of table.] Yellow seal, how's that? Now give me a glass—a wine glass you understand, of course, when one drinks ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... sovereign, and many a time during her remaining nine years of life was she to seek delight again in the renderings of plays by himself and his fellow-actors at her palaces on the banks of the Thames. When Shakespeare was penning his new play of A Midsummer Night's Dream next year, he could not forbear to make a passing obeisance of gallantry (in that vein for which the old spinster queen was always thirsting) to "a fair vestal throned by the West," who passed her life "in maiden meditation, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... less eager activity of the other children; and they had betaken themselves to occupations that did not admit of his companionship. Laurence sat in a recess near the book-ease, reading, not for the first time, the Midsummer Night's Dream. Clara was making a rosary of beads for a little figure of a Sister of Charity, who was to attend the Bunker Hill fair and lend her aid in erecting the Monument. Little Alice sat on Grandfather's footstool, with a picture-book in her hand; and, for ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... near chance, too, I can tell you!" She looked round, and said in a cautious whisper: "Mother doesn't know but that I lay and turned over in my bed at home all Midsummer night. She went to eat St. John's porridge with aunt out at Asker, and I was to stay at home, and iron; but at nine o'clock, I said good-bye and went my way. Oh Nikolai!"—she clapped her hands, laughing—"you should have heard how she scolded yesterday morning when she ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... finished, and not a sound broke the silence except the screaming of the sea- fowl, which led my thoughts wandering back to nights long past, when we dragged the seine up to our chins in water through the short midsummer night, and scrambled and rolled over on the beach in boyish glee, after the skate and mullet, with those now gone; and as I thought and thought, old voices seemed to call me, old faces looked at me, of playmates, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they'll come as one," said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace. "Instead of my skellington he'll carry home her living carcass before long. But though she's a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, it do seem to me ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... in mouth like bells, Each under each," [Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Act IV. ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... and therefore he was not a little anxious to catch a glimpse of the mysterious creatures who had so whimsical a reason for taking an interest in him. Many and many a time he sat at the waterfall where the Nixy was said to play the harp every midsummer night, but although he sometimes imagined that he heard a vague melody trembling through the rush and roar of the water, and saw glimpses of white limbs flashing through the current, yet never did he get a good look at ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the steps. Fathers were smoking at the lintel. Smiling faces looked out from the various and darkling draperies with which the warehouses were hung. Ringlets glossy, and curly, and jetty—eyes black as night—midsummer night—when it lightens; haughty noses bending like beaks of eagles—eager quivering nostrils—lips curved like the bow of Love—every man or maiden, every babe or matron in that English Jewry bore in his countenance one or more of these characteristics ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray |
