QUINCE
  1   Have you sent to Bottom's house ? Is he come
  2   home yet?

      STARVELING
  3   He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is
  4   transported.

      FLUTE
  5   If he come not, then the play is marred: it goes
  6   not forward, doth it?

      QUINCE
  7   It is not possible: you have not a man in all
  8   Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he.

      FLUTE
  9   No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft
 10   man in Athens.

      QUINCE
 11   Yea and the best person too; and he is a very
 12   paramour for a sweet voice.

      FLUTE
 13   You must say "paragon": a paramour is, God bless us,
 14   a thing of naught.

           Enter SNUG the joiner.

      SNUG
 15   Masters, the duke is coming from the temple, and
 16   there is two or three lords and ladies more married:
 17   if our sport had gone forward, we had all been made
 18   men.

      FLUTE
 19   O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost
 20   sixpence a day during his life; he could not
 21   have 'scaped sixpence a day: an the duke had not
 22   given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I'll be
 23   hanged; he would have deserved it: sixpence a day in
 24   Pyramus, or nothing.

           Enter BOTTOM.

      BOTTOM
 25   Where are these lads? where are these
 26   hearts?

      QUINCE
 27   Bottom! O most courageous day! O most
 28   happy hour!

      BOTTOM
 29   Masters, I am to discourse wonders: but ask
 30   me not what; for if I tell you, I am no true
 31   Athenian. I will tell you every thing, right as
 32   it fell out.

      QUINCE
 33   Let us hear, sweet Bottom.

      BOTTOM
 34   Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is, that
 35   the duke hath dined. Get your apparel together,
 36   good strings to your beards, new ribands to your
 37   pumps; meet presently at the palace; every man look
 38   o'er his part; for the short and the long is, our
 39   play is preferr'd. In any case, let Thisby have
 40   clean linen; and let not him that plays the lion
 41   pair his nails, for they shall hang out for the
 42   lion's claws. And, most dear actors, eat no onions
 43   nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I
 44   do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet
 45   comedy. No more words: away! go, away!

           [Exeunt.]