A Midsummer Night's Dream: Act 4, Scene 2 Translation

A side-by-side translation of Act 4, Scene 2 of A Midsummer Night's Dream from the original Shakespeare into modern English.

Original Text	Translated Text
Source: Folger Shakespeare Library
Enter Quince, Flute, Snout, and Starveling. QUINCE Have you sent to Bottom’s house? Is he come home yet? STARVELING He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is transported. FLUTE If he come not, then the play is marred. It goes 5 not forward, doth it? QUINCE It is not possible. You have not a man in all Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he. FLUTE No, he hath simply the best wit of any handicraftman in Athens. 10	Back in Athens, the playacting gang is gathered at Quince's house. They're worried because no one has seen Bottom yet. If he's not around, the play can't go on. No one else can pull of Pyramus because, as Flute says, Bottom has the finest wit of any craftsman in Athens.
QUINCE Yea, and the best person too, and he is a very paramour for a sweet voice. FLUTE You must say “paragon.” A “paramour” is (God bless us) a thing of naught.	Quince announces that Bottom is the paramour of a sweet voice, and Flute points out that he means "paragon." (A paramour is a lover—usually in shady circumstances, like someone who's dating a married person; a paragon is the best example of something. They're pretty different.)
Enter Snug the joiner. SNUG Masters, the Duke is coming from the temple, 15 and there is two or three lords and ladies more married. If our sport had gone forward, we had all been made men. FLUTE O, sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life. He could not have 20 ’scaped sixpence a day. An the Duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I’ll be hanged. He would have deserved it. Sixpence a day in Pyramus, or nothing!	Snug enters the house, announcing that the Duke is coming from the temple with two or three more couples who were just married. Flute laments that, had they been able to perform, they'd no doubt be rich men, earning them at least sixpence a day (a royal pension).
Enter Bottom. BOTTOM Where are these lads? Where are these 25 hearts? QUINCE Bottom! O most courageous day! O most happy hour! BOTTOM Masters, I am to discourse wonders. But ask me not what; for, if I tell you, I am not true 30 Athenian. I will tell you everything right as it fell out.	Then Bottom shows up. He says he can't possibly explain what's happened to him, so they shouldn't bother asking. Then, before anyone replies, he tells them he'll give them every last detail exactly as it happened.
QUINCE Let us hear, sweet Bottom. BOTTOM Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is that the Duke hath dined. Get your apparel together, 35 good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your pumps. Meet presently at the palace. Every man look o’er his part. For the short and the long is, our play is preferred. In any case, let Thisbe have clean linen, and let not him that plays the lion pare his 40 nails, for they shall hang out for the lion’s claws. And, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath, and I do not doubt but to hear them say it is a sweet comedy. No more words. Away! Go, away! 45 They exit.	His friends definitely want to know everything, but the story will have to wait. Since the Duke and Hippolyta are now hitched and have had their wedding cake, it's time for the Mechanicals to perform the play. Bottom calls for everyone to get ready and tells them not to eat onion or garlic—he wants them to have "sweet" breath to make the audience say that they have put on a sweet comedy.