Inauspicious Stars 


Act I, Scene 1

Narrator:  Our revels now are ended.
These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven
And passion in the gods.
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.  We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
   
Oliver: Give me some music.  Now, good morrow friends, now good Caliban, but that piece of  song, that old and antique song we heard last night; methought it did relieve my passion much, more than light airs and recollected terms of these most brisk and giddy-paced times: come, but one verse.
Caliban: He is not here, so please your lordship, that should sing it.
Oliver: Who was it?
Caliban: Trinculo, the jester, my lord; a fool that the lady Celia took much delight in.  He is about the house.
Oliver: Seek him out to play the tune awhile.
		          [exit Caliban]
	Come hither boy: if ever thou shalt love, in the sweet pangs of it remember me; for such as I am all true lovers are, unstaid and skittish in all motions else, save in the constant image of the creature that is beloved.  How dost thou like this tune?
Egeus: It gives a very echo to the seat where love is throned.
Oliver: Thou dost speak masterly: my love upon it, young though thou art, thine eye hath stay'd upon some favor that it loves: hath it not, boy?
Egeus: A little, by your favor.
Oliver: What kind of woman is't?
Egeus: Of your complexion.
	[enter fool]
Oliver: O fellow, come, the song we had last night.  Mark it, Trinculo, it is old and plain;
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones
Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.
Trinculo: Are you ready, sir?
Oliver: Aye; prithee, sing.
Trinculo: 
Come away, come away, death,
   And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, Fly away, breath;
    I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
        O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
         Did share it.
Not a flower, not as flower sweet,
    On my black coffin let there be stown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
     My poor corpse, where my bones shall be
                thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
               Lay me, O where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
         To weep there! 

		[Oliver tosses him a coin]
Oliver: There's for thy pains.
Trinculo: No pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir.
Oliver: I'll pay thy pleasure then.
Trinculo: Truly sir, and pleasure will be paid one time or another.
Oliver: Give me now leave to leave thee.
Trinculo:  Now, the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.  I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be every thing and their intent every where; for that's it that always makes a good voyage of nothing.  Farewell.
Oliver:  But if the melody touches the heart more than thine to her?
Egeus:  I cannot be so answer'd!  
There is no woman's sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart; no woman's heart
So big, to hold so much; they lack retention.
Alas, their love may be called appetite, --
No motion of the liver, but the palate, --
That suffer surfeit, cloyment and revolt;
But mine is all as hungry as the sea,
And can digest as much; make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me
And that I owe Celia.
Oliver: Thou gives thy love to Celia?  Tis but a girl… in my own blood.  My father had a daughter, loved a man; hence you be that man?
Egeus:  Then it is!  For whom Celia loves no other; than to me, and I, my love to her.
Oliver:  Then fate lies within the inevitable, to prove thy love is as true of heart as we.
Egeus:  Aye, thats the theme.
To her in haste; give her this jewel; say,
My love can give no place, bide no denay.
Oliver:  To life be strong,
Love her without regret, and my blessings.
Good night, good night!  Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
			[exit Oliver]
Egeus:  Then plainly know my heart's dear love is set
On the fair Celia, till be it end;
As mine on hers, so hers on mine,
The time draws near, and all combined.
[enter Celia, a kiss (of love more than passion)]
	Celia, true dearest love, what is on thy mind at such a late hour?
Celia:  O, Egeus, my fate-bound lover, when shall you retire?
Egeus:  In time, ample time.  What worries thy love?
Celia:  Oh, my lord, forgive me!  I have done you wrong!
Egeus:  Celia, my dear.  Whatever it was, it has been, and can not have been great beyond forgiveness.
Celia:  Oh, I beg thy haste!  I gave a pair of thy cattle to Frederick. 
Egeus:  Frederick, the peasant?… Celia, thy illusions are great, hence lie a while, and rest.
Celia:  Tis no jest.  Take brevity upon me, and I heed to your disappointment.  'Tis in my memory locked,  And you yourself shall keep the key of it.
                      [Egeus starts to show anger]
Egeus:  Life and Death, I am ashamed
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus!
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,
Should make thee worth them.  Blasts and fogs upon thee!
Old foolish eyes, Beweep this cause again, I'll pluck yea out And cast you, with the waters that you let loose.  Yea, is it come to this?
		[pauses to think]
Vanish from my eyes!  [offstage]: Caliban, bring the peasant.
Celia:  No!  Thy Punishment belongs to me, surely not a peasant's wrong!
		[Caliban enters with Frederick]
Egeus:  Retched peasant who calls himself a man, how doth your woes beg forgiveness from your plentiful sins?

	Caliban, what keeps this peasant's breath?
Caliban:  Sir, he is deaf.
Egeus:  This scoundrel shall be hanged!  The gallows await your presence. 
	          [exeunt Caliban with Frederick]
[Celia tries to protest]   
Egeus:  Silence!
	[Celia runs offstage in silent tears]
		[exeunt Egeus]

        

Act I, Scene 2


Nar:  The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
It is a nipping and an eager air.
What hour now?
I think it lacks of twelve.
No, it is struck.
Indeed?  I heard it not.  It then draws near
     the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.
What shall become of it?

[Egeus and Trinculo walk together, although Egeus barely notices him]
Egeus:  Let me cruel, though not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her but use none.
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites – 
How in my words somever she be shent.
To give them seals never, my soul, consent!
I will forget my nature.  O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!  Keep me in temper;  I would not be mad!
Trinculo:  Never afflict yourself to know the
		cause
But let his disposition have that scope
As dotage gives it.
Egeus:  Fool, For what doth cause you to follow?
Trinculo:  A fox when one has caught her,
                And such a lover,
    Should sure to the slaughter,
     If my cap would buy a halter.
     So the Fool follows after.
Egeus:  What hence do you preach?
Trinculo:  Thou canst tell why one's nose
    stands in the middle of his face?
Egeus:  No.  Prithee tell.
Trinculo:  Why to keep one's eyes on either
     side's nose, that what a man
     cannot smell out, he may spy into.
Egeus:  I did her wrong.
Trinculo:  Though thy heart will prove more
     than that.  Adieu…
Egeus:  Who is it that can tell me who I am?
Trinculo:  Egeus' shadow.  My blessing season this in thee.
		[exeunt Trinculo]
[exeunt Egeus with intent on
 resolving the conflict]

		[enter Celia]

Celia:  Now I am Alone!  O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!  Without my passion, I should be doing more murder in this loathsome world.
The time is thus savage wild
More fierce and more inexorable far
Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.
Need and oppression starveth in mine eyes,
Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back:
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;  
The world affords no law to make thee rich;  Then be not poor, but break it, to take this. 
		[Sips poison]
Come, cordial and not passion, go with me To thy idle floor; for there must I use thee.
Why I descend into this bed of death
Is partly to my passion's face.  Though the bitterness of thy life far surpasses any of thy passions. 
Shall I believe that unsubstantial Death is amorous, and that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark, to be his paramour?
For here lies my soul, and my love makes
This floor a cold, desolate presence full of emptiness.  
Death, lie thou there, by a dead will interred.

Will I set up my everlasting rest, and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars, from this world-wearied flesh?

Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,
Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open
And in despite I'll cram thee with more poison.
		[drinks the remainder]
Come bitter conduct, come unsavory guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks, thy seasick weary love.
Adieu, Adieu, Adieu!

   
Act I, Scene 3

Nar:  All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him by inch-meal a disease!
His spirits hear me and yet I needs must curse
But they'll nor pinch, Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire, Nor lead me, like A firebrand, in the dark, Out of my way,
Unless he bid them; 
But for every trifle are they set upon me
All wound with adders who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness.
   
Egeus:  Where inhabits fair Celia?  She lies not in her quarters!  Oh, take me my pardon, If I have 
Done myself wrong;
But pardon't, as I am fit for sorrow.
This presence knows,
And you must needs have heard, how I am punished
With sore distraction.  What I have done
That might my nature, honor, and exception 
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was't Egeus whom wronged Celia?  Never Egeus.
If Egeus from himself be ta'en away,
And when he's not himself does wrong Celia,
Then Egeus does it not. Egeus denies it.
Who does it then?  His madness.  If't be so,
Egeus is of the faction that is wronged;
His madness is poor Egeus' enemy.
So hath be it.
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts
That I have shot the arrow of hate into my lover's heart,
And killed myself.
			   [enter people] 
Egeus: Why do you weep so oft, and beat your breast?
Person1:  One Woe doth tread upon another's heel,
So fast they follow.  Celia is asleep.
Egeus: Tis' asleep, as to how?
Person1:  As to sleep forever.  Into her chambers, 
Sealed to the sun passing across the radiant sky.
There with fantastic garlands did she weep
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name.
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pedant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down herself,
Till her eyelids did no longer wag.
Egeus:  My words fly up, my thoughts remain 
     below;
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. 
			          [Egeus weeps]

Person1:  To be or not to be, that is the question:  Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer.  And by oppressing, end them.  To die - to sleep - No more;  and by a sleep to say we end.  To die - to sleep - perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub!  For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?  The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised death, The law's delay, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When she herself might her quietus make with a bare bodkin?
Egeus: No, not I!  I never gave her despise!
Person2: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,  The fair Celia! - Nymph in thy orisons... Be all thy sins remembered.  
		[all exeunt except Egeus]

Egeus: Ah, so much pain I have in thy sorrow
As I had title in thy noble Celia.
Though not a whit, We defy augury;  
There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. 
I have bewept a lover's painful death,
And lived with looking on her images;
But now two mirrors of her immaculate semblance
Are cracked in pieces by malignant death.
And I for comfort have but painful memories,
That further grieves me when I see my past in her future.
To overgo thy woes and drown thy cries!
To be but my blind actions, But I am in 
So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin.

Scene  IV

Nar: Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect
That he should weep for her?  What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have?  He would drown the stage with tears, 
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant; and amaze,
      indeed,
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Oliver:  Twas my own flesh and blood, slain by her own hands.  
Thy sins are great, dear Egeus, thy sins are great.
Egeus:  Who calls me a villian?  Breaks my pate across?  But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter; or this,
With this slave's offal: --bloody, bawly villian!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villian!
O, vengence!                  [wields sword]
Oliver:  This is most brave, that I, the son of a dear sister murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must like a whore, unpack my heart with despise.                           [They duel]
Egeus:  Maybe the devil: and the devil hath power.
Oliver:  To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps.
Egeus:  Out of my weakness, and my melancholy, and thy fate very potent with such spirits.
Oliver:  Abuses me to damn me:  I'll have grounds.
Egeus:  That guilty creatures sitting at a play… Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the passion.

Rest, rest perturbed spirit! --
With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Egeus is
Let us go out seperately,
And Still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint: --O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right! --
Nay, go!  And thou shalt live in this fair world behind. 
                          [exeunt Oliver]


 
Scene V

Nar:  Ecstasy!
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gamble from.  Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks.


Caliban:  Sir, Hold Pardon unto me. Have you time bidding for a peasant's words?
Egeus:  A peasant hath been known to no others.  Whom shall bid my leave?
Caliban:  Frederick, the deaf Peasant, for whom you commended to a death, yet whom to a life I doth save.
Egeus:  Unknowing men saveth in the end,
A blind faith I bid,
To whom a life you doth free.
What virtuous stars lay thus present in our end?
Caliban: Sir in my heart there was a kind of fighting that would not let me sleep
Egeus:  When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us
There is a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts,
And when I, a humble relapse to thyne soul devulge,
Thou shalt leave the mind of a servant to feed the morakls of a king.
		[exeunt Caliban]
Egeus:  A trillion stars will tell my fate, thou killing mind regress my past.
		[enter Frederick]  
   Egeus:  O good peasant, what a wounding name.  Things standing thus unknown shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,  Absent thee felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world drawe thy breath of pain,
To tell my story.

When thou dost ask me a blessing I'll kneel down And ask of thee forgoiveness: 
So we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at guilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news;
And we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins, who's in, who's out;
And take upon the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies.

But first I'll turn yon fellow in his grave,
And then return lamenting to my love.
Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
That I may see my shadow as I pass.

                      [Egeus dies in Peasant's arms] 

Nar: Thus ends the tale,
That has no relish of salvation in it.
As hell, whereto it goes.  My passion stays:
This humble teller but prolongs thy sickly days.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. 


Fin