"Midsummer Night" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... the voice of love. His jewelled sentences glittered, but left her cold. They lacked that spontaneity which renders even simple and hackeneyed phrases wonderful and unique. Ethel clearly realised that her hold upon the boy's imagination had been a fleeting midsummer night's charm, and that a word from Reginald's lips had broken the potency of her spell. She almost saw the shadow of Reginald's visage hovering over Ernest's letter and leering at her from between the lines in sinister triumph. Finally reason ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... 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 ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... 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
... the screech-owl, sounding loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets out its sprite, In the church-way paths to glide. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... novelty. And it is not quite certain that it is a mistake. 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... grand objects—about the 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 the case, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... her reading was a success, and even the twins and Geordie, once they had grown used to her, seemed to prefer a ringing page of Henry V, or the fairy scenes from the Midsummer Night's Dream, to their own more specialized literature, though that had also ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... the deeds that 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
... this habit of our two greatest dramatists, when speaking of Shakspeare he says—"The humour of the constable in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he happened to take at Grendon in Bucks; which is the roade from London to Stratford; and there was living that constable in 1642, when I first came to Oxon. Ben Jonson and he did gather humours of men dayly, wherever they ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... these hedges to make up for the loss of views; but we had views too, when, for a moment, a gate, a stile, a gap in the hedge itself, opened to us glimpses of such woods and dells as we read of in the Midsummer Night's Dream. ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... by Danish and Norman invasions, by remnants of old Keltic belief, and by the introduction of Christianity, which last degraded the good fairies into mischievous elves. (See Hazlitt, 'Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare,' Halliwell's 'Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of Midsummer Night's Dream,' also Poet-Lore, April, 1891, 'Fairy-lore ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... last night," Brenda replied. "We none of us did for that matter. We were wandering round the Park and just missing each other like the people in A Midsummer Night's Dream." ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... "Midsummer Night's Dream," has been given several times outdoors with great success in the camps conducted by the writer. The boys were coached by a graduate of a School of Oratory, costumes were made by the boys out of all sorts of material, make-up was bought from a theatrical supply house ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... strenuously kept up in country sports. I do not think we could get from sedentary poets, who had never mingled in the vicissitudes, the dangers, or excitements of the chase, such descriptions of hunting and other athletic games, as are to be found in Shakspeare's Midsummer Night's ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... attempt at selection or arrangement, were all examined in the course of their researches. But Lady Penelope declared loftily and decidedly for Shakspeare, as the author whose immortal works were fresh in every one's recollection. Shakspeare was therefore chosen, and from his works the Midsummer Night's Dream was selected, as the play which afforded the greatest variety of characters, and most scope of course for the intended representation. An active competition presently occurred among the greater part of the company, for such copies of the Midsummer Night's Dream, or the volume ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... 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, and those nearer than ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... found quietly camping in the sheltered valley full of sweet grass, on its further side. To walk up to my pretty bay mare Helen, and lay hold of her mane, and then, vaulting on her back, ride the rest of the mob back into the stockyard, was, even in the deep darkness of a midsummer night, no difficult task for eyes so practised to catching horses under all circumstances. So here was one obstacle suddenly smoothed, and as I hastily collected my few simple remedies, consisting chiefly of flannel, chlorodyne, and brandy, I could only trust and pray that poor Fenwick's case might not ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... her pale-blue bathing-dress, looked like one of those fairy-like creatures in Shakspere's "Midsummer Night's Dream," innocent and alluring, child ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... 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
... the snow, What magic airs about them blow? They read, in wondering voices low, The Midsummer Night's Dream! ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... as to be within reach of all, but one country freely borrowed from another. Thus, the French romances of Huon de Bordeaux and of the Four Sons of Aymon found many admirers in England, where the former later supplied Shakespeare with some of the characters for a Midsummer Night's Dream. It was to offset the very popular romance of Alexander, that some patriotic poet evolved the romance of Richard Coeur de Lion, explaining how this king earned his well-known nickname by wrenching the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... scraped, shovels dug, and wonderful changes were made, while Fay danced about in the moonlight, like Puck intent upon some pretty prank, and papa quoted Snout, [Footnote: A character in Shakspeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream."] the tinker's parting words, ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... went through the midsummer night, up hill and down hill, by cross-road and bye-lane, until, as they climbed a long ascent, they beheld a tall figure standing upon the top of the hill, in the attitude of one who waits; and who, spying them, immediately ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... of Orlando, and the character of Circe reappears in Alcina. The fountains of Love and Hatred may be traced to the story of Cupid and Psyche; and similar effects produced by a magic draught appear in the tale of Tristram and Isoude, and, substituting a flower for the draught, in Shakspeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream." There are many other instances of the same kind which the reader will ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... all his adventures, and all that had happened to him since that midsummer night, ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... late criticks call alliteration, of using in the same verse many words beginning with the same letter. But this knack, whatever be its value, was so frequent among early writers, that Gascoigne, a writer of the sixteenth century, warns the young poet against affecting it; Shakespeare, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, is supposed to ridicule it; and, in another play, the sonnet of Holofernes ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... his rook 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 not bear anyone ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... editions of 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 hundred and thirty ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... 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 through ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... if he couldn't find something else besides money in the sky. So one fine moonlight midsummer night he refused his supper, and before he went to bed stole out to the garden with a big watering-can and watered the ground under his window; for, thought he, "there must be two more beans somewhere, and perhaps it is too dry for them to grow." ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... works. The first was an Octet for strings. He was not yet seventeen when the Octet was finished, which was pronounced the most fresh and original work he had yet accomplished. It marked a distinct stage in the gifted youth's development. The composition which followed was the beautiful "Midsummer Night's Dream" music. He and his sister Fanny had lately made the acquaintance of Shakespeare through a German translation, and had been fascinated by this fairy play. The young people spent much of their time in the lovely ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... 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." In a canyon by the sea we found a theatre. The setting ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... desire to play a part in this pantomime, 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... preference to Pope's. We do not think it worth while to settle such a question of precedence. Neither of the rivals can be said to have translated the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word translation be used in the sense which it bears in the Midsummer Night's Dream. When Bottom makes his appearance with an ass's head instead of his own, Peter Quince exclaims, "Bless thee! Bottom, bless thee! thou art translated." In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers of either Pope or Tickell may very properly exclaim, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... damp, a typical San Francisco midsummer night. A drizzling fog had swept in from the ocean and fell refreshingly on the gray city. But the keenness of the air irritated Suvaroff's headache instead of soothing it; he felt the wind upon his temples as one feels the cool cut of a knife. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... thoroughly understand the forces themselves. So, too, it is with great political upheavals. The revolution which drenched the whole of France with blood in 1789 is no more difficult to explain than the thunderstorm which drenches the parched earth with rain on a hot midsummer night. It was simply the reaction after a century of oppression, extravagance and vice. In like manner the great revolution whose development we are about to trace was merely the natural result of long years of tyranny culminating ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... 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 a great spread of sail, but to our surprise she flew ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... "comes right down" before anybody 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 gently ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... little in the valley itself, if thou be not overcome by terror there. Yea, for my part I am not all so sure that thou shalt see the wonder of the Stony Folk coming alive; for 'tis not said that they quicken save on certain nights, and chiefly on Midsummer Night; unless it be that the trier of the adventure is some one fated above others thereto; as forsooth thou mayst be. And as for peril of evil men, there are few who be like to be as venturesome as thou or I. They durst not enter that black street, save sore ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... to mean," but means) "Shining." That Shakespeare knew everything is much more certain than that miracles do not happen; and he certainly knew Mr Arnold's case if not Mr Arnold, when he introduced a certain main episode in A Midsummer Night's Dream. To frown on Oberon and caress Bottom is venial compared with the dismissal of the Bible as popular legend, and the implicit belief in ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... frame. Under the picture stood a small black crucifix. There was little furniture,—a cooking-stove, two or three stools, a broken table, and a chest of drawers. On an iron bedstead in the corner lay Torrini, muffled to the chin in a blanket, despite the hot midsummer night. His right arm, as if it were wholly disconnected with his body, rested in a splint on the outside of the covering. As the visitors entered, a tall dusky woman with blurred eyes rose from a low bench at the foot of ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 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 ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... question whether Shakespeare had any notion of the existence of the sexes in plants and the part played in their fertilisation by insects, which, of course, would be prevented from visiting them by rainy weather, when he wrote in the "Midsummer Night's Dream":— ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... waving of trees, as in the Notturno in Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and Schubert's exquisite beckoning song of the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... these lyrics, in its smaller way, affects us with a sense of uniqueness, as surely as the sublimer works of a supernatural cast,—Marlowe's "Faustus," the "Faust" of Goethe, "Manfred," or even those ethereal masterpieces, "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." More than one, while otherwise unique, has some burden or refrain which haunts the memory,—once heard, never forgotten, like the tone of a rarely used but distinctive organ-stop. Notable among ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... reluctance that the temporary sojourner in Cuba leaves her delicious shores. A brief residence in the island passes like a midsummer night's dream, while the memories one brings away seem almost like delusive spots of the imagination. Smiling skies and smiling waters; groves of palms and oranges; the bloom of the heliotrope, the jasmine and the rose; ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... 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
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... stood together side by side at Metz, and we knelt down together that midsummer night when we first landed on Carolina's sands, and then we rode together across the provinces. These are events that I shall ever love to recall. To-night we stand together again in brotherhood of soul. Baron, the times are dark and grow more perilous, and it may be I now confide ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... lovely, calm, midsummer night, forty years ago, this house was broken into by burglars. They got in through the Green Room window, which was always left open during the warm weather. We—my mother, your Aunt Deborah, and I—were awakened by a loud shriek for help. Recognising Alicia's voice, we instantly flew out ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... the author is correct in asserting that it contains "some of his highest and most fortunate efforts in rhyme." "The Pilgrims of the Sun" was his next poem; it was originally intended as one of a series, to be contained in a poetical work, which he proposed to entitle "Midsummer Night Dreams," but which, on the advice of his friend, Mr James Park of Greenock, he was induced to abandon. From its peculiar strain, this poem had some difficulty in finding a publisher; it was ultimately published by Mr John Murray of London, who liberally recompensed the author, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... inequality, while 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 ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... 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 days ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... flowers were mcuh in request as love-philtres, various allusions to which occur in the literature of most ages. Thus, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Oberon tells Puck to place a pansy on the eyes of Titania, in order that, on awaking, she may fall in love with the first object she encounters. Gerarde speaks of the carrot as "serving for love matters," and adds that the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... means of one day's pleasure excursion from Athens, though meeting neither thief nor robber. He lost his way: and this being scandalous in an ex-chancellor of the exchequer having ladies under his guidance, who were obliged, like those in the Midsummer Night's Dream, to pass the night, in an Athenian wood, his excellency died of vexation. Where may not men find a death? But we ask after the calculation of any office which takes extra risks: and, as a basis for such a calculation, we submit the range of tour sketched by ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... of converting the new belles lettres of that new time, to such grave and politic uses was first suggested; he is the genius of that company, that even in such frolic mad-cap games as Love's Labour's Lost, and the Taming of the Shrew, and Midsummer Night's Dream, could contrive to insert, not the broad farce and burlesque on the old pretentious wordy philosophy and pompous rhetoric it was meant to dethrone only, and not the most perilous secret of the new philosophy, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... 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 the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... those creatures that frighten the natives under the roof of the forest, giants with crabs' claws, men with fiery eyes, women that turn into deadly serpents, vague, misty souls of ancestors, that pass through the branches and appear to their descendants; all that we dream of in our northern midsummer night ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... 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
... Filina's boudoir, where she is at her toilet, arraying herself for her part as Titania in the forthcoming performance of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" at the castle. As Wilhelm and Mignon enter the apartment, a very dramatic conversation ensues between them in the form of a terzetto ("Ohime quell' acre riso"). Mignon is in despair at the attention Wilhelm pays Filina, and the latter adds to her pangs ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... "touching with a dead hand" as a cure for sickness, covering the mirrors in a house where one has just died, watching at the church door on Midsummer Night to see the souls of all the worshippers pass in, and those who will not live out the year remain behind and do not pass out—these are part of the common stock of beliefs, not confined to Devonshire or Scotland, nor directly traceable to Celt or Saxon or Latin, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... My very life is sore to me. They all hate me! My brothers and the servants, every one of them. And my father and tutor say I am possessed with an evil spirit, and I am beaten daily, and more than daily. I can never, never get a good word from living soul! This is the second seven years, and Midsummer night! Oh, bring the other back again! I'm weary, I'm weary! Good elves, good elves, take me home. Fairy mother! Come, come, come!" Shutting his eyes he seemed to be in a state of intense expectation. Tears filled Mrs. ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "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 ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... has suggested that the opera has some basis in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' Sarastro is Prospero, Pamina Miranda, Tamino Ferdinand, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... smiles of heaven that her battles, revolutions, 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Moravian girls gather flowers of nine sorts and lay them under their pillow when they go to sleep; then they dream every one of him who is to be her partner for life. For in Moravia maidens in their beds as well as poets by haunted streams have their Midsummer Night's dreams.[429] In Austrian Silesia the custom also prevails of lighting great bonfires on hilltops on Midsummer Eve, and here too the boys swing blazing besoms or hurl them high in the air, while they shout and leap and dance wildly. Next ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... brother Caunus with her love, till she was changed to a fountain; Ovid, "Metamorphoses." lib. ix. Thisbe and Pyramus: the Babylonian lovers, whose death, through the error of Pyramus in fancying that a lion had slain his mistress, forms the theme of the interlude in the "Midsummer Night's Dream." Sir Tristram was one of the most famous among the knights of King Arthur, and La Belle Isoude was his mistress. Their story is mixed up with the Arthurian romance; but it was also the subject of separate ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... images of sleep: she hardly noticed where Selden was leading her, till they passed through a glass doorway at the end of the long suite of rooms and stood suddenly in the fragrant hush of a garden. Gravel grated beneath their feet, and about them was the transparent dimness of a midsummer night. Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the depths of foliage, and whitened the spray of a fountain falling among lilies. The magic place was deserted: there was no sound but the splash of the water on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of music that might have been ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... 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, in ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... to guard against the ferocious assaults of this terrible man-eater,—which never failed to convulse the audience and put them in the proper humor for the rest of the performance. The snake-charmer exhibited her paper pets. The lion, made up on the principle of the one in "Midsummer Night's Dream" pawed and roared and assured timid ladies that she was not a lion at all, but only that far more awful creature, a Harding senior. And finally Mary opened the cage containing the Happy Family, and there filed out a quartette of strange beasts which no Harding girl in the audience ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... turned it in her fingers. It was paper—a letter—and she drew it out. A letter—my letter—the long, loving message I had penned to her on the night of the party at Anderson's. Clear and white, as when I put it there that moonlit midsummer night, when I thrust it in too far for my little girl to find without ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... day of rejoicing and merry-making among the people, for they were all abroad, feasting and drinking from great mead horns in the open air, and shouting barbarous songs to the noise of rude instruments. When it grew to such duskiness as there may be in a midsummer night countless fires were lit, near at hand and far away, on the hills around; and on the ridges above the river children ran about with blazing brands of pine-wood, and young men and maidens gathered at the flaming beacon. Wheels, too, wrapped round tire and spoke with ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... the lively impertinence of the inhabitants 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 a fresh ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the spider, the cricket, the beetle, the glow-worm, with his feeble lamp, the firefly that flies twinkling through the air all the "midsummer night," and every beast that roams the field, whether wild or tame, all—all have their proper sphere, and ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... 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 forest on the skirts of the fairy crew; and inwardly ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... much besides the crops; he knew so much of the crops that his thoughts could easily run free from them; he used to meditate on who they were that lived in briar and thorn tree, and danced as folk said all through midsummer night, and sometimes blessed and sometimes harmed the crops; for he knew that in Old England were wonderful ancient things, odder and older things than many folks knew. And his eyes had leisure to see much beside the furrows, for he could ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... 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 far more wonderful than the greatest actress who ever ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... motto of the classicists was polished regularity, they avoided the romantic, irregular, and improbable, and condemned the Arabian Nights, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, and other "monstrous irregularities of Shakespeare." This school loved to teach and to point out shortcomings, hence the terms "didactic" and "satiric" are often ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... origin. In our own country it has different names in different districts, such as Meg Merrylegs, Peg Meryll, Nine Peg o'Merryal, Nine-Pin Miracle, Merry Peg, and Merry Hole. Shakespeare refers to it in "Midsummer Night's Dream" (Act ii., ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... fascinated his 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 ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... meal, and was early forth again. But, alas, as we climbed the interminable hill upon the other side, "Proot!" seemed to have lost its virtue. I prooted like a lion, I prooted melliflously [Footnote: Melliflously: sweetly. Find this allusion in "Midsummer Night's Dream," Act I, Scene 2.] like a sucking-dove; but Modestine would be neither softened nor intimidated. She held doggedly to her pace; nothing but a blow would move her, and that only for a second. I must follow at her heels, incessantly belaboring. A moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... around 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 ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... that which embodies Shakespeare's final view of life, and is the inevitable quotation of all who would sum the teachings of philosophy. It contains his most exquisite lyrics, his tenderest love passages, and one glimpse of fairyland which—I cannot but think—outshines the utmost beauty of A Midsummer Night's Dream: Prospero's farewell to the "elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves." Again a miracle; these are things which cannot be staled by repetition. Come to them often as you will, they are ever fresh as though new minted from the brain of the poet. Being perfect, they can never ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... Fitzgerald," said the young lady with 3 smile in her pretty black eyes, "that you are not a student of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.'" ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... found work as a schoolmaster. There was 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
... again to finish "Bleak House." Kate and Georgina send their kindest loves to you, and Miss Macready, and all the rest. They look forward, I assure you, to their Sherborne visit, when I—a mere forlorn wanderer—shall be roaming over the Alps into Italy. I saw "The Midsummer Night's Dream" of the Opera Comique, done here (very well) last night. The way in which a poet named Willyim Shay Kes Peer gets drunk in company with Sir John Foll Stayffe, fights with a noble 'night, Lor Latimeer (who is in love with a maid-of-honour ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the mover of the figures and the audience, the puppeteer and the puppetee, the letter-writer and the letter-reader. The play presented is, therefore, a play within a play: like the Mousetrap in Hamlet, like Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream, like the romantic drama of Gayferos and Melisandra which Don Quixote witnessed with a select company of acquaintance at an inn. The temperament of this presented spectator, himself or herself a person of the scene, is always reflected in the entertainment when the letter-writer is a ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... To Berlin! 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 ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... church with a flickering glare, that made her start in terror as 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 Eberhard said he had left his spurs and belt in the hermit's cell, and must ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 with ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... cataracts, now again scattering through a net-work of small, bluish channels, mingled their melodious voices into a hushed symphony, suggestive of fairy bells and elf-maidens dancing in the cool dusk of the arctic midsummer night. ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... strange scene my father came on. He pulled up his big red-roan horse at the crossroads, where the long lane entered the turnpike, and looked at the stiff, tragic figure. He rode home from a sitting of the county justices, alone, at peace, on this midsummer night, and God sent this tragic ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... was one of those bishops whom you do not love, I would curse, excommunicate, and anathematize you for cutting down all those splendid trees and laying bare those deep, dark, leafy nooks, the haunts of a thousand "Midsummer Night's Dreams," to the common air and the staring sun. The sight of the dear old familiar paths brought the tears to my eyes, for, stripped and thinned of their trees and robbed of their beauty, my memory restored ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... two 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 that he ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... he went to sleep on Aldington Knoll about ten o'clock one night—it was quite possibly Midsummer night, though he has never thought of the date, and he cannot be sure within a week or so—and it was a fine night and windless, with a rising moon. I have been at the pains to visit this Knoll thrice since his story grew ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... 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 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, the nimble air of Scone Castle, the moonlight of Portia's villa, "the antres vast and desarts idle," of ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... entire seriousness of having seen in a place called Fairy Glen in Wales the Tylwyth Teg. And when I told her of Oberon and Titania, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, whose acquaintance I had made through Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, she said that one bright moonlight night she, in the company of two of her Gypsy playmates, Rhona Boswell and a girl called Sinfi, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... long awake that night, tossing and turning in her bed in that delightful apartment in "Midsummer Night's Dream," and reviewing the fell array of these unlucky affairs. As she eyed them, black shapes against the glow of her firelight, it struck her that the same malevolent influence inspired them all. For what had caused the failure and flatness of her ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... of course, alluded to Biron and Rosaline; and there are other obvious prolusions, as the scene of the masque with the courtiers, compared with the play in A Midsummer Night's Dream.—ED.] ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... 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, act ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... the great white moon appeared on the rim of the eastern horizon and slowly crept above the water, throwing a perfect flood of silver light upon the dancing waves. The stars shone with the soft light of a midsummer night, and the breaking of the low waves upon the shore added the charm of pleasant sound to the beauty of the night. Mr. Lincoln, whose home was far inland from the great lakes, seemed greatly impressed with the wondrous beauty of the scene, and carried by its impressiveness ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... Dream and The Tempest, may be in so far compared together that in both the influence of a wonderful world of spirits is interwoven with the turmoil of human passions and with the farcical adventures of folly. The Midsummer Night's Dream is certainly an earlier production; but The Tempest, according to all appearance, was written in Shakspeare's later days: hence most critics, on the supposition that the poet must have continued to improve with increasing maturity of mind, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... me! for aught that ever I could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth! —Midsummer Night's Dream. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... too, for the traditions of English giants, and ogres, and dwarfs still linger in the tales of Jack the Giant-killer and Jack and the Bean-stalk, and Hop o' my Thumb; and we have also the elves whom Shakspeare draws for us so delightfully in "Midsummer Night's Dream" and in "The Merry Wives of Windsor"; and there are the Devonshire pixies; and the Scottish fairies and the brownies—the spirits who do the work of the house or the farm—and the Irish "good people;" and the Pooka, which comes in the form of a wild colt; and ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... me as very appropriate in this connection, that the spirit which held the woe of Lear and the tragedy of "Hamlet" would have broken had it not also had the humor of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" and the merriment of the "Midsummer Night's Dream." ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... doubt, but it does not begin to be as sad as having no fairies at all. There must have been a few in England in Shakespeare's time, or he could never have written The Tempest or the Midsummer Night's Dream; ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... passes before ones' eyes for an hour. Then the senses begin to reel and it is time to leave this scene of Oriental life that is far lower and more repulsive than the most crowded streets in the terrible East Side tenement quarter of New York on a midsummer night. ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... 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 ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... has had some experience 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... more refined; more a sentiment than a passion—a compound of impulse and fancy, while the reflective powers and moral energies are more faintly developed. The same remark applies also to Julia and Silvia, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and, in a greater degree, to Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer Night's Dream. In the two latter, though perfectly discriminated, love takes the visionary fanciful cast, which belongs to the whole piece; it is scarcely a passion or a sentiment, but a dreamy enchantment, a reverie, which a fairy spell ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... manner of Gluck, in a passage 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 what ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... 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 ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the young lady with 3 smile in her pretty black eyes, "that you are not a student of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.'" ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... in his hand. Lord Bacon has a beautiful passage about flowers. As to Shakspeare, he is a perfect Alpine valley—he is full of flowers; they spring, and blossom, and wave in every cleft of his mind. Witness the Midsummer Night's Dream. Even Milton, cold, serene, and stately as he is, breaks forth into exquisite gushes of tenderness and fancy when he marshals the flowers, as ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Don't you see that you're on the verge of a new 'Midsummer Night's Dream'; that the world's tired of work and gone back to play! Don't talk like a tired business man whose wife has dragged him to see one of Ibsen's frolics—'Rosmersholm,' for example—where they talk for three hours and then jump in the well! The fact that there's ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... tales with which a lonely woman beguiled the weary hours for her little son It was a weirdly extravagant fairy story, and yet it fascinated Pearl in spite of it's unlikeness to truth. It had all the phantasy of a midsummer night's dream. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... my design in the following poem to celebrate by an allegory that immortality which Shakspeare has conferred on the fairy mythology by his Midsummer Night's Dream. But for him, those pretty children of our childhood would leave barely their names to our maturer years; they belong, as the mites upon the plumb, to the bloom of fancy, a thing generally too frail and beautiful to withstand the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... you been, my Mary, And where have you been from me?" "I've been to the top of the Caldon-Low, The midsummer night ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... truth, it would not amount to much. You would tell her that I met you in England; that I courted you, and that you found my attentions agreeable. And then? It pleases you to think too seriously of that midsummer night's dream under the great trees of Churchill Castle, and you reproach me for my errors! But what are they? Seriously, I do not see them! We lived in a noisy world; where we enjoyed the liberty which English manners allow to young people. Your aunt found ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... about the way in which the great English dramas were interpreted at that period.[279] And indeed they deserved that some trouble should be taken with them, for in London it was the time of "Romeo and Juliet," of "Midsummer Night's ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... talent and mental power, the world of men has not his equal to show. But when the question is to life, and its materials, and its auxiliaries, how does he profit me? What does it signify? It is but a Twelfth Night, or Midsummer Night's Dream, or a Winter Evening's Tale: what signifies another picture more or less? The Egyptian verdict of the Shakespeare Societies comes to mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact to his verse. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... 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.
... 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 an idea of the serious side of life ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... waving of trees, as in the Notturno in Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" and Schubert's exquisite beckoning song ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... from Spenser than anywhere else) gave this principle a greater range, and applied it with more various mastery. I have little doubt that the tune of the last stanza cited above was clinging in Shakespeare's ear when he wrote those exquisite verses in "Midsummer Night's Dream" ("I know a bank"), where our grave pentameter is in like manner surprised into a lyrical movement. See also the pretty song in the eclogue for August. Ben Jonson, too, evidently caught some cadences from Spenser for ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... the window, his curly head buried in a well-worn Shakespeare opened at "Midsummer Night's Dream." Lyddy was sitting under her favourite 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 in her lap. The pockets were small, the needles were ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... having gone off to foreign parts so young, that on Midsummer Night it is believed hereabout that the faint shapes of all the folk in the parish who are going to be at death's door within the year can be seen entering the church. Those who get over their illness come out again after awhile; those that are doomed to ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... unmoved by the mystery and psychology of Hamlet, the keen suffering and misery of King Lear, the bitter hate and revenge of Othello, the sweet devotion of Romeo and Juliet, the majesty of Richard III, and the fairy beauty of A Midsummer Night's Dream? In this wonderful kaleidoscope of all the human passions one can find a world of inspiration. I am also intensely fond of Goethe, Heine, and Alfred de Musset. It gives me pleasure to compare them to the great masters of music. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke |
